In a lighthearted homage to a threatened way of life, an American anthropologist recalls his first year among the Saami reindeer herders of Lapland. Beach (Cultural Anthropology/Uppsala University, Sweden) was 15 when his Swedish grandmother first took him to a Saami summer calf-marking, in which reindeer herders notch the ears of their herds' newest additions before releasing them for grazing. The incident marked Beach as well: After studying anthropology at Harvard, he raced back to Sweden in 1973 to sign up as a reindeer hand with the Tuorpon herders of Jokkmokk, north of the Arctic Circle. Teased, humored, and painstakingly educated by his polite and often mischievous hosts, the author joined a herder family at their summer settlement, where he listened to tales of evil trolls and ghost reindeer herds; partook in fortune-telling sessions; and learned to fish Saami-style and to share his cognac afterward. Moving on to Staloluokta, Beach was lent an empty goattieh (a dome- shaped, turf-covered dwelling) and allowed to help with the gathering and marking of the reindeer. In August, he journeyed to Parka to help separate the herds before mating season. But the most difficult and dramatic season was winter, when the herders ventured on skis through blinding blizzards, first to hunt moose, then to guide their herds back toward summer grazing. Beach gratefully suffered frostbite, snow blindness, and freezing nights for the chance to live the Saami life. Having returned often since, he has witnessed the bureaucratic restrictions, misguided conservation efforts, and wind-borne radiation from Chernobyl that continue to affect the herders, but he remains convinced that the Saami sense of identity continues intact, and he reminds readers that to remain static is also to die. An enthusiastic report by a man in love with his subject, best read on a cold winter's night. (Twelve color, 43 b&w illustrations)
Pub Date: May 27, 1993
ISBN: 1-56098-230-6
Page Count: 280
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1993
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
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