8 74     REVIEWS
students, specialists, and lay readers alike.
I found the ethnographic descriptions
particularly vivid and rich. The book is
shaped around five chapters. The second
chapter discusses the dam construction
directly, the third considers how migra-
tion for labour elsewhere and its returns
form part of new livelihood strategies.
The final two chapters look directly at
how humans interact with non‐­human,
or what Johnson later terms, the ‘inhu-
man’ (p. 167) and concludes by suggest-
ing that the residents of Ban Beuk, and
by the same token everyone living in the
changing world, will have to make peace
and live with things that are unknow-
able, and about which we have little or no
information.
I have few criticisms of this ethnog-
raphy and will therefore limit myself to
some observations. First, Johnson makes
much of the concept of potency in this
book. This is in terms of how the riv-
er’s potency has changed, but moreover
how that changing landscape provides
both possibilities and anxieties. This is
not the first time that a connection has
been made between natural resources in a
similar context, their uses and potency. I
was therefore somewhat surprised to see
no reference to Singh’s (2012) ethnogra-
phy on Lao forests and power. Second,
Johnson’s interlocutors talk about the
time before the dam. This functions as a
fixed point for how the river has changed
since the dam construction. I was left
wondering if they really thought life had
always been the same in the time before
the dam construction. There are very few
mentions of other events in this pre‐­dam
world and given the amount of data about
how the life worlds of his interlocutors
have changed since, I would have like
some further context on the past.
Overall, this is an excellent book first
to consider how the Mekong itself has
changed. Second, it investigates the power
and limits of possibility in future‐­making
strategies. In this change lie possibilities,
or maybes, and this holds considerable
power both to have or become some-
thing more, or to lose. This ‘maybe’ has
potency and makes this ethnography
more than about the river, but about liv-
ing in this world of uncertainty.
References
Singh, S. 2012. Natural potency and political
power: forests and state authority in contem-
porary Laos. Honolulu, HI: University of
Hawaii Press.
Swain, J. 1998. River of time. London: Vintage.
Phill Wilcox
Bielefeld University (Germany)
phill.wilcox@uni-bielefeld.de
Leigh Binford, Lesley Gill and Steve Striffler
(eds.) 2020. Fifty years of peasant wars
in Latin America. New York: Berghahn
Books. 228 pp. Hb.: US$120.00. ISBN:
9781789205619.
What are the similarities and differences
between the 1960s revolutionary aspira-
tions for radical change by taking state
power and the political aspirations of
the decades that followed? How much
of this historical change reflects on the-
ories and methodologies of academic
research? Fifty years of peasant wars in
Latin America unfolds these two main
questions, electing Latin American peas-
ants and Eric Wolf as the touchstones for
this analysis.
Founded on a historical‐­materialistic
analysis and comparative approach, those
interrogatives are elaborated through-
out the book’s chapters, each of them
dedicated to one Latin American coun-
try: Venezuela, Ecuador, Colombia, El
Salvador, Mexico, Brazil and Bolivia.
The analyses condense the correspon-
dence between each particular country
© 2021 European Association of Social Anthropologists

state formation and historical econom-
ics. There is a focus on regional and local
situations captured by the ethnographic
study of peasant mobilisations and insur-
gencies, sometimes associated with urban
subaltern groups. The cohesive struc-
ture of the book is complemented by
the introduction written by Leslie Gill,
Leigh Binford and Steve Striffler, and the
afterword by Gavin Smith.
The main argument here is that Eric
Wolf may be much appreciated mostly
on how he broke through to an anthro-
pology that analyses capitalism and
global power, not just limited to cultural
studies and micro‐­singular cases. Peasant
wars of the twentieth century (Wolf 1969)
is the example of his elaborations on how
peasant polities are connected to broader
global power relations, including state
power, economic and social formation,
associated with their singular historical
struggles. Published in 1969, at a time
when revolution was a real possibility
and not a past imaginary utopia as now-
adays, Wolf observed how peasants fig-
ured as relevant political actors capable
of changing the state and capital powers
at national levels.
Detailed analysis of each chapter
shows that the last 50 years of Latin
American history was first marked by
a developmentalist capitalism strategy
that promoted some agrarian reform leg-
islations as a way to push back against
the revolutionary tendencies that were
brewing. This was followed by a neo-
liberal agenda implemented in the 1980s
that foreclosed the land tenure claims and
the overwhelmed counterinsurgency vio-
lence in most of the analysed countries.
These politics led to the reduction of
living conditions for the peasantry, result-
ing in a demographic change from rural
to urban predominance and increased
poverty in urban peripheries and slums.
The authors strongly conclude that along
with the capitalism politics and their
© 2021 European Association of Social Anthropologists
R E V I E W S      8 7 5
social effects, the intense state violence
and counterinsurgency were strong fac-
tors that disabled revolutionary aspira-
tions and shifted peasants to defensive
struggles, and identity or human rights
focused movements.
