Barnard, Alan J. and Jonathan Spencer (eds.). 2010. The Routledge Encyclopaedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. Second Edition. London: Routledge. x + 855 pp. Pb.: $65.00. ISBN: 9780415809368.
The publication of the second edition of the Routledge Encyclopaedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology, almost fifteen years after the first edition, offers a useful addition to the toolkits that practitioners and students of the discipline already have for their research. In the words of the editors 'this book aims to meet some of the need for an accessible and provocative guide to the many things that anthropologists have had to say', (p. xii) and it appears that they achieved in this task. In producing the volume, 134 authors were involved: a vast array that encompassed supportive anthropologists, such as Maurice Bloch, Michael Herzfeld, and Ralph Grillo, and younger scholars, 'whose work', in the auspices of the editors 'would become the core knowledge of the discipline in years to come' (pg. viii). Since I cannot do justice to the work of all the authors, I will restrict this review to presenting the structure of the book and propose some general comments.
Although without the extension of other encyclopaedias, such as Birx's Encyclopedia of Anthropology (2006), this volume aimed to presents some of the key themes, areas of research and traditions of anthropology. Distinct from other encyclopaedic works, such as Ingold's Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology (2002), structured as a handbook and aimed at presenting the cutting edge of anthropological debate, Barnard and Spencer's volume is a reference book, also suitable for undergraduate students and non-specialist researchers interested in grasping the state of art of the debate on crucial topics and the meanings of anthropological keywords, or the history of some of the principal schools of the discipline. In the words of the editors, the book is: 'a guide and an introduction, a map which will help them find their way around the anthropological landscape rather than an authority set up to police what counts as anthropologically correct knowledge about the world' (pg. xiii).
Like the first edition, the Encyclopaedia is divided into main three parts. Part I (pp. 1-173) includes 275 main entries listed in alphabetical order; Part II (pp. 724-53) is a bibliographic dictionary that include 300 profiles of leading figures who have been influential in the development of anthropology; finally, Part III (pp. 791-855) is a glossary of 600 terms used in anthropological jargon, such as "habitus", "stratification" or "cognate".
Hence, the volume offers three different tools to the readers for their research and studies, which are able to clarify questions and portray the state of art of an anthropological debate. In this process of research, particularly precious is the meta-textual apparatus that enrich the main entries and the biographical profiles. All of them are provided with a short list of key readings to further and complete the researches.
In its attempt of present a state of art of socio-cultural anthropology, the book deals with a vast array of subjects, spanning from "Aboriginal Australia" (by Robert Layton and Megan Warin) to "Youth" (by Deborah Durham). Analytically, they include ethnographic surveys of the main socio-geographical areas explored by anthropologists, present the history of different international anthropological traditions and some of their most influential scholars, present some of the main sub-disciplines, and explain key features
of the theoretical apparatus of social and cultural anthropology.
Since the first edition, new entries have been included in order to fill the gaps left in the previous edition and to reflect substantial transformations the have occurred in anthropology in the previous decade and the establishment of new sub-fields, such as medical anthropology, or new disciplinary interests and methodology. For example, among the new entries we can find "diaspora" (by Vered Amit), "neoliberalism" (by Andrew Ki-pnis), "multi-site ethnography" (by Matei Candea). Where, on one hand, the extension of the theme treated is able to portray the vastness of the areas of enquiry of contemporary anthropology, on the other, it results in a lack of the in-depth focus that can be found in specialised encyclopaedic works such as Lee and Daly's The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, (2004), Ember and Ember's Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology (2004) or Harrington, Marshall and Muller's The Human Economy (2006). In this respect, the volume appears as a possible first tool, particularly fit the early stages of research, that does not substitute more specific publications.
Moreover, this publication still appears quite anglophone-centric. The claim of internationalism that sustains the volume is achieved by the editors, 'by combining "social" and "cultural", the American and the European' (pg. xii). Although in doing so they 'tried to indicate our desire to produce a volume that reflects the diversity of anthropology as a genuinely global discipline' (pg. xii), the result is an implicit equalising between "global" and English-speaking. This tendency, particularly marked in the first edition, is somehow stemmed through the inclusion of new entries about "othef' international traditions such as the Scandinavian (by Jonathan Spencer), the Japanese (by J.S. Eades) or the Latino-American (by Sian Lazar). Unfortunately, the ideas that arose in those countries or geographic areas are scarcely put in correlation with the ones produced by English-speaking scholarship outside the boundaries of the historio-graphic entries. Thus, although the existence of other anthropological traditions is acknowledged, the volume ends up portraying a "global" anthropology whose propulsive and creative motors is anglophone-centric, i.e. a position that is being increasingly challenged and a globality through juxtaposition that is just starting to experiment with new grounds of integration.
In sum, in spite this remark, the Encyclopaedia appears to be a good resource with many excellent contributions. It is a useful tool for students and scholars starting their research on new topics or wanting to know more about the discipline, its fields of research and different scholarly traditions that distinguish it.
MICHELE FILIPPO FONTEFRANCESCO
Durham University (United Kingdom)