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likelihood of insufficient insurance settlements. However,among those disaster victims who were insured by one of the"top three" insurance companies, there was no significant dif-ference among racial and ethnic groups in settlements. Segrega-tion limited both movement out of the disaster area and disasterrecovery for Blacks. Florida City had a disproportionate loss ofhousing, population, and businesses, as compared to anothersmall city, Homestead, with a higher Anglo population, andfaces an uncertain future.

The final chapter is a discussion of the impact of the disasterin fostering social change in Miami. There were short-lived con-sequences of unity and community solidarity, but the long-termchange was more complex. For example, there was some degreeof unity and pulling together across ethnic and racial lines, espe-cially through new organizations for disaster recovery. How-ever, it also appeared that now there is greater inequality andsegregation in terms of households in the disaster area.

This book is of great value to those interested in disaster re-search and policy. The well-organized presentation provides anin-depth examination of many aspects of a community devas-tated by a natural disaster, and it gives a particularly valuablelook at gender and ethnicity, which are frequently ignored indisaster research. Another valuable facet of the book is the pol-icy section of each chapter. After discussing the research find-ings, the authors suggest policy implications for each issue. Be-cause of these suggestions, the book could also be of use inupper-level or graduate courses in which a professor wants todemonstrate clearly the link between research and policy. Ihighly recommend this book to researchers, policy-makers, andteachers interested in the area of disasters. •*•

Life among the Yanomami: The Story of Change amongthe Xilixana on the Mucajai River in Brazil. John F. Peters.Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press, 1998. 292 pp.

LESLIE E. SPONSELUniversity of Hawaii-Honolulu

This ethnography is based on long-term field research, no lessthan eight years actually living with the Mucajai Yanomami(1958-67), and that followed by half a dozen subsequent visitsover the last two decades. Furthermore, Peters and his wife, anurse, raised four of their children among the Yanomami. Hisfamily situation provided a unique opportunity to interact so-cially and in conversation with the Yanomami on an intimate ba-sis each day, a more normal manner than the usual lone anthro-pologist, even if a recurrent visitor. The depth of this experiencecomes through clearly in this richly detailed, well balanced, andcomprehensive ethnography. Peters's attitude toward theYanomami is revealing: "I enjoyed life in the rainforest—I wasalways to find the time spent with the Yanomami stimulatingand enriching" (p. 13). (This resonates with my dissertationfield experience with a northern group.)

It is also noteworthy that Peters was one of the first non-in-digenous persons to have sustained contact with Yanomami inthe Mucajai, and that this was as a member of the UnevangelizedField Mission. He returned to Canada in 1967, holds a doctoratein sociology, and is a professor at Wilfrid Laurier University.

(Previously he coauthored a book with John Early that is themost sophisticated demography on any Yanomami population.)

Among the 15 chapters, 1 provides general background, 2discusses field experience, 3-6 village life and individual lifecycle, 7 religion, 8 precontact history, 9-10 missionization, 11violence, and 12-15 sociocultural change. Chapter 13 providesa penetrating analysis of disease and health care as agents ofchange and raises some serious questions including some aboutgovernment responsibility and irresponsibility. However,change is an underlying theme in all chapters.

According to Peters, traditionally the Yanomami themselvesare concerned primarily with food, spirits, and taboos, and onlysecondarily with marriage, reproduction, raids, and feasts.However, Peters chooses to focus his ethnography on two levelsof temporal processes—the changing lives of individuals (in-cluding socialization, life cycle, marriage, and family), and thechanging society as a result of contact, especially with mission-aries and miners, but also, interestingly, with other Yanomamiand other indigenous societies. The first set of themes reflectsthe author's special interest in a structural functional approachto family studies. The latter set is dictated by the realities of theexternal forces imposing on the Yanomami that Peters, unlikemost other anthropologists writing about them, cannot ignoreand approaches critically and in terms of professional ethics.

Interesting differences are revealed between the MucajaiYanomami and other groups, emphasizing the significant vari-ation within the Yanomami that most other ethnographers havenotrecognized let alone pursued. Moreover, Peters identifies as-pects of culture that have been modified or lost, and other as-pects that have persisted or even been reinforced. Cultural sur-vival and the politicization of the Yanomami are among theother special topics considered. Thus, unlike so many accountsof the Yanomami (ethnographies, textbook descriptions, etc),this one does not emphasize "traditional" culture to the exclu-sion (or near exclusion) of the tragic forces of ethnocide, geno-cide, and ecocide that they have experienced in recent decades.(Other rare exceptions are the books by Dennison Berwick,Linda Rabben, and Alcida Ramos.)

Peters has the intellectual and moral courage to confrontsome very tough questions that do not have easy answers. In theprocess he also exposes the hypocrisy of human rights advo-cates who justifiably scream at the violation by outsiders of theYanomami yet remain embarrassingly silent about how someYanomami individuals violate some other Yanomami. This is-sue, and relevant concepts like cultural relativism, should makefor lively discussion in classes where students read this book as acase study. Likewise, readers will probably be especially inter-ested in the various Yanomami criticisms of Western culturethat Peters reveals. However, it would also have been fascinat-ing if the author and his family had drawn heavily on materialfrom their field diaries and correspondence, another aspect ofreflexivity in contemporary ethnography.

Despite the usual ambivalence and even antipathy betweenmany anthropologists and missionaries (see Missiology,24(2): 162-280, 1996), for those who can read this book withopen minds as scholars and scientists, there are rich rewards. Pe-ters offers an ethnography that is very special in its method, ap-proach, foci, and insights, in addition to the account of missioni-zation and the new data on the Mucajai Yanomami. Those whohave followed the years of debates over the character and causes

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of interpersonal and intergroup violence among the Yanomamiwill find that Peters agrees on some points but not on others.

