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ates the reasons for the variability apparent in the archeological record.

D’Altroy’s goal is to explain Inka adminis- trative strategy in the central highlands of Peru by examining it in terms of a general model of imperial control. He does this by employing a territorial-hegemonic model that describes variation in imperial admini- stration in terms of the degree and type of control exerted by the empire over provincial populations. Territorial strategies are those that entail high levels of control and invest- ment on the part of the expanding state, while hegemonic relations are characterized by low levels of control, and a correspond- ingly greater degree of autonomy in the pe- riphery. D’Altroy argues that administrative strategies also vary in terms of the constitu- tion of imperial power brought to bear on conquered populations. Following Mann (The Sources ofsocial Pmq Volume 1: A History of Pmer to A.D. 1760, Cambridge University Press, 1986), he partitions power into four categories-military, political, economic, and ideological-and then examines lnka control in terms of the first three, which he believes are most fundamental. According to this analysis, different combinations of power and levels of control provided the Inka with flexible strategies that were implemented on the basis of a cost-benefit calculus. Explicitly rejecting substantivist approaches that high- light the unique nature of Andean civiliza- tion, he argues, instead, that the Inka state was in many ways similar to other preindus- trial empires and can be best understood from a comparative perspective.

The primary case examined in the book is the Upper Mantarovalley, a region of central Peru that was the focus of intensive study by the Upper Mantaro Archaeological Research Project. The data set at D’Altroy’s disposal is probably the most comprehensive for any area within the Inka Empire, and this, along with his wide-ranging consideration of the many factors af€ecting imperial control, re- sult in a book that is dense with information. The author begins with an overview of his argument and primary conclusions, and then discusses the concepts he uses to analyze Inka provincial administration. These two chap ters are followed by a description of the envi- ronment and research methods employed in the Upper Mantaro Valley and a reconstruc- tion of local Wanka society prior to Inka ex- pansion. The analytical core of the volume comprises four chapters that examine Inka military strategies, imperial infrastructure, and economic and political organization. All

begin with a general consideration of Inka practices, and then examine the Upper Man- taro case in detail. The book ends with a discussion of how Wanka society was affected by incorporation into the Inka Empire and a brief conclusion in which comparisons are drawn with other empires.

On a general level, D’Altroy concludes that the evidence for Inka administration of the Upper Mantaro Valley is consistent with tem- tonal control, and carefully identitles the fac- tors that promoted the precise nature and intensity of Inka activities in the region. One of his most interesting contributions is the examination of military logistics and state infrastructure in terms of transportation costs, an approach that suggests that the im- pressive network of state facilities is as much a reflection of the limitations on provincial administration as the success of imperial con- trol. Somewhat less satisfying is his treatment of the empire’s transition from reliance on corvee labor to the increased use of attached specialists, a process for which there is rela- tively little evidence in the study region.

The model used in Awincial Pmer to expli- cate Inka control of the Upper Mantaro re- gion allows the systematization of a broad array of information and ideas, many of which have been previously discussed by D’Al- troy and other authors. The key analytical value of this work is in offering a refreshing examination of provincial administration in terms that are conducive to comparison with other empires. It will be of great interest to Andeanists as well as those who are con- cerned with the evolution and organization of preindustrial states in other parts of the world.

Stains on My Name, War in My Veins: Guyana and the Politics of Cultural Struggle. Bracket& F. Williams. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991.344 pp.

RICHARD PRICE Martinigue

In this ambitious study, Williams single- mindedly applies (mostly Gramscian) the- ory-for example, the notion of a trans- formist hegemony-to the everyday interac- tions of ordinary Guyanese engaged in the process of postcolonial nation building. Many of the leadingedge concerns of current anthropological debate figure prominently: ethnicity, identity, nationalism, and state for- mation. (Consideration of gender is con-

SOCl AL/ CU LT URAI. ANTHROPOLOGY 713

spicuously absent.) Williams effectively dem- onstrates the multifarious ways this young nation’s colonial past constrains how its citi- zens think and act in the present. Rarely have I seen the burdens and ghosts that emerged from such a past-ethnic chauvinism, racial stereotyping, religious bigotry+o effectively linked to presentday discourses and interac- tions.

