340 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [ 7 3 , 1971

a general ethnography, Vogt’s book is a val- uable addition to our knowledge of Middle American Indian communities. Moreover, I suspect that the value of Vogt’s contribution will increase over the years as specialized studies stemming from the Project are pub- lished and serve lo extend our understanding of Zinacanteco life now described for us in Vogt’s “encyclopedia.’,

Morne-Paysan: Peasant Village in Marti- nique. MICHAEL M. HOROWITZ. Fore- word by George and Louise Spindler. Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology. New York & London: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1967. xii + 114 pp., figures, illustrations, tables, glossary, references, recommended reading. n.p. (paper).

Reuiewed b y RICHARD PRICE Yale University

With this brief, pleasantly written book, Horowitz has made a welcome contribution to Caribbean studies-a well-rounded eth- nography of a Martiniquan peasant com- munity, which he attempts (with only par- tial success) to place within the broader regional context.

Mome-Paysan belongs to a class of Ca- ribbean communities that have long played an important role in the islands, though only a minority of the rural population lives in them. Founded in the highlands by runaway slaves and freedmen, on the margins of plantation society and, in an important sense, in opposition to it, such communities are the home of a “reconstituted peasantry” (Mintz 1961), owning their own land on which they grow fruits and vegetables for home consumption and for sale in nearby (often urban) markets. Today, because of rapidly expanding population, the frag- mentation of landholdings through inheri- tance and, in Martinique, competition from European vegetables and chickens (whose importation is indirectly subsidized by planter interests), these people are caught in the process of proletarianization. In de- picting the current dilemma faced by the villagers of Morne-Paysan, who seem headed toward reabsorption into the mass of rural wage-laborers from which their proud an- cestors succeeded in separating themselves,

Horowitz helps us to realize just how much the lives of even the most independent inhabitants of the Caribbean islands are bound up with larger historical processes almost completely beyond their control.

Following an overview of Martiniquan history and society, Horowitz nicely sketches in the physical characteristics of the village, outlines the complexity of individual economic adaptations (one man, in addition to farming as a tenant on his father’s land, helps his wife run a shop and bar, repairs shoes, supervises village road work and serves as clerk of a credit association), and lightly underscores some of the subtler aspects of the colonial heritage (being offered drinks in a wattle-and-daub hut from crystal goblets hand-cut in Limoges). An informative chap- ter on agriculture, land tenure, and mar- keting combines hard data with lively de- scriptions of local economic activities. The chapters on domestic organization seem somewhat less satisfactory; statistical tables, case histories, and pure description tend to overshadow explanatory passages, and there is some tendency to underplay what the various alternatives mean to the people involved. It is worth noting, however, that in an excellent article elsewhere Horowitz (1967) offers a clearer presentation of much of this material, a sophisticated explanation of conjugal patterns and, incidentally, some useful criticism of M. G. Smith’s West Indian Family Structure (1962), which heavily in- fluenced the presentation and analysis in Morne-Paysan.

The chapter on the life cycle is strong on children’s activities and the general concern with health, and presents an intriguing though little-developed structural analysis of mortuary rites. Opposing the “pagan” wake and the “Christian” burial, Horowitz argues that local funerals reaffirm a dual set of values-a theme which if further explored might have been found relevant to many aspects of village life. The final chapter on the village, “Consensus and Conflict,” is something of a catch-all, treating religion, economics, politics, and courts in terms of their integrative functions for the com- munity.

Nearly one-fifth of the book is taken up by two chapters intended to set Morne- Paysan in its Caribbean context. Chapter 1, “The Anthropology of the West Indies,”

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includes a generally useful summary of some characteristic features of the area, as well as a brief, uncritical review of anthropological research in the region. The penultimate chapter, “Some Other Caribbean Villages,” is no more than a summary description of the social structure of seven villages in the space of ten pages, and does justice to neither the original studies nor the reader’s intelligence. As another part of the effort to generalize, statements of the form “some scholars say. . .” appear several times in the book, a h a y s alluding (without expansion or references) to controversial issues in the literature; I found this more irritating than provocative.

There are many smaller points one could question. Since when was maize introduced into Martinique by Europeans? And I am certainly not prepared to accept, without any evidence, that beliefs about polydactyly or being born with a caul are European in origin. An unfortunate paragraph on fishing technology runs afoul of the facts; Marti- niquan fish traps are not primarily for crustacea, miquelon fishing for tuna, sword- fish, and shark is practiced with lines, not nets, and so forth. Moreover, although from some points of view, fishing may be only “slightly developed. . .[providing] only a small amount of the food consumed on the island” (p. 16), it is worth noting that the per capita consumption of fresh fish places Martinique near the top of the world list, close behind Japan and with three times that of France. I would suggest, too, that Horo- witz may be wide of the mark in calling the prescription of a certain quimboiseur (ritual specialist) “a chaotic parody of modern medical practice” (p. 73) , when the form of such prescriptions (as well as many of their ingredients) is part of a venerable tradition of European magic, transmitted in writing since the Middle Ages. In this sense, the man who prescribed hdmoglobine “de chien” in- stead of “Deschiennes” (the name of a drug company) is less likely to be “an idiot or extremely intelligent, intentionally misspel- ling to protect himself from a criminal charge of incompetent prescribing” (p. 74) than a typical syncretist. For, other ingre- dients of the form “ de chien” (e.g., graisse de chien) are in the oldest Mar. tiniquan magical recipes and come directly from seventeenth century French grimoires.

Morne-Paysan is a useful book. For Ca- ribbeanists and students of peasant societies it offers a valuable description of the troub- ling social and economic problems such communities face today; for undergraduates it provides a readable introduction to the study of Caribbean communities.

References Cited

Horowitz, M. M. 1967

Mintz, S. W.

A decision model of conjugal pat- terns in Martinique. Man 2:445-453.

1961 The question of Caribbean peas- antries. Caribbean Studies I, 3:31-34.

1962 West Indian family structure. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Smith, M. G.

Black Americans. ALPHONSO PINKNEY. Ethnic Groups in American Life Series. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1969. xvii + 226 pp., tables, chapter se- I e c t ed bibliographies, index. $5.95 (cloth), $2.95 (paper).

Reviewed by IRENE DIGGS Morgan State College

This book is a good introduction to the study of Negro Americans but not a “rea- sonably complete picture of the status of black people in the United States at the present time.” Not only has detail been sac- rificed, many major events directly relevant to the present status of the Negro not men- tioned, but important past and contem- porary achievements of the Negro are omitted. Thirty of the thirty-six pages which sketch “the peculiar history” of Black people in the United States from 1619 to the middle of the twentieth century, are devoted to slavery and its aftermath. Only if “legacy of slavery” is an euphemism for racism would the reviewer agree that the “legacy of slavery” continues “to play a dominant role in the life of Americans.”

Over and over Pinkney declares that in- stitutional racism continues to be the domi- nant force in American life where the Negro is concerned; “that being a Negro takes pre- cedence over whatever other attributes he