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Ecotourism is a form of tourism that is highly visible and growing rapidly. It is commonly presented and understood as very different from conventional mass tourism because it is especially responsible, and even beneficial, environmentally and socio-culturally. However, such a view may be inaccurate. The favourable image of ecotourism is a consequence of viewing it in an ecotourist bubble, analogous to the idea of the tourist bubble. Within this ecotourist bubble, the destinations and experiences sold to tourists are abstracted from their contexts, thus inducing a distorted image of them and of ecotourism itself. Aspects of what the bubble excludes are illustrated through a consideration of two destinations in the Caribbean., In the past decade or two ecotourism has become increasingly visible and significant in a number of ways. It is commonly referred to as the fastest growing sector of the [...]

The significance of abstraction in the work of anthropologists is examined. Topics include the social aspects of abstraction, which relate to the people who are the abstracting agents and the manner in which abstraction is institutionalized; and the different roles abstraction plays in the social and economic realms.

An increasing number of scholars have turned their attention to the social nature of objects in the West (e.g. Bourdieu 1984; Douglas & Isherwood 1978; D. Miller 1987). These writers [...]

From Said's Orientalism (1978), this article extracts a general model of the production of understandings of alien societies. The model points to aspects and manifestations of this production that have received less attention than those associated with Orientalism. After presenting some of these briefly, the article turns to the most neglected, the way that anthropologists have Occidentalized the West. This Occidentalism is likely to have important effects on anthropological understandings of alien societies. The article illustrates Occidentalism by examining the distinction between gift and commodity societies, and it concludes by considering some of the ways that anthropologists might reduce the twin risks of Occidentalism and Orientalism.

MACDONALD, SHARON. Behind the scenes at the Science Museum. xiii, 293 pp.' figs., illus., bibliogr. Oxford, New York: Berg Publishers, 2002. £44.99 (cloth), £14.99 (paper) If I had a time [...]

GUDEMAN, STEPHEN. The anthropology of economy: community, market and culture. viii, 189 pp., figs., bibliogr., index. Oxford, Malden: Blackwell, 2001. £50.00 (cloth), £14.99 (paper) Much of the closing decades of [...]

WARDLE, HUON. An ethnography of cosmopolitanism in Kingston, Jamaica, xix 229 pp., fig., illus., bibliogr. Lewiston, N.Y: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000. $89.95 (cloth) Each ethnographic region seems to have a [...]

MACNAGHTEN, PHIL & JOHN URRY. Contested natures. ix, 307 pp., illus., bibliogr. London: Sage, 1998. £49.50 (cloth), £15.99 (paper) Environmentalism may well be the reigning civil concern of the close [...]

ROBOTHAM, DON. Culture, society and economy: bringing production back in. 189 pp., table, bibliogr. London: Sage Publications, 2005. £60 (cloth), £19.99 (paper) About a quarter-century ago anthropologists decided to reject [...]

VIVANCO, LUIS A. Green encounters: shaping and contesting environmentalism in rural Costa Rica. xv, 222 pp., maps, illus., bibliogr. Oxford, New York: Berghahn Books, 2006. £45.00 (cloth), £17.95 (paper) If [...]

WILK, RICHARD. Home cooking in the global village: Caribbean food from buccaneers to ecotourists. x, 286 pp., map, fig, tables, illus., bibliogr. Oxford, New York: Berg Publishers, 2006. £55.00 (cloth), [...]

BROWNE, KATHERINE E. Creole economics: Caribbean cunning under the French flag. xvii, 271 pp., maps, illus., bibliogr. Austin: Univ. Texas Press, 2004. $55.00 (cloth), $22.95 (paper) Anthropological work on the [...]

PRYOR, FREDERIC L. Economic systems of foraging, agricultural, and industrial societies. xvi, 316 pp., tables, figs, bibliogr. Cambridge: Univ. Press, 2005. £40.00 (cloth), £17.99 (paper) Both anthropology and economics study [...]