Williamsviews the “cultural stmgg1e”of the subtitle as a universal process, arguing that it is out of such struggles over meaning and status that the symbolic systems we call “cul- tures” are produced. Her ultimate theoretical goal is “to suggest how, methodologically and analytically, anthropology can consider sym- bols, interpretations, and meaning in social life without losing sight of the material and political realities of the contexts in which these processes occur” (p. xvii) . And her re- lentlessness, and success, in keeping this goal in sight, whether she is discussing a fleeting “eyepass” dispute between neighbors or an elaborate Hindu wedding, may help explain why R. T. Smith, in the jacket blurb, dubbed this “the best work of Caribbean ethnography to appear in a very long time.”

Chapter 1, on the politics of cultural strug- gle, centers on Rebecca West’s fictional dia- logue, written during World War 11, between a Serb and a Croat. Williams succeeds, with considerable subtlety, in underscoring the complexities of “how personal and group identities are constructed and transformed in the intersection of territorial and cultural nationalism” and in proselytizing for an eth- nographic practice that explores “the man- ner in which race, class and culture have been entangled in the historical development of particular ideological fields” (p. 29).

Chapters 2 through 4 introduce the largely agricultural community, divided by ~ r i o u s ethnic, racial, and religious fault lines, and present an ethnography of status-the evalu- atory criteriapeople use to place one another. Chapters 5 to 7 enrich the account by focus- ing on ethnic stereotypes and stratagems, demonstrating at some length the ways that ideology concerning ethnic afiXation was produced historically and the ways it plays into the culture of domination today.

Chapter 8, “Religion, Class, Culture, and the Ghost of Hegemony,” places ~ r i o u s ritual events within a historically constituted ideo- logical field that, today, permits multiple readings. Chapter 9, with considerable ethno- graphic finesse, examines three weddings: “each example,” Williams explains,

is intended to pull us deeper into the cul- ture of domination established under An- glo-European hegemony and the ghostly constraints this form of domination now imposes on Guyanese identity formation and on their efforts to reconceptualize the Guyanese sociocultural and political order.

And a final chapter, on “exorazing the ghost,” homes in on the competingpulls ofclass consciousness and racial and ethnic identity, on the tensions between “cultural content“ and ethnic identity, and on the “ideological war fought in the veins, the scars from which be- come stains on the names of individuals and ethnic groups” (p. 252).

Williams ends her account of (past) hegemonic dominance and the (present) ideological struggle to dismantle it by point- ing out that, while “hegemonic dominance has not been reestablished in Guyana,. . . force is thinly cloaked in worn hegemonic naturalizations [which] provided a frame within which a regime could steal an election, subvert a constitution, and assassinate its o p ponents, and expect that such practices- more politely labeled, of course-could be justified as revolutionary steps toward dis- mantling the remnants of colonialism” (pp. 2 70-271 ) .

Theory and analysis far outweigh ethno- graphic texture here; though well written, Stains is not an easy read. Nonetheless, it is a work that is sure to stimulate anyone trying to understand nationalism, ethnic conflict, or postcoloniality-in short, all of us.

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Sweet Mother: M o d e m African Music. Wolfgang Bender (Wolfgang Freis, trans.). Chi- cago Studies in Ethnomusicology. Chicago, IL University of Chicago Press, 1991.256 pp.

CHRISTOPHER WATERMAN University of Washington

Wolfgang Bender’s Sweet Mother; fust pub lished in Germany in 1985, is an enthusiastic and idiosyncratic survey ofAfrican popular mu- sic. Sweet M o b is based on Bender’s research in Siena Leone, Gte d’hoire, Nigeria, and Ethiopia, interviews with musicians elsewhere in Africa and in Germany, and a variety of scholarly and journalistic sources. The book is structured around a set of geographically d e fined style clusters: the “griot style” of the West African savanna; a network of Francophone styles centered on the soukous complex of