in the time of oil: piety, memory & social life in an omani town. mandana e. limbert. stanford,...

BOOK AND VIDEO REVIEWS

The Archaeology of American Labor andWorking-Class Life. Paul A. Shackel. Gaines-ville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2009.

Margaret E. Beck, University of [email protected]

Paul Shackel’s The Archaeology of American Laborand Working-Class Life is a fascinating review of laborstudies as well as the historical archaeological sitesthat illuminate labor relations and struggles in theUnited States. The book is published as part of theUniversity Press of Florida’s series on The AmericanExperience in Archaeological Perspective. Accordingto the press Web site (http://www.upf.com), eachvolume in the series addresses a key “event, process,setting, or institution” in U.S. history while emphasiz-ing the contributions of archaeologists to our scholarlyunderstanding of the topic. Shackel’s book achievesboth admirably, introducing readers to issues in U.S.labor history and to the associated domestic andindustrial sites.

The book opens with a short foreword by theseries editor, Michael S. Nassaney, followed by apreface and introduction by the author. The role ofarchaeology is made clear in these early pages; givenall of the ink devoted to the industrialists and robberbarons, the material record provides a crucial way “totell different stories that counter the dominant narra-tive” (xvi). Previously, archaeologists investigatingindustrial sites have often chosen to emphasize indus-try’s technological development rather than theworking lives of people at these sites and in thissystem. Shackel eloquently explains that archaeologycan and should tackle the social issues surroundingindustrialism.

Chapter 1, “World Systems and the Develop-ment of Industrial Capitalism,” provides definitions ofcapitalism and reviews landmark studies on its deve-lopment, incorporating themes such as ImmanuelWallerstein’s world systems approach, the core-periphery model, and broader shifts in the U.S.economy and social organization in the 1700s and1800s. This chapter smoothly incorporates physicalsites and archaeological studies, as do the others,making it clear that the archaeological data are notsimply “tacked on” but form an integral part of thediscussion. Several important locations, such as site ofthe Ludlow Tent Colony in Colorado or the mill town

of Lowell, Massachusetts, have been the focus ofextensive archaeological research as well as historicaland documentary work. The material record in thesecases visibly enhances our understanding of theworkers’ domestic behavior and of the mechanismsused to control workers – subjects not generallycovered in popular histories.

Chapter 2, “Surveillance Technologies andBuilding the Industrial Environment,” highlights theutility and importance of material culture and con-struction by exploring how physical settings, such asplanned company towns and housing complexes,were used to monitor and control the workers within.Chapter 3, “Workers’ Housing in the Late NineteenthCentury,” places archaeological studies of workingclass households and housing (including boarding-houses and tenements) into the context of laborhistory by addressing living conditions and relatingthese to broader labor issues. Chapter 4, “Power,Resistance, and Alternatives,” describes many exam-ples of power struggles such as strikes, workplacesubversion, and attempts to develop alternativesystems in utopian communities. Chapter 5, “Direc-tions for a Labor Archaeology,” outlines productiveareas for research including race, gender, and environ-ment and sustainability. Chapter 6, “Memory, Ruins,and Commemoration,” specifically addresses sitepreservation and the creation of monuments andmuseums in terms of what we choose to rememberabout labor history.The final chapter, the conclusion,includes an excellent discussion of teaching laborhistory and labor archaeology, providing manyexamples of appropriate sites for different topics andeven directing readers to lesson plans from theNational Park Service. Shackel recommends visits toparticular sites that well-illustrate “our industrialpast,” although he cautions that “it is always impor-tant to critically view how work, labor, and industryare being interpreted in public places” (98). Recom-mended sites include mining towns (e.g., Tyrone,New Mexico; Buxton, Iowa; and Klondike GoldRush National Historical Park, Alaska), mill towns(e.g., Lawrence Heritage State Park in Lawrence,Massachusetts, site of the 1912 Bread and RosesStrike), and industrial sites (e.g., Harpers FerryNational Historical Park, Virginia).

The Archaeology of American Labor and Working-Class Life is an accessible, engaging, and informativeoverview of U.S. labor history with numerous material

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Volume XXXIII, Number 1 © 2012 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved. 47

examples. This very readable book would be a goodchoice for undergraduate and graduate classes on U.S.history and archaeology. Even readers with no existingpassion for historical archaeology should enjoy it; itamply demonstrates the contributions of the archaeo-logical record without getting bogged down in special-ized methods or language. Archaeologists should alsofind the volume immensely useful; it illustrates thevalue of humanizing our subjects and consideringsocially relevant questions. Particularly interesting tome was the discussion of hidden, undocumentedworker resistance to employer control and the ideol-ogy that legitimized it, resistance that is only visible inthe archaeological record. Memorable examplesinclude deliberate use of outdated material culture byworkers’ families at Harpers Ferry, suggesting loyaltyto an earlier time when they “had some control overtheir means of production” (62) and heavy consump-tion of a brewery’s products by its employees, whohid the resulting empty bottles in walls and the eleva-tor shaft. The seamless integration of informationfrom history, archaeology, and other disciplines is toeveryone’s benefit.