EDELMAN, MARC & ANGELIQUE HAUGERUD (eds). The anthropology of development and globalization: from classical political economy to contemporary neoliberalism. x, 406 pp., bibliogrs. Oxford, Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing, 2004. £65.00 [...]

SMITH, JENNIE M. When the hands are many: community organization and social change in rural Haiti. xii, 229 pp., illus., bibliogr. London, Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press. 2001 When the hands [...]

KOROM, FRANK J. Hosay Trinidad: Muharram performances in an Indo-Caribbean diaspora. viii, 305 pp., illus., bibliogr. Philadelphia: Univ. Pennsylvania Press, 2003. £44.00 (cloth). £17.50 (paper) Hosay Trinidad will interest those [...]

Social anthropology GINSBURG, FAYE D., LILA ABU-LUGHOD & BRIAN LARKIN (eds). Media worlds: anthropology on new terrain. xvi, 413 pp., illus., bibliogrs. London, Berkeley: Univ. California Press, 2002. £40.00 (cloth), [...]

Religion PALMIE, STEPHAN. Wizards and scientists: explorations in Afro-Cuban modernity and tradition. xi, 399 pp., bibliogr. London, Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press, 2002. £16.95 (paper) Palmie has written an intriguing [...]

456 pp., maps, plates, illus., bibliogrs. London, Chicago: Univ. Press, 2002. 42.00 £(cloth), 17.50 £ (paper) Anthropology has a public face. At times this is the agreeable one celebrated in [...]

GRAEBER, DAVID. Toward an anthropological theory of value: the false coin of our own dreams. xiii, 337 pp., bibliogr. New York: Palgrave, 2001. £15.99 (paper) 'Value' is a complex concept [...]

BENJAMIN, ALAN F. Jews of the Dutch Caribbean: exploring ethnic identity on Curacao. xii, 200 pp., maps, tables, illus., bibliogr. London, New York: Routledge, 2002 £50.00 (cloth) Ethnic identity is [...]

MUNASINGHE, VIRANJINI. Callaloo or tossed salad? East Indians and the cultural politics of identity in Trinidad. xv, 315 pp., maps, bibliogr. New York: Cornell Univ. Press, 2001. £30.50 (cloth), £13.50 [...]

MYERS, FRED R. (ed.). The empire of things: regimes of value and material culture. ix, 353 pp., figs., illus., bibliogr. Oxford: James Currey; Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, [...]

ZERNER, CHARLES (ed.). People, plants, and justice: the politics of nature conservation. xvii, 449 pp., maps, tables, illus., bibliogr. New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 2000. $49.50 (cloth), $30.00 (paper) 'Environmental [...]

GODBOUT, JACQUES T. & ALAIN CAILLE, The world of the gift. xvi, 250 pp., bibliogr. London, Montreal: McGill-Queen's Univ. Press, 2001. £21.50 (cloth), £16.95 (paper) In the past few years [...]

DOMINY, MICHELE D. Calling the station home: place and identity in New Zealand's high country. xiii, 306 pp., maps, tables, illus., bibliogr. Oxford, New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001. $69.00 [...]

GUPTA, AKHIL & JAMES FERGUSON (eds). viii, 361 pp., bibliogr. Durham, NC, London: Duke Univ. Press, 1997. £52.50 (cloth), £16.95 (paper) This is a collection of papers that explores how [...]

MILLER, DANIEL. x, 180 pp., bibliogr. Cambridge: Polity, 1998 £39.50 (cloth), £11.95 (paper) Miller turns out work at a rate that easily depresses the onlooker. The most recent instance is [...]

NAROTZKY, SUSANA. (Anthrop. Cult. Soc.). viii, 253 pp., bibliogr. London, Chicago: Pluto Press, 1997. £45.00 (cloth), £14.99 (paper) What's in a name? The question is pertinent to economic anthropology. Although [...]

A long-serving element in the anthropological tool-kit is the assumption that the Modern world lurks outside local societies, threatening to swamp them and stamp them with its image. This assumption [...]

The study of consumption has attracted increasing attention within anthropology over the past decade or so. More than most anthropological topics, this one is of interest among a variety of [...]