Macedonia. The Politics of Identity and Difference

1054 american ethnologist it has been known in its historical and contemporary permutations. Cowan and Brown note the peculiar fate of an area always seen to be a "problematic anomaly" (p. 11). At the Turn of the Century, when Western European nationstates created a norm of homogenous populations, Macedonia stood for a "fruit salad" of hopelessly mixed populations and ill-defined borders (p. 8). Now, at the turn of the 21 st century, and under a discourse of transnational ism and cosmopolitanism, Macedonia is once again synonymous with the atavistic—it is identified now with outmoded ethnic loyalties. Cowan and Brown argue that this discourse on Macedonia has always made essentialist assumptions about the Balkans as a site of "groups in collision" (p. 10). They counter with a view of Macedonia as "processes underway" (p. 10), using the metaphor of "inflections" (p. 20) to suggest a constant juxtapositioning or playing off of one image with another—of one Macedon ia: The Pol it ics of I dentity and D iffer- point in time or in space with others that proence. Jane Cowan, ed. London: Pluto Press, vide that point with different contexts and in2000. viii + 166 pp., maps, figures, tables, index. terpretations (they credit "inflections" to the playwright David Mamet, but in this context it DAVID E. SUTTON could equally and perhaps more appropriately Southern Illinois University, Carbondale be tied to Milko Manchevski's 1994 film BeTwenty years after the publication of Ander- fore the Rain). Cowan and Brown's introduction provides a son's ImaginedCommun/f/es (Verso 1983) and Hobsbawn and Ranger's The Invention of Tra- unifying thread for the seven case studies that dition (Cambridge University Press, 1983), an- should be read as inflected by, or juxtaposed thropologists continue to struggle with the in- against, each other. Several authors tackle the tellectual and political implications of the intriguing issue of how nationalism is concritique of national, ethnic, and other identities structed as a "short-term biographical process as historical inventions rather than essential at- that takes place over the course of the lifetime tributes. How does one fashion accounts that of specific individuals" (p. 85). Loring Danforth deconstruct nationalism and ethnicity without describes how "local Macedonians" (p. 85) in reinscribing a cosmopolitan superiority of Australia are forced to choose between two Western theorists? The authors of Macedonia mutually exclusive national identities in the are well aware of this pitfall as they attempt to context of Australian multiculturalism. Whereas confront it by focusing on identity as process those who identify with the new state of Mace(e.g., asking when is an ethnic group?) and the donia use a language of blood and kind to politics of multiculturalism at local and claim a naturalized identity passed down from translocal levels. They employ approaches ancestors, those who identify with Greece that situate Macedonia not in a fixed geo- speak a language of citizenship and social relagraphical space but in the shifting experiences tions to insist on the naturalness of their identity (if you were born and raised in Greece, you of homeland and diaspora. Given the Cheshire Cat, now-you-see-'em- must be Greek). Although Danforth is critical now-you-don't nature of U.S. media coverage, of the exclusions of each view, by insisting on the status of various Macedonias—Greek, an anthropological understanding of ethnicity Slavic, Bulgarian, and others—may have largely he implicitly and ironically privileges the dropped out of current public awareness. In Greek identity construction in that it sees idenMacedonia's introduction, Jane Cowan and tities as made rather than born, lakovos Keith S. Brown provide an important back- Michailidis, a historian, focuses his chapter on ground to the "Macedonian Question" (p. 2) as the discrepancies between individual memory practice is found are the following questions: In what sense are otherwise unrelated Malays (Muslims) who have suckled the same breast kin, and in what sense is their kinship an as-if relationship—a compelling metaphor? Readers know that those who have suckled the same breast should not have sex. Readers do not know in what else their relationship consists; there is certainly more to cross-sex siblingship than the incest taboo, and sexual prohibitions often apply to non-kin. Nor do readers learn if sharing breast milk also generates kinship between same-sex children. Until such matters are clarified, assessing Galvin's contribution will remain difficult. What Schneider would have made of it is anyone's guess. In sum, New Directions in Anthropological Kinship is an uneven book. Its best chapters engage the reader, whereas others disappoint. book reviews and national history in Greek and Macedonian historiography, giving a sense of the way family tradition led Slav speakers to choose different sides at different moments in this history. Finally, and perhaps most intriguingly, Piero Vereni uses interviews and a particularly rich set of autobiographical notebooks to chart one man's attempt to weave together personal and grand history in his own unique blend that evades the platitudes of nationalists on both sides. Vereni uses kinship charts and naming practices particularly effectively as he shows how this man makes claims to local, national, and cosmopolitan identities. Particularly fascinating is the way that Vereni's ethnographic subject personalizes ancient history (Alexander theCreatdied of indigestion) while projecting hisown family's complex history of shifting national loyalties onto a grand stage. Vereni's chapter can be inflected against Riki Van Boeschoten's macro perspective on identity construction. She focuses on the multiple factors that lead to the relative saliency of class versus ethnic difference in different regions and at different time periods in Greek Macedonia. Such factors include relative social mobility, relative availability of resources, hypergamic marriage practices, and events such as the breakup of Yugoslavia. All these factors help readers understand why "differences seem to matter" (p. 43) in certain times and places more than others; they form a useful complement to Vereni's highlighting of processes of individual creativity. Three authors focus on themes also touched on by Danforth concerning the relationship of ethnic identities to state multicultural policies, Anagnostou charts the rise of state multiculturalism in Salonica in the 1990s, a multiculturalism that commodifies and homogenizes identities while failing to confront the more challenging diversity in Salonica's past and present. Jonathan Schwartz uses multisited research in Prilep, Toronto, and Copenhagen to -1055 argue that multicultural policies based on the metaphor of an "ethnic mosaic" allow "and even encourage distance-keeping" among diasporic Macedonians (p.107). Schwartz chronicles two processes—his involvement in an NGO to foster local projects of multiethnic cooperation in Prilep, and an attempt to estabfish a Danish-Macedonian friendship organization in Copenhagen. Although the NGO becomes bogged down in issues of representation, the friendship organization, more practically oriented and without multicultural pieties, has some limited success in creating bridges between communities. Schwartz might have focused a bit more attention on gender issues in interethnic practices, as he argues that diaspora Macedonians forget "the neighbourly exchanges of Baklava at Bayram and Easter" (p. 120), a gender-marked practice that might have had quite different resonances in the "all-male spaces" (p. 118) where Schwartz conducted fieldwork in Copenhagen, Finally, Brown looks at the cultural politics of identity in recent attempts to forge alliances and coalitions in the Republic of Macedonia, Brown examines what he terms the realm of "parapolitics" (p. 123) in which disputes over language, names, flags, and other symbols revolve around competing definitions of events as cultural expressions or as political manipulations. The relevance of parapolitics, as well as individual experiences of competing nationalisms and the politics of multiculturalism in homeland and diaspora, can be inflected well beyond the boundaries of Macedonia to the questions of culture and identity that currently demand careful anthropological analysis. This volume, in sum, not only provides an excellent introduction to studying "Macedonia," it will be of relevance to all anthropologists interested in the diverse contemporary approaches currently being employed to confront the enigma of nationalism in a transnational world.