The Anthropology of Labor Unions. E. PaulDurrenberger and Karaleah S. Reichart, eds.Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2010.

Frederick C. Gamst, University of [email protected]

At one time, some anthropologists held thatlabor organizations, and especially their labor actions,disrupted the social equilibrium of a structurallyfunctionalist conceived stable society. Not so withthe informative 11 chapters of Durrenberger andReichart’s book, which depicts a dynamic society withlabor and its organization continually in flux. Anunderlying query in the book is given the union advan-tage of higher wages and better fringe benefits thanin unorganized and disorganized employment, whythe great low for the American union movement?Abounding in ethnographic groundings, the authorsof these case studies scrutinize essential issues inunionism across a range of industries in the UnitedStates and elsewhere.The editors and authors providecompelling insights into the unions of several coun-tries, but primarily the United States.

Durrenberger and Reichart introduce their col-lection of essays with an overview of the complexitiesof unions, contemporary issues faced, and the placeof (sociocultural) anthropology in union research,including use of the culture concept. Reichart’s“Miners, Women, and Community Coalitions in

the UMWA Pittston Strike” focuses on the place ofwomen and their power in forming, dissolving, andreorganizing alliances and coalitions adjunct to thelabor action. This occurred in an extremely genderedindustry, coal mining, where men predominate in theranks and the leadership. In “Is This What Democ-racy Looks Like?” Durrenberger and Suzan Eremplumb a fair union election in which a self-interestedclique replaced progressive leadership. Researcherspredicting the union election’s outcome found thatdeep ethnography within a subgroup does not fore-cast correctly as does a random sample survey ofthe union population. In “With God on Everyone’sSide,” Sandy Smith-Nonini relates conflict in NorthCarolina between rural Methodists and organizingfarm workers. As the number of Hispanic farmworkers grew and neoliberal sentiment and the influ-ence of talk radio and Fox TV ascended, local com-munities circled their wagons in an effort to do the“Gott mit uns” right thing. Peter Richardson pondersa core matter, job property rights, in “Buying outthe Union: Jobs as Property and the UAW.” Relatedissues are management versus union workers in theunprofitability of a firm, buyouts – relinquishingcontractual provisos – to reduce labor costs, two-tiercompensation, and government failure in equitablyregulating the labor market. Contractual rightsbecame a limited property hoarded by families andthen sellable by individuals. Unionism suffered asits sine qua non collectivism, us, lost to individual-ism, me.

In “Approaching Industrial Democracy in Non-union Mines,” Jessica Smith explains the shift to unor-ganized miners as the coal industry moved to surfaceoperations in the West. In the Powder River Basin,loose Wyoming “cowboy solidarity” obtains ratherthan the customary close union solidarity. Unionembodiment of brotherhood lost to the Cowboy Statepersonhood centered on (a Marlboro man?) standingtall, unaided. One-fifth of the mine workers arejob-integrated women.

In “Small Places, Close to Home: The Impor-tance of Place in Organizing Workers,” Lydia Savageconsiders place in organizing employees. Unions mustshow that they are relevant both in workplaces andelsewhere. It is not sufficient for unions to studyrelations between variables in the workplace and out-comes of union elections. “[O]rganizers must alsounderstand how workers’ experiences in their com-munity, workplace, and home affect their decisions”(132).

In chapter 8, “Economic Globalization andChanging Capital-Labor Relations in Baja Califor-nia’s Fresh-Produce Industry,” Christian Zlolniskivisits Baja California’s produce industry to considervulnerable employees of transnational corporations.

Anthropology of Work Review


Mexico’s neoliberal policies contribute to uprootingand proletarianizing peasants, creating inexpensive,flexible labor. Political action concomitant to eco-nomic globalization, however, produces some humaneregional outcomes. Rather than unions, ethnic orga-nizations support worker mobilization. Marty Otaez,in “The Tobacco Trap: Obstacles to Trade Unionismin Malawi,” analyzes obstacles to unions in Malawi.By avoiding the minimum wage, that is, completingthe race to the bottom, child labor from impoverishedproletarians supports the black farm owners. Promot-ing health, theWHO seeks reduction of world tobaccoproduction, thereby weakening local familial income.Trapped, farm union organizers lack options regard-ing alternative incomes and crop substitutes forchronically poor families.

Karen Brodkin’s “Concluding Thoughts” seespromise in the chapters’ reporting of innovative orga-nizing of low-paid, marginalized workers. On the nega-tive side, governments, capitalists, and workers havejointly constructed invidious distinctions of differen-tial worth regarding categories of labor. Accordingly,these distinctions channel who gets what jobs, thecircumstances under which one lives, and the lifechances and priorities of different kinds of workers.The “working class” is less an extant grouping withknown shared interests than a potential for a coalitionnegotiating accommodation of differences. Brodkindraws from the rich collection of case studies to outlinean anthropology of labor and working class activism.

