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hold in the West. In his discussion of alien- ation a t the workplace, only Western case studies are used. He concludes that while alienation is not a necessary feature of urban work, it is a concomitant of “Western indus- trial bureaucratic culture.” He repeats many times the assertion that the problems ofAmer- ican inner cities are mainly rooted in discrim- ination, but the important work ofWilliam Ju- lius Wilson on this subject is conspicuously absent. In Gulick’s scant three-page discus- sion of the “culture of poverty” there is little said about modern revisions of that old sim- plistic notion.

Unless I am mistaken, undergraduates would not get very much out of this book. It is rather densely written; it is filled with refer- ences and cross-references, and it is polemical without being clear about its point of view. Most students would not be able to discern ex- actly what Gulick is trying to say with his end- less string of case studies. On the other hand, graduate students and social science profes- sionals could look past the flaws and find a valuable review of modern worldwide urban studies.

J. G. Frazer: His Life and Work. Robert Ack- erman. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. 358 pp. $39.95 (cloth).

JOHN BARKER University of British Columbia

Robert Ackerman opens this intellectual bi- ography ofJames G. Frazer with the arresting assertion that his subject “is an embarrass- ment” (p. 1) . Indeed, Frazer appears to many as the representative “armchair anthropolo- gist” secluded in his study far from the annoy- ances of “natives,” composing ornate collages of ethnographic snippets in support of grand theories covering the sweep of human culture. Yet few anthropologists have commanded as large or as loyal an audience as Frazer. While Ackerman presents his work as a rehabilita- tion, his study reinforces the familiar negative appraisal of Frazer’s theory and methods. De- spite his public success, Frazer had a very un- even influence on anthropology in its forma- tive years.

Ackerman adopts a chronological approach to his subject, noting that “most of the events in Frazer’s adult life were publications” (p. 3). The opening chapters review what is known of Frazer’s childhood and early schooling in Glasgow and his undergraduate years a t Cambridge. The author next looks at several

aspects of Frazer’s unexpected addition of an- thropology to his classical studies, notably his intellectualist assumptions and dogmatic re- jection of Christianity and his important early association with William Robertson Smith. The remainder of the chapters center around Frazer’s publications in anthropology and the classics, with asides on his marriage, finances, responses to critics of The Golden Bough, and pitiful last years.

Readers familiar with only The Golden Bough will appreciate the wealth of information and insight concerning the whole of Frazer’s huge scholarly output. Ackerman does a fine job of tracing the genesis, continuities, and diver- gences of the three editions of Thc Goldcn Bough and Frazer’s other anthropological works, all of which he critiques thoroughly. He does not neglect Frazer’s less known classical writings. In fact, Ackerman argues that two of these- the commentaries and translations of Pausa- nias’s Description of Greece and Ovid’s F a t i - are Frazer’s only works of enduring scholarly value.

I found the book less satisfying as a biog- raphy. The fault is not entirely Ackerman’s. Frazer seems to have cared for virtually noth- ing except preparing his massive books, and his surviving correspondence deals with little else. Ackerman’s manner of dealing with this evidence, however, commits him to some of the same tendencies he criticizes in Frazer’s work. The chronological presentation of Fra- zer’s writings, for instance, leads Ackerman to return repeatedly to a few themes, most nota- bly Frazer’s obsessive enlargement of his books and the shallowness of his intellectualist assumptions. The result is that the biography seems overly long. Also much like Frazer, Ackerman has a tendency to slide into specu- lation when evidence is lacking on a matter he considers important. This is particularly an- noying in his discussion of Robertson Smith and Frazer, where he piles surmise upon sur- mise concerning the relations between the two men.

