874 American Anthropologist • Vol. 120, No.
4 • December 2018
Readers expecting an exhaustive ethnographic account
of doctors and patients in or displaced from Iraq or of the
broader role of medicine in region-wide conflict and dis-
placement may be disappointed by the relatively brief cov-
erage of such topics in this book, in which ethnography book-
ends and informs history but is not itself the primary focus.
But Dewachi’s other recent writing on these topics provides
a welcome complement (e.g., Dewachi 2015; Dewachi et al.
2014). Ungovernable Life’s lucid prose, accessible treatment of
the topic, concise theoretical discussions, and self-contained
chapters make the book eminently classroom friendly. As
both an empirical corrective to an understudied history and
How to Think Like an Anthropologist by Matthew Engelke
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018. 326 pp.
DOI: 10.1111/aman.13121
Younes Saramifar
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Anthropologists and ethnographers are fascinating story-
tellers, but their storytelling skill does not make them
any less weird and challenging to comprehend. Matthew
Engelke’s book is an intriguing invitation to demystify the
oddity and weirdness of anthropological thinking. The book
presents nine major buzzwords of anthropology and un-
packs them through “anthropological tidbits” (p. 283) and
historical trajectories of the discipline. The nine terms are
openings to larger issues that anthropologists have tried to
address throughout the years. According to Engelke, culture
points at “social histories of humankind” (p. 54), civilization
touches on how development is “more than a Euro-American
imagining of modernity” (p. 79), values highlight “humans
as meaning-making animal(s)” (p. 112) while value points
to humans as more than the sum of their social relations
(p. 134), blood and identity address how we “began to think
of ourselves as right-bearing individuals” (p. 163), authority
asks how it is authorized (p. 211), reason spells out “what
redefines . . . thought-work” (p. 244), and, finally, nature
exposes “political positions” (p. 250).
The nine terms seem straightforward, but they are paths
to the fundamental debates that shape our disciplinary iden-
tity. Engelke journeys through anthropology via examples
of classical ethnographic studies to demonstrate how, in the
different ways of seeing the world and imagining realities of
others, anthropologists created different schools of thought.
He refers to Malinowski, Geertz, and Benedict, among oth-
ers, to show why ethnography is fundamental to anthropol-
ogy and why anthropological methods insist on “bottom-up”
approaches. However, Engelke does not shy away from the
a conceptual model for what this history implies, it will be a
valuable resource to scholars of medical anthropology, con-
flict and colonialism, global health, Middle Eastern studies,
and the history of medicine.
REFERENCES CITED
Dewachi, Omar. 2015. “When Wounds Travel.” Medical Anthropology
Theory 2 (3): 61–82.
Dewachi, Omar, Mac Skelton, Vinh-Kim Nguyen, Fouad M. Fouad,
Ghassan Abu Sitta, Zeina Maasri, and Rita Giacaman. 2014.
“Changing Therapeutic Geographies of the Iraqi and Syrian
Wars.” The Lancet 383 (9915): 449–57.
darker history of anthropology while he reflects on these
classic works. He briefly points to the time when anthropol-
ogy served colonial masters and brings up the more recent
embedding of engaged anthropologists with American mili-
tary forces in Afghanistan. Ultimately, Engelke stresses that
he engages with histories of the discipline to give his readers
“measures of an anthropological sensibility” (p. 283).
Tracing these anthropological “measures” across the
book encourages readers to break away from binaries by
exploring relationships and inner structures. Engelke high-
lights culture, civilization, value(s), and blood to underline the
fluidity of life and show how anthropologists snap out of
assumptions that outsiders hold against proverbial others.
Then he moves to the long-standing debate between cul-
ture and nature. Interestingly, he remains faithful to more
conventional anthropological traditions and rarely brings up
scholars like Bruno Latour, John Law, and Annemarie Mol,
who have held their anthropological ground against the pos-
itivist approaches of the hard sciences. Engelke refers to
classical writings of E. E. Evans-Pritchard and Christopher
Crocker to demonstrate how anthropologists understood the
so-called social and cultural issues through the larger ecol-
ogy of life. Engelke continues by adding Eduardo Viveiros de
Castro’s demand that anthropologists think “like the natives”
(p. 242) and not limit themselves to figuring out how natives
think.
Identity, authority, reason, and nature are interwoven to-
gether to describe how anthropologists manage everyday
differences and distinctions in our disciplinary craft. He ad-
vocates understanding differences through examples of the
“messiness” of life and accordingly advises anthropologists
to look for how people act instead of remaining limited to
the meanings of actions. Engelke makes explicit the link
between who we are as humans and as social beings in his
discussion on identity. He stresses that every element within

our everyday lives requires active cultivation and “doesn’t
come from nothing” (p. 188).
Engelke elaborates on anthropological thinking either
through examples from others’ work or interesting anec-
dotes from his own fieldwork. The nine keywords are rele-
vant, and his explanation of them outlines the parameters of
anthropological thinking. However, there is a fundamental
keyword that is overlooked, and that is the anthropologist
herself. Engelke overlooks how anthropology becomes a
distinctive discipline through reflexivity and interrogating
the role of the researcher in processes of knowledge mak-
ing. His nine keywords cover most fundamental debates of
anthropology, but reflexivity and questioning the place of an-
thropologists within anthropological traditions and research
are missed in the book. Reflexivity is the missing keyword,
Book Reviews 875
which may very well be because of Engelke’s theoretical
orientations; while he admires Lévi-Strauss, he mentions
Viveiros de Castro with gentle sarcasm.
Overall, the accessible and well-structured writings of
Engelke make his book a pleasant read for both undergrad-
uate students and nonacademic readers. This book can be
seen as an insightful map for beginners who want to un-
derstand what anthropology is. Similarly, it may provoke
some graduate students to look at the history of the disci-
pline with a broader approach and from different political
positioning. The humorous and simple prose of Engelke will
be a good interdisciplinary introduction for students, re-
gardless of their educational background. However, those
in search of more in-depth and comprehensive accounts of
anthropological thinking should seek different resources.