In the afterword, the editors conclude thatworkers often value unions for an individual increasein remuneration instead of collective ascent. Regard-ing the book’s comparative ethnology, this generaliza-tion and others might not be apt globally, for example,as in Germany. In the United States, recent actionstaken by capital directly or through their lobbying ofnational and state governments have resulted inpoorer compensation and other conditions of employ-ment for labor. But Sweden and Ethiopia are notAmerica. In comparative ethnology, we must bewareof our collectively carried subcultures subtly influenc-ing our concerns, subject foci, scope, and generaliza-tions. Even within one U.S. state, we might not be ableto generalize. How do one author’s and the editors’“cowboy” conclusions hold for the soda ash minersand railroaders ofWyoming? Nationally on October 6,2011, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers andTrainmen, with an authorizing vote from 97 percent ofits members, called a strike against the railroads. Presi-dent Obama ended the possibility of this action withhis establishment of Presidential Emergency Board243 under the complex machinery of the RailwayLabor Act of 1926 as amended. Whither compara-tive industrial ethnology when the educated, job-experienced, validating subjects can read our findings?

Methodologically alerting is the contrast madebetween “surveys” and “ethnography” in one chapter(47), with the distinction fruitfully employed in theother chapters as well. Which tool is more useful fora particular task, the saw or the hammer? In all,Durrenberger and Reichart produce an idea-rich,pioneering collection on the sociocultural anthropol-ogy of unions, certainly citable for years to come.Their book is valuable not just for students of unionsbut also to those interested in the broader social rela-tions of work influenced and even restrained by thestate. Interunion and extraunion relations are a primeexample of political economy, as demonstrated in thisvolume.

Counter Culture: The American Coffee ShopWaitress. Candacy A. Taylor. Ithaca, NY: ILRPress, 2009.

Carrie M. Lane, California State [email protected]

After a particularly long and exhausting nightwaiting tables, Candacy Taylor, then in her 30s, foundherself wondering how waitresses twice her age wereable to manage the intensive physical and emotionallabor involved in waiting tables for shifts that average8–10 hours.To answer that question, starting in 2001,Taylor, a photographer, writer, and visual artist, setout to interview and photograph career coffee shopwaitresses, or “lifers” (Taylor defines a coffee shop asa place that serves breakfast and has a counter withstools; she specifically sought out long-standingbusinesses with a regular clientele). Taylor ultimatelyspoke with 59 waitresses in cities and small townsacross 43 states. The resulting text, Counter Culture,built around nine themed chapters, each interspersedwith photographs and followed by biographies of indi-vidual servers, is part scholarly work, part coffee tablebook, and wholly engaging.

Taylor set out expecting to find women who feltoverworked and unappreciated but instead learnedthat most veteran waitresses love their jobs and haveno interest in other careers. They describe waitingtables as a calling, something they were born to do.Many continue to work well into their 80s and 90s,saying they love their customers (especially the regu-lars), the busy pace, and the physical activity, howeverdemanding. Although the job takes a toll on theirbodies, they also believe it keeps them healthy, fit, andyoung in body and heart. An 80-year-old waitress whohas served tables for more than 55 years told Taylorshe has considered retiring many times, but, “I justcan’t give it up” (118).



Most lifers do have their complaints about thejob. They are aware of the long-standing stigmasaround serving (outlined in chapter 6), especially thatwaitresses are of low class and loose morals. Manyreport having been mistreated or propositioned bycustomers and managers; one woman’s first uniformwas a short green tunic that revealed ruffled whitepanties in the back (85).Yet veteran servers take pridein their ability to handle such affronts with wit, calm,or a hot pot of coffee in the lap, whichever the situa-tion requires.They reject the “servant” part of serving,emphasizing that they are very much in control intheir milieu and that their work, while devalued bysociety, is important and deserves respect. “I am notashamed to be a waitress,” says one Massachusettsgrandmother of three. “I can walk with judges andlawyers. I can fit in with anyone because I know whatI do and I’m no phony” (86).

Taylor skillfully details the labor involved in wait-ressing, cataloguing 20 specific steps involved inserving a single table (32).Veteran waitresses’ greatestskill – and greatest advantage over less experiencedservers – is their ability to reduce those steps by antici-pating customers’ needs, knowing the coffee shoplayout and menu, minimizing trips with good plan-ning, and remaining calm under pressure. Althoughlifers say it takes at least 15 years to “turn waitressinginto an art” (32), at this stage in their career, theynever get behind, flustered, or overwhelmed – “in theweeds,” in industry parlance (35). As one waitress saysof watching her 77-year-old colleague work, “It’s likewatching Fred Astaire dancing. She makes it lookeffortless” (32).