Finally, while certainly more careful with context than Frazer, Ackerman too is primar- ily a student of ideas. Because Frazer’s ideas concerning religion remain familiar, most readers will not learn much that is new. The biography, however, does reveal fresh infor- mation concerning Frazer’s relations with sev- eral pioneer anthropologists including Tylor, Haddon, and Marett. Perhaps ofmost interest to anthropologists, Ackerman touches upon ways Frazer contributed to the emergence of an anthropology based on fieldwork, primar- ily through his patronage of Gillen and Spen- cer, Seligman, Roscoe, and Malinowski. Fra-

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zer may have also helped to standardize sev- eral ethnographic concepts through his writ- ings and a questionnaire he prepared in the late 1880s. There are clues and hints, then, that Frazer made a substantial practical contri- bution to the founding of academic anthropol- ogy, but unfortunately Ackerman does not pursue this theme very far.

These quibbles aside, Ackerman has writ- ten an important and welcome biography. It should do much to make Frazer a better ap- preciated and perhaps a less embarrassing fig- ure for anthropologists.

Micro-Approaches to Demographic Re- search. John C. Caldwcll, Allan G. Hill, and Valcric J. Hull. New York: Routledge, Chap- man and Hall, in association with the Inter- national Union for the Scientific Study of Pop- ulation, 1988. 516 pp. $75.00 (cloth).

SUSAN GREENHALCH Th Population Council, New York

Over the last decade or so, the image of an- thropology within demography has dramati- cally improved. The individual most respon- sible for this advance is the Australian demog- rapher John Caldwell, inexhaustible and pro- lific practitioner-cum-advocate of field research methods of demographic inquiry.

This book represents a self-conscious effort by Caldwell and a group of like-minded de- mographers and population anthropologists to define a subfield of microlevel research within demography. The need for such an ad- dition to the field is obvious, even to many de- mographers, who have become painfully aware of the blindness of the survey method to cultural and historical context, and of the straightjacket that conventional demographic transition theory imposes on thinking about population change.

How micro-demographic research differs from mainstream demographic research is clear; how it differs from anthropological work on related subjects is less so. In a thoughtful final chapter, Caldwell concludes that micro- demographic researchers are more interested in change, more quantitative, more systematic in recording information, more inclined to em- ploy research teams, and more given to con- ducting probing, topic-oriented interviews than are anthropological fieldworkers. I be- lieve he is right on all but the last count.

The micro-approach is not only a method- ological, but also, and more importantly, a theoretical innovation in demography. Some

of the potential theoretical contributions are fleshed out in an insightful lead chapter by McNicoll, who calls for comparative institu- tional analysis of the local context of demo- graphic behavior.

The majority of the 28 chapters illustrate the application of specific micro-research techniques to concrete demographic problems in Third World countries. Admirably, the top- ics covered include most of the areas in which important contributions have been made. The chapters, whose authors include such familiar figures as Nag, Oppong, Das Gupta, and Van de Walle, are of uniformly high quality, un- usual in a volume of this length.

My only reservation about this book and the enterprise generally concerns the use of the term micro-upproad to describe the innovation the authors seek to introduce. While clearly appropriate for the methods ofinterest, the mi- cro label may become a constraint on the theo- rizing that guides and flows from the ap- proach. For while one may concur with the au- thors that many sources of demographic change lie, undetected, on the village level, I suspect the contributors would agree that it is the interaction among processes at different analytic levels-individual, community, na- tional, global-that must be understood if we are fully to understand population change. Such processes are described as micro with dif-

This book succeeds in part because, unlike anthropologists, demographers have a Prob- lem. (Anthropologists have many problems but no Problem.) Furthermore, these demog- raphers have a Mission, and one that is easy to defend. Unified in argument, diverse in supporting da ta , the resulting book has punch.

The impact of this important project is hard to predict. It is unclear how many demogra- phers will be prepared to leave their secure of- fices and data sets for the surprises-and or- deals-f the field. The volume may make a greater impression on anthropologists, who will find a wealth of ideas for how to apply fa- miliar field methods to knotty problems such as age determination in nonliterate societies. It can be hoped that the volume will encour- age students not yet indoctrinated in our dis- cipline’s traditional aversion to demography to turn their attention to the critical popula- tion problems of our day. Whatever tran- spires, anthropologists owe Caldwell a debt of gratitude for lending his considerable talent, energy, and prestige to making the case for an- thropology to a sister field.

ficulty.