The Yanomami have been studied in the field by some threedozen anthropologists during this century. Without any doubtPeters provides a superb complement to the growing number ofpublications on the Yanomami (see books by Dennison Ber-wick, EttoreBiocca, Napoleon Chagnon, Brian Ferguson, Ken-neth Good, Jacques Lizot, Linda Rabben, Alcida Ramos, Wil-liam Smole, Wilbert and Simoneau, and also the rather peculiarones by Florinda Donner, Margaret Jank, Geoffrey O'Connor,Mark Ritchie, and Frank Salamone). One can only hope thatauthors of textbooks who discuss the Yanomami will read Pe-ters and also eventually discover this extensive literature, in-stead of relying on any single account. (See the reviewer's arti-cle in Aggressive Behavior 24[2]:97-122, 1998, for a criticalanalysis of Yanomami research.)

Peters dedicates his book to the future of the Yanomami andintends it to help raise awareness about their human rights. Thisis more than tokenism because there is a most commendable butunfortunately almost unique attribute to this book—the royal-ties go to a health fund for indigenous communities! That pro-vides one genuine way for readers to contribute something con-crete and positive to the Yanomami, contrary to "normal"academic colonialism. What if all authors of books on theYanomami would do this? The time is very long overdue for an-thropology to come full circle—to find appropriate ways to re-turn something meaningful to those people who so kindly hostour field research. In this and other ways Peters has accom-plished something very meaningful. •*•

Peasant Moorings: Village Ties and Mobility Rationales inSouth India. Jean-Luc Racine, ed. New Delhi: Sage Publica-tions, 1997. 400 pp.

FlLIPPO OSELLA

University of Sussex

This book offers some important insights toward the under-standing of rural migration in India. Starting from the realizationthat India, despite land shortages and high rural population den-sity, retains more than 75% of its population in villages, the con-tributors set themselves the double objective of finding out theforces and rationales that either favor or prevent rural migration.

The site of the research—conducted by French and Indian ge-ographers, anthropologists, and economists—is a number ofvillages in four districts of south Karnataka-Dakshina Kannadain the coastal belt; the mountain ranges of the Western Ghats;and dry as well as irrigated areas of the Maidan, in the DeccanPlateau. The villages are typical of different "rural systems," theconcept introduced to describe "all the structures and relation-ships that give a rural environment its functional identity" (p.26), thus allowing for appreciation of the fact that agriculturemight not be the sole—or central—economic activity.

The case studies presented aim to highlight the complex inter-play between structural forces—economic, political, and so-cial—and the individual factors that influence both mobility andretention of rural populations. While migration is a survivalstrategy for many, it is not the poorest who migrate to urban ar-

eas. F. Landy shows that in villages in the dry area of the Maidanit is usually marginal fanners who resort to periods of temporarymigration to the city to supplement family income. Successfulurban migration requires a minimum of skills, education, capi-tal, and contacts that the poorest villagers lack. Periods of migra-tion to the city vary considerably, from a couple of years to thewhole working life; only those who manage to get good, perma-nent government jobs will not return to their village of origin un-til retirement. The return of migrants is facilitated by the possi-bility of maintaining strong links with the village duringmigration periods. Brothers can be left in charge of cultivationof the migrants' land, while cultural acceptance of long-termseparation of couples allows migrants to leave wives and chil-dren behind.

In the irrigated areas of the Maidan, as well as in theplantationsystem of the Western Ghats, where agricultural work is plenti-ful and seasonal in-migration of laborers is the norm, the profileof out-migrants is different. Migrants to the cities are fewer and,as F. Landy and B. N. Shivalingappa show, belong to well-to-dofamilies, leaving villages to follow higher education and even-tually to enter sought-after professions. Here migration is part ofwider family strategies that seek to expand contacts and to enterurban power circles. The high level of retention of rural popula-tion in these two districts is due to a combination of economic,social, and cultural factors. These areas are very fertile, andthere is usually enough work for marginal farmers and the lan-dless poor; at the same time, the low living costs act as a disin-centive for artisans and petty traders to move to towns. Cultur-ally, villagers display an ideology that valorizes kinship andvillage ties, attaches high prestige to landowning, and creates astrong emotional attachment to place of birth and the land.These cultural and prestige considerations, M. A. Kalam argues,have a direct bearing on the decision to remain, while those whodo migrate are always attracted back.

All the case studies point to another extremely important fac-tor impeding rural mobility among the poor, while at the sametime creating some specific patterns of rural-to-rural seasonalmigration: the persistence of "feudal" agrarian relations basedupon forms of bonded labor. This is particularly marked in theinterior of Dakshina Kannada analyzed by K. Nagaraj, but alsonoted in the Ghats and the irrigated Maidan. Nagaraj argues thatwhile the lower castes in the interior are more socially and eco-nomically deprived than those in the coastal belt, it is the amongthe latter that a high incidence of migration is found. In the inte-rior, agriculture is dominated by high-caste landowners whoown large amounts of land and maintain low-caste laborers andtenants in relations of debt bondage that, to all effects, limit mo-bility. In the Ghats and irrigated Maidan similar relations arefound, but bonded labor is also extended to incoming seasonalmigrants who, by building up debts with employers that cannotbe repaid, are forced to come back to work for the same land-owners, at low wages, every season.

The ethnography presented throughout the volume goes along way to forward understanding of internal migration in In-dia. Itclearly showsthatmigration,moreoften than not, isnotanirreversible choice, and that a large number of practices areavailable to villagers between the two extremes of going awayforever or never abandoning the village. This in turn points tothe flows and complex webs of economic and social relations ofco-dependency that tie together rural and urban India, and