Perfecting the art of serving also brings materialrewards. An experienced server can earn more thantwice what others make on the same shift.This is duein part to lifers’ ability to turn tables quickly andtherefore serve more customers per shift. Waitresseswith seniority also claim prime positions at thecounter, where less walking, faster turnover, and moreface time with customers tend to translate into highertips. Most importantly, lifers’ higher earnings are aproduct of the deep connections they have developedwith their regulars (the subject of chapter 4). Althoughservers are emphatic that such relationships are notabout the money – “I don’t see a dollar sign coming in,I see a human being” (98) – cultivating regulars is anessential part of the job. Servers tend to spoil theirregulars, adding sprinkles and a cherry to theirsundae, saving leftover bones for their dogs, or callingto check up on them if they fail to show up at theirregular time. In return, regulars usually tip signifi-cantly more than nonregulars, require less time toserve because their needs can be anticipated, and canbe dealt with more frankly when conflicts arise. Regu-lars have been known to turn around and walk out if

their favorite server is not working or to nurse a singlecup of coffee for hours until her shift starts. Some donot know their own orders because their regular serverbrings it without them having to ask.

Thanks to the tip-based system, career waitressesare able to average US$20–30 an hour despite lowhourly wages (servers are exempt from minimumwage laws in most states), making waitressing “one ofthe most lucrative jobs that requires no formal educa-tion” (91). Contrary to the perception of waitressingas a poorly paid, dead-end job, most of Taylor’s inter-viewees were “financially stable homeowners, drovenewer cars, and many had sent their children toprivate schools” (4). Many were single mothers whochose serving as a career because its scheduling flex-ibility allowed them to support their families whileworking around their children’s school schedules.Although over 90 percent of the waitresses inter-viewed were offered management positions, fewerthan 5 percent accepted (72), as such a move usuallymeant losing that flexibility as well as a reduction inpay and status. “In some coffee shops with a veteranwait staff, managers do not hold the same amount ofpower as office, factory, or retail managers” (70).Veteran servers often end up training their managers,rather than the other way around, and because wait-resses depend more on tips than wages, they prioritizepleasing customers, especially regulars, over pleasingsupervisors.

Even as Taylor documents the unique culture ofcareer waitressing, she identifies multiple forces has-tening its demise. Both Taylor and the women shespoke with see a sharp contrast between the experi-ences and attitudes of older coffee shop waitresses anda new generation of younger waitresses (of whichTaylor considers herself a part). According to lifers,young servers see waiting tables as embarrassing or“below them” and are unwilling to put in the hardwork and long hours required to turn waitressing intoa profitable and fulfilling career. “[T]he work ethic isdifferent now,” says one veteran waitress. “People justdon’t want to work hard. I hate to say that it’s gen-erational, but for the most part that’s true” (105).Lifers dread working with younger servers, whom theydescribe as overly casual, slow to learn (allegedlybecause they do not want to), and quick to call in sickor complain about physical labor.

In defense of the younger generation, Taylornotes that today’s youth face a very different profes-sional landscape than did lifers who entered the work-force in the mid-20th century. “Veteran waitresseswere raised in a time when work choices for womenwere limited to teacher, secretary, waitress, factoryworker, or department store clerk. As waitressing paidbetter than most jobs available to them, they stayedwith it and felt grateful they could support their fami-



lies” (106). Compared with other jobs, especiallyphysically arduous agricultural labor (more than halfof the women interviewed grew up on farms) or officework, which lifers describe as too physically andsocially confining, waiting tables seemed an excellentalternative.Young women today, however, have signifi-cantly more professional options available to them. Aswell, the lucrative and long-term positions held bymany lifers have become increasingly rare. Althoughwaitressing is still one of the most common occupa-tions in America (7), the restaurant industry is nowdominated by chains that neither value nor encouragethe sort of personalized service on which lifers builttheir careers. There are also fewer single men andwidowers who cannot cook and take all their meals indiners, eroding the base of regulars from whom lifersmake their best tips. Young women’s disdain for ordisinterest in waitressing may therefore be at leastpartially explained as a logical aversion to an increas-ingly unprofitable field.

As the previous summary should make clear,Counter Culture has much to offer anthropologists ofwork, although they may have to do a bit of searchingand extrapolating to locate it. The chapters are occa-sionally repetitive, and when it comes to analysis,Taylor often disappoints. The sections in which sheaddresses academic theories around gender, femi-nism, and labor feel tacked on, as if added to satisfy anadvisor or editor. Similarly, the histories provided ofdiners and waitressing (chapters 2 and 6, respectively)are fine for general interest readers but too cursory tobe of much use to scholars. Perhaps most importantlyfor readers interested in labor issues, although Taylorsays many waitresses make far less money and are farless content than the career waitresses she describes,her focus on the latter group obscures that point.Taylor also identifies the lack of medical and retire-ment benefits as one of the worst parts of waitressingbut includes so many positive anecdotes about man-agers who take their employees on vacation every yearor pay for a waitress’s cancer treatment that the veryreal impact of those missing benefits gets lost alongthe way.