Neoliberalism, politics of recognition
and the uprising of indigenous people on
decision‐­making could not have been fore-
shadowed by Wolf in his time. With the
suggestive title of ‘Forgetting peasants’,
Forrest Hylton addresses this thematic,
revealing the conservative and neoliberal
face of the current ‘indigeneity’ and how
they eclipse the very indigenous insurgency
on the Bolivian scenario. The book as a
whole, however, may overlook the com-
plex manifestation and necessity for human
rights politics. Some clues for this matter
are specially provided on the chapters dedi-
cated to El Salvador and Colombia, written
by Leigh Binford and Leslie Gill, respec-
tively. In these two countries, peasants’
struggles in wars and guerrillas were col-
lapsed by militaries, police forces and death
squads; it takes to wonder if any possibility
of structural change can proceed without a
moral economy oriented towards victims,
their survival and social fabric restoration.
The general theoretical framework is
established in a critical opposition to some
Anglo‐­American anthropological produc-
tion. This endorses a very polarised debate
and the authors, as Foucauldian detractors,
may eventually take only a glance over the
decolonisation of knowledge and subaltern
studies approaches advocated by Latin
America scholars, although their contribu-
tion on considering both subjects’ forma-
tion and large‐­scale power and economic
connections, on epistemologies that goes
far beyond the Foulcauldian legacy.
These questions do not detract
from this title, as we are presented with
a provocative, pertinent reading. These
1960s revolutionary aspirations can be
inspiring in the 2020s. In the current time
of despair, due to the political uprising of
8 76     REVIEWS
ultra‐­rightists and the Covid‐­19 pandem-
ic’s effects on increasing social inequality,
we may consider Wolf’s legacy for an
anthropology that assumes how radical
change must be sought in these dark times
and intellectuals can take an active role in
this.
Rosana Carvalho Paiva
Federal University of Amazonas (Brazil)
carvalhorosana8@gmail.com
Reference
Wolf, E. R. 1969. Peasant wars of the twentieth
century. New York: Harper & Row.
Henley, Paul. 2020. L’aventure du Réel. Jean
Rouch et la Pratique du Cinéma Ethnographique.
Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes. 518
pp. Broché: €30.00, ISBN: 9782753579125
Les publics francophone et anglophone
ont accès à diverses monographies dont
Jean Rouch fait l’objet et à des collections
réunissant une partie substantielle de son
œuvre écrite depuis un certain temps. Ce
livre, publié d’abord en anglais en 2009, a
mis plus d’une décennie pour apparaître
en français. Etant donné qu’il ne s’agit pas
vraiment d’un ouvrage récent, il faut se
demander à quel point cela valait la peine
de le traduire en français après tout ce
temps. C’est‐­à‐­dire, dans quelle mesure
ce livre apporte‐­t‐­il de la nouveauté au
débat francophone autour de ce cinéaste
français ?
D’abord, Henley affirme que, même
s’il n’a pas adhéré aux modus operandi
d’une « école » de cinéma documentaire,
Rouch a développé une praxis hautement
systématique —­et même normative.
En effet les principes qui l’ont guidé se
répandent partout et l’une des ambitions
de L’aventure du réel est de rassembler
ceux‐­ ci dans un portrait minutieux.
Henley cherche donc à éclaircir la façon
dont les aspects pratiques du travail
cinématographique de Rouch —­y com-
pris ses techniques d’opération de caméra,
d’enregistrement sonore et de montage —­
incarnent des propositions esthétiques,
éthiques et épistémologiques qui, au fur
et à mesure, constituent une véritable «
théorie‐­de‐­la‐­pratique ».
Cette mise en évidence sert à faire
l’éloge du cinéaste français mais aussi
à corriger la tendance anglophone à le
sanctifier. Le fait que Rouch soit devenu
le pilier central d’une génération d’an-
thropologues et de cinéastes exige que
son héritage soit étudié de manière tout
à fait critique et réfléchi. « Ma préoccupa-
tion ultime », écrit Henley dans l’édition
originale anglaise, « sera de distinguer le
fort du faible dans l’héritage qu’il a laissé
derrière lui, le véritable cœur de son pro-
jet du nuage de légende qui l’obscurcit si
souvent […] » Il affirme, « ce livre pour-
rait être considéré comme une tentative
de récupérer Rouch et son œuvre pour
l’anthropologie » (2009, pp. xix–­xxi). La
tâche d’humaniser Rouch, pour ainsi dire,
nécessite de le localiser dans un temps et
dans un espace, d’identifier les influences
derrière ses idées et de comprendre leur
développement tout au long de sa vie.
Pour le faire, Henley se penche sur
les diverses influences qui ont contribué
à former le cinéaste, tels que le temps
qu’il a passé au Musée de l’Homme et
sa relation avec son directeur de thèse,
Marcel Griaulle. Le résultat est tout à
fait discutable. Par exemple : dans ce qui
me paraît un glissement vers le même
mode de louange qu’il critique au début,
Henley affirme que, malgré l’autodéri-
sion avec laquelle il parlait de sa propre
position par rapport à Flaherty et Vertov,
Rouch « tenait à les considérer comme
des précurseurs […] parce qu’il partageait
résolument avec eux la conviction que
l’humanité, grâce au cinéma, disposait
© 2021 European Association of Social Anthropologists