The book’s greatest contributions are its charm-ing and nuanced portraits of career waitresses, thework they do, and how they feel about it (the photo-graphs included nicely convey the spirit and person-ality of the women and their workplaces). The lifersthemselves are exactly the sort of sassy, efficient, take-no-shit waitresses who have become stock figures inAmerican popular culture. Taylor’s use of extendedquotation and description allow them to expand intofuller, more complex characters whose stories illumi-nate issues of labor, gender, and occupational culturein the American food service industry. Ultimately,Taylor says, her journey into the lives of career wait-

resses led her to “reevaluate the myth of the Americandream that says you need to have an ‘important’ jobto be happy” (4). “If the American dream can besummed up as happiness, prosperity, ownership, andfree will,” she posits, “who’s to say these women aren’tliving it?” (98). She thus offers this book as a celebra-tion of career coffee shop waitresses and a lament fortheir impending disappearance from the Americanlandscape. “There’s an authenticity and honesty indiners,” she says, “that is missing in our everydaylives” (25). For those of us looking to redress thatabsence, Taylor helpfully includes a list of the wait-resses she interviewed and the restaurants and cities inwhich they work (137–138) so that we, too, can graba seat at the counter.

Reshaping Gender and Class in Rural Spaces.Barbara Pini and Belinda Leach, eds. Farnham:Ashgate, 2011.

Kendra Coulter, University of [email protected]

Barbara Pini and Belinda Leach have assembleda valuable, global collection on rural work andworkers. The chapters present cross-cultural explora-tions of the realities of rural livelihoods and socialrelations, while maintaining a consistent, conceptualfocus on class and gender. As a result, the volumeprovides organized and coherent breadth and depth.The reader is left with a clearer and fuller picture ofthe worlds of contemporary rural work within thecontext of global restructuring. Moreover, the textoffers insights into shifting and enduring gender andclass relations, work in a local-global framework,and other conceptual questions on labor as embodiedand experienced. Consequently, the book’s value liesnot only in its portraits of rural livelihoods but in itsbroader analytical contributions to anthropologicalstudies of work.

Pini and Leach’s introduction effectively situatesthe collection within rural studies, gender scholarship,and both historical and recent trends in the analysis ofclass. In doing so, they set the stage for engagementwith the role(s) of culture and emotions in scholarshipon class, gendered class relations in rural contexts, andcross-cultural perspectives on stratified ruralities. Inother words, they seek to fill multiple lacunae by“classing” rural studies and by bringing the genderedrural into conversation with studies of class. Theeditors’ ambitions are laudable and ambitious, andthe contributors effectively take up the challenge.We are presented with an interesting and broadcross-section of case studies that center on the



gender-class-rural work nexus from different topical,regional, conceptual, and methodological angles. Theauthors come from a range of academic disciplines,but the majority of the chapters incorporate empiri-cally grounded if not ethnographic methodologies.Thus, the approaches and data are well-suited toanthropological teaching and research.

Geographically, the collection considers ruralcommunities in Canada, the United States, Australia,and Britain. Manufacturing, mining, forestry, as wellas agricultural work are examined. This diversity isimportant for demonstrating that the types of workperformed in rural spaces are heterogeneous. Thesedifferent labor contexts are approached from the per-spectives of various gendered, classed, and racializedsocial actors differently positioned within worlds ofwork and their broader rural socioeconomic land-scapes. As a result, we gain a better understanding ofhow inequities are reproduced and negotiated.

Particularly noteworthy contributions includeSuzanne E.Tallichet’s chapter on Appalachian womenminers and Belinda Leach’s study of women inautomotive manufacturing and parts work, whichexplore the lived tensions of gender politics in male-dominated workplaces in rural communities. AnnieHughes provides an insightful examination of loneparents’ struggles with rural worlds of waged work inBritain. How gender identities affect agricultural divi-sions of labor and class demarcations is probed bySusan Machum in her study of women on familyfarms in New Brunswick, Canada, and Rae Dufty andEdgar Liu incorporate analysis of the racialized rural“other” in their research on New South Wales,Australia. Similarly, Kerry Preibisch and EvelynEncalada Grez focus on Mexican female migrantworkers in rural Canada and offer a gendered andintersectional analysis of the experiences and effects oftransnational labor programs. In other words, notionsof a monolithic, declassed country are replaced withmore accurate pictures of rural lives and livelihoodsthat illuminate intersecting and divergent inequalitiesas structured and experienced.

The text highlights the role of rural people innational and global divisions of labor. Accordingly, thecollection reminds anthropological scholars of workthat local, rural specificities and cultures affect howbroader economic projects and labor processes areunderstood, expanded, remade, and/or resisted. Thevolume highlights how work performed outside ofmajor city centers is entangled with rural-urban pat-terns of mobility, the production and processing ofvarious goods, and expanding economic polarizationat national and global levels.

The collection would be well suited to seniorundergraduate or graduate courses, offering a rigor-ous but teachable combination of empirical data,

analytical nuance, and ethnographic fodder for discus-sions. Themes incorporated into the analyses includepaid and unpaid work, social reproductive labor, themeanings of public and private spheres for ruralworkers, restructuring, unemployment, education andtraining, age and generation, familial politics andculture, migration, sexuality, public policy, and thechallenges and possibilities of community engage-ment. Consequently, the collection offers a plethora ofinterconnections with existing scholarship, and hookswith which to attract and engage students. Notably,gender is particularly well-theorized in many chapters.Scholarly conceptualizations of gender relations, femi-ninities, and masculinities are bolstered, enriched, andchallenged through the rural data, the lens of class,and the attention paid to how work and gender areconnected. The results are important genderedinsights into the experiences and understandings ofclass injury, the articulation of class categories, andrealities of classed lives. Expanded discussion ofagency and class action in rural contexts and consid-eration of how the social constructions of animals andthe nature/culture nexus figure in rural labor processeswould be valuable, complementary angles to furtherstrengthen the collection.

Overall, Reshaping Gender and Class in RuralSpaces offers a holistic picture of the complexities,inequities, and contradictions that characterize con-temporary rural work, workers, workplaces, and com-munities. This in itself makes the text a valuablecontribution to anthropological studies of work.However, the volume’s thoughtful insights into under-standings of gender and class make its contributioneven greater.

In the Time of Oil: Piety, Memory & Social Lifein an Omani Town. Mandana E. Limbert.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010.

Paul Gilbert, University of [email protected]

In James Ferguson’s widely cited ethnography ofZambia’s declining Copperbelt, the fictional qualityof modernization theory’s teleologies is affirmed bythe experience of previously prosperous, and nowdestitute, mineworkers. For these disappointed anddisillusioned workers, modernity’s promise hadbecome “the object of nostalgic reverie, and ‘back-wardness’ the anticipated (or dreaded) future” – thejuncture between Africa and the West had beenrevealed not as a stairway but as a wall (Ferguson1999:13, 237). In terms of its theoretical and com-parative contribution, In the Time of Oil can be read as



a complementary critique of the teleological mythsthat infuse modernist planning and accompanyextractive industry development in the Middle East.

Mandana Limbert takes as her subject matterthe experiences and anxieties of Omanis for whommodernity’s myths never took hold so completely asthey did on the Copperbelt, despite the sudden trans-formations brought about by oil wealth and theOmani “renaissance” (al-Nahda). This renaissance –which would see the privatization of water distribu-tion, the number of modern schools and kilometers ofasphalt road increase exponentially inside a decade,and the end of manual labor for many – was triggeredby Sultan Qaboos’ coup in 1970.This coup also led tothe unification of the coastal Sultanate of Muscat andthe interior Imamate of Oman.

Renaissance notwithstanding, the inevitability ofdecline looms large in contemporary Oman, with theofficial exhaustion of oil supplies constantly deferred20 years into the future (10, 167). It is perhaps unsur-prising then that the time of oil is not “set within amyth of permanence or conceived of as a step in an‘open’ teleology of progress” but is experienced bymany Omanis as a “time between the ‘realities’ ofpoverty” (11). The uncertainty surrounding Oman’soil wealth is compounded by Qaboos’ failure toannounce an heir. This means, however, that thefuture is not only imagined as a return to povertybut as a potential opportunity for the revival of thetheocratic Imamate, which previously ruled in theinterior (al-Dakhiliya), where Limbert conducted herfieldwork.

In In the Time of Oil, Limbert documents howanxieties about the inevitable decline of oil wealth(and possibly the renaissance state) find expression inintergenerational disagreements over what constitutesproper sociality in the interior town of Bahla. On theone hand, there are those who remember life before1970, when governance operated through familialallegiance and scholarly authority (40), drinking waterwas provided free to all passersby according to “moraland religious recommendation” (123), and communalbathing and prayer constituted correct social conductfor women (128).

On the other, there are those born during therenaissance, for whom social order is experiencedthrough state town planning projects, bureaucracy,and policing. These Bahlawis grew up after drink-ing water had been privatized according to UnitedNations “modernization” prescriptions and Interna-tional Monetary Fund loan conditions (119). Thusthey protested about the use of “their” family’smetered water by those of lower castes or class, pro-tests that expressed “the practical tensions seeminglyerased in the Omani state’s discursive elaborationsabout development and tradition” (127). For this

younger generation, an Islamic ethic “tied to a dis-course of individualized and privatized religiousmodesty” (129) acquired at university led them to findthe thought of communal bathing abhorrent.

The older generation might respond that thebureaucratic reordering of Bahla meant that therewere “too many shaykhs” (40), simply bureaucrats byanother name, and not the learned Ibadi men of theImamate past. Likewise, while for young university-educated women, religiosity must be carved out as a“distinct category in life” (89) organized around self-discipline and the individual contemplation of God,their grandmothers responded to their concerns aboutcommunal bathing by complaining that “Everything isharam [forbidden] now” (128).

The intergenerational tensions that Limbertdescribes are perhaps best encapsulated by the ways inwhich the sociality of older women represented “boththe ease and the excesses of the oil era” (17) fromwhich their daughters sought to distance themselves –while at the same time, the older generation embodiedthe truly religious time before oil. In Bahla, memoriesof the Imamate run up against an understanding thatoil supplies are exhaustible, and Limbert’s intimatelywritten ethnography provides a remarkably cohesiveaccount of the ways in which these memories areinvoked in contemporary assessments of proper soci-ality and religiosity, as well as in speculation aboutwhat the future might hold – a possible revival of theImamate and a return to poverty.

Limbert’s most exciting contributions in In theTime of Oil involve her discussions of changing workand leisure practices, and the memories of (or nos-talgia for) the time before oil that are invoked whenthese practices are subjected to moral assessment.While it is often noted that the introduction ofextractive industry developments can alter localpractices of time reckoning through the disciplinarymetrics of wage labor (e.g., Halvaksz 2008), in thecase of petro states such as Oman, oil wealth hascreated remarkable new opportunities for leisure time.Earlier, women situated in or above the middle socialstratum were occupied with tasks now carried out bydomestic employees or with collective work outsidethe home such as cutting alfalfa, grazing livestock,and milling wheat (59–60). In the 1990s, however,Limbert’s landlady commented about her neighbor-hood visiting group (gıtan), “you see, this is my work(shughli)” (14).

Chapter 3 contains an elegant discussion of therole that coffee plays in women’s sociality. The moralambivalence surrounding communal coffee drinkingis given in the fact that both coffee and sociality may“become associated with leisure, the waste of time,decadence, decline, and overabundance,” and thus,sociality “becomes a means to control desire and a



producer of risk, potentially corrupting those whopartake in it” (68). Highly stylized visiting and coffee-sharing practices occupied the days of most of theBahlawi women with whom Limbert spent time inthe late 1990s. Not only was the past – the time beforeoil – narrated by these women in terms of how fewopportunities there were for coffee and socialization(59), but “[i]t was understood that those who did notvisit their neighbors were somehow marginal, eitherbecause they were ‘crazy’ or because they had enteredan economic world where they worked for wages”(53–54).

For younger women who do not remember thetime before oil but seek to revive an imagined versionof the properly religious Imamate past, their mothers’socializing practices are problematic. This is firstlybecause they are the product of excess and theabsence of pious and productive work, and secondly,because they involve unacceptable forms of movementthrough public space. Chapter 4 deals with theseyoung women’s troubled efforts to produce new formsof religious sociality involving semipublic meetings(if they met in their homes, their religious study wouldnot be taken seriously by their male counterparts),while simultaneously critiquing the gıtan visiting prac-tices fuelled by Oman’s oil wealth, and noting that“ ‘in the past,’ when Omanis were properly religious,women would study ‘at home’ ” (109).

In stark contrast to the contemporary situation inwhich proper sociality demands leisure time, Ghaniaand Fatima (two women in their late 60s or 70s)narrate in chapter 6 their pre-renaissance travelsbetween Bahla and Zanzibar in terms of a search for,and willingness to participate in, “productive work”(148). The Omani state is currently promoting “acontinued faith in the teleological model whereby‘modernization’ could be said to be attainable andsustainable through diversification” and – perhapsmost importantly – the “acceptance of manual labor”(167). Yet Ghania and Fatima know from their jour-neys in search of productive work, which took themfrom drought-stricken Bahla to prosperous but declin-ing Zanzibar and back again, that the emergence ofrenaissance Oman is nothing more than a “strangetwist of fate” (163).

Insofar as Limbert’s account of her research con-tains shortcomings, they are perhaps to be found in alack of elaboration on the contemporary distributionof oil wealth. We are informed early on that there hasbeen a shift from agricultural to government andmarket jobs (14) – historical alfalfa cultivation (59,149) and irrigation (117) practices, and the shift fromlocal date auctions to state farming of dates (76) arebriefly alluded to – but readers may find themselvesleft curious about the economic organization that hasafforded the very increase in leisure time whose social

implications are so richly explored here.That said, it isLimbert’s unusual focus on the production (and con-tested moral evaluation) of leisure time in relation tothe alleviation of workloads, and the explicit experi-ence of affluence as transient, that makes this elegantethnography worthy of exploration for anyone inter-ested in the temporalities and anxieties engendered byextractive industry development.

ReferencesFerguson, James. 1999. Expectations of Modernity:Myths and Meanings of Modernity on the ZambianCopperbelt. Berkeley and London: University ofCalifornia Press.

Halvaksz, Jamon II. 2008. Whose Closure? Appear-ances, Temporality, and Mineral Extraction in PapuaNew Guinea. Journal of the Royal AnthropologicalInstitute 14(1):21–37.

SoLa:LouisianaWater Stories. Jon Bowermaster,director. 62 min. DVD. Reading, PA: BullfrogFilms, 2010.

Steve Striffler, University of New [email protected]

SoLa: Louisiana Water Stories revolves around abasic contradiction. On the one hand, Southern Loui-siana (SoLa) is home to one of the world’s most vitaland remarkable ecosystems, a place defined andcovered by water that flows down the MississippiRiver, creates hundreds of thousands of acres ofswamps, marshes, and bayous, and then emptiesinto the Gulf of Mexico. On the other hand, SoLa’swaterways are also home to big business, includingLouisiana’s US$70 billion a year oil and gas industry,a US$2.4 billion seafood industry, and a port thathandles 40% of total U.S. exports. What HurricaneKatrina exposed, and what SoLa: Louisiana WaterStories historicizes and explains, is that this vital eco-system, and the human cultures it sustains, are infundamental contradiction to an oil and gas industrythat for decades has been destroying the region’senvironment while extracting millions in profits andcorrupting Louisiana government in the process.ThatSoLa is able make this compelling case in about anhour through visually stunning footage, accompaniedby a superb soundtrack, is all the more reason towatch this important documentary.

Sola, quite appropriately, flows through a seriesof water stories that relate directly to work and itsconsequences. The first is a historical one of ongoinglevee construction that began in 1927 and was



designed first to control flooding from the MississippiRiver and then to control storm surge from periodichurricanes. Although this system did provide incon-sistent protection for human populations in theregion, it also locked the Mississippi River into a singlecourse, in effect pushing hundreds of thousands oftons of silt offshore. This, in turn, led to the ongoingdisappearance of Louisiana’s most important formof protection from storm surge, its wetlands, whichare now disappearing at a pace of 25 square milesper year.

With that as context, SoLa then takes the viewerthrough a series of more contemporary vignettes. Indi-vidually, these more personal stories are rich, compel-ling, and at times both moving and inspirational.Collectively, they make the case that corporations –despite the best efforts of local activists – have beenquietly destroying SoLa for decades. The BP oil spillis only the latest and most dramatic example. Com-panies have been able to do this because they areimmensely powerful, co-opting government, and over-whelming opponents, and because the enormity of thewetlands, combined with the relative absence ofpeople in many areas, allows corporations to operatefreely while giving the false impression of ecologicalcontinuity (against the actual history of continuousdestruction).

The documentary makes clear that despite therelative lack of attention, the ecosystems of SouthernLouisiana are vital on national and global levels. Thisis not just about one region. The Atchafalaya swampalone is the largest contiguous hardwood forestin North America, supporting more than half ofAmerica’s migratory waterfowl and more than 300species of birds and 100 species of fish.The well-beingof wildlife throughout the United States is affected byLouisiana marshes.

The first water story is that of Dean Wilson,environmental activist and swamp tour guide, whoseknowledge, vigilance, and permanent presence on thewater has made him one of the most important moni-tors of the oil and gas industry. His experiences high-light the impact of illegal logging, at a rate of around20,000 acres a year, as well as the long-term problemscaused by tens of thousands of miles of oil and gascanals running through Louisiana wetlands. The casealso points to the fact that this kind of corporateactivity occurs largely in the absence of state regula-tion. Wilson, it appears, is the only one watching.

Subsequent water stories tell us about the longhistory of oil spills, about the vast “dead zones” in

both rivers and the Gulf of Mexico (including one thesize of New Jersey, where runoff from Midwesternfarms sucks all oxygen and life out of the water), aboutthe impact of the region’s massive petrochemicalindustry on local environments and populations,about family fisherman navigating the twilight of anindustry destroyed by environmental recklessness, andfinally, about the well-publicized BP spill.

Director Jon Bowermaster gives the viewer anexcellent sense and understanding of the destructionof SoLa. What SoLa does so well is demonstrate howcorporate greed has not only captured governmentregulators and led to the destruction of life in Louisi-ana but also why this matters for the rest of thecountry. Less clear is how we turn the ship around.Louisiana, as SoLa makes clear, operates a lot likethird-world oil-producing countries. On the one hand,the oil and gas industry has a huge economic impact(US$70 billion), employs over 300,000 people, andprovides 15% of the state’s tax base.The industry also,in effect, drives the state and selects the ruling elite.On the other hand, few of the industry’s resourcestrickle down to the population as a whole. Louisiana ispoor, ranking near the bottom of just about everyeconomic indicator. Its infrastructure, schools, healthcare, and public services look remarkably similar toMississippi or Arkansas, poor neighbors without muchin the way of oil and gas resources. Faced with thisextreme power imbalance, local activists are simplyoutmatched. SoLa is a powerful documentary thatdoes an excellent job of interweaving economic,political, and environmental issues in pointed andpowerful cultural narratives about unrestrained capitaldestroying the traditions and ecological health of avitally important region. The lessons should resonatewith all of us in the sense that nearly every part ofthe globe faces some version of these problems. Thedocumentary’s attention to the relationships amonglocal cultures, state power, and corporate influencemake it ideal for the classroom and for anthropo-logy courses in particular. Work features promi-nently, both in the general sense of the relationshipbetween human productive activity and the environ-ment and in the more narrow sense of the livelihoodsof fishing families being threatened by the oil and gasindustry.

DOI:10.1111/j.1548-1417.2012.01076.x



in the time of oil: piety, memory & social life in an omani town. mandana e. limbert. stanford,...

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