Burke, Timothy

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Swarthmore College Works History Faculty Works History 4-1-2009 Review Of "Dress, Undress, And Difference: Critical Perspectives On The Body's Surface" Edited By A. Masquelier Timothy Burke Swarthmore College, tburke1@swarthmore.edu This work is brought to you for free and open access by . It has been accepted for inclusion in History Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact myworks@swarthmore.edu. Follow this and additional works at: https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-history  Part of the History Commons Let us know how access to these works benefits you  Recommended Citation Timothy Burke. (2009). "Review Of "Dress, Undress, And Difference: Critical Perspectives On The Body's Surface" Edited By A. Masquelier". Comparative Studies In Society And History. Volume 51, Issue 2. 461-463. DOI: 10.1017/S001041750900108X https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-history/3 the market in basic foodstuffs in order to guarantee subsistence to all, and alaissez-faire idea of absolute, individual rights of ownership. The push andpull between these two positions explains much of the dynamic of economicdevelopment traced in the book and underlies many of its most interesting argu-ments, particularly as it examines the spatial implications of these two contend-ing legal philosophies.In places, the spatial thread Amith tries to weave through the entire studyproves marvelously revealing. For instance, in an effort to turn the protectionsof the moral economy to its own advantage by guaranteeing low prices and asecure supply of maize, the urban mining center of Taxco attempted toabsorb the agrarian region to its south into its jurisdiction, thus redeﬁning the“locality” within which protective controls on the exchange of provisionswould apply. The chapter on “Place Making and Place Breaking” delves intothe meanings poured into spaces by their inhabitants and claimants.Elsewhere, however, space seems a less incisive category of analysis than itsfrequent invocation would suggest. For example, the large-scale movements ofpopulation that the early chapters document, while unarguably transpiringacross space, reﬂected the environmental, economic, and political possibilitiesof one place over another, rather than any notions of space itself. In fact, onmany occasions space seems to work as the dependent variable, with its mean-ings and uses responding to other predictive factors examined so well in thebook: class and caste, moral visions, disease and destruction, environmentand climate, technologies of production and transportation, world marketsand commodity exchanges. Space offers enormous promise as a theoreticalpoint of entrance and novel mode of analysis, but keeping its promise ontrack proves inordinately difﬁcult. Amith succeeds marvelously in fulﬁllingmuch of the ambition of the book, and if the focus on space occasionallyblurs, that seems forgivable in pursuit of a grand goal.———Valerie A. Kivelson, University of MichiganAdeline Masquelier, ed., Dress, Undress and Difference: Critical Perspectiveson the Body’s Surface. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.doi:10.1017/S001041750900108XThe subjects covered by these authors—nudity, the body’s surface, cleanliness,clothing, and various cultural formations and representations related to thesetopics—are important ones. The essays are excellent and provocative, boththeoretically and descriptively, and present original arguments and material.One expects, given the subject matter, that Mary Douglas’ work on purityand pollution would be given prominent place, but most of the authorsinstead adopt the position presented by Masquelier in her introduction:“The present volume makes a break with the anthropological wisdom thatC S S H N O T E S 461dirt and disorder can be explained in terms of universal and unchanging struc-tural patterns to illuminate the complex and nuanced strategies at work in localprocesses of dirtying and undressing” (p. 4).This correction follows three paths. First, a theoretical and empirical argu-ment is made in favor of historicity and speciﬁcity against universalism, inthis case regarding bodies, sweat, and dirt. Second, it is claimed the speciﬁchistory of colonial rule has created an epistemological barrier to understandingthese (and other subjects) in properly historical, speciﬁc, and local terms. Third,it is asserted that universal claims about subjects like bodies, nudity, or dirt areactually local and particular to the history of the West, but that, as a con-sequence of colonialism and globalization, they have been integrated intonon-Western practices and discourses. Speciﬁc, local studies are required tounderstand this process and its outcomes in any given society.In many ways it is hard to quarrel with this approach. For example, whocould disagree with Wiener’s argument that due to tourism and globalization“in Bali what once was merely naked now is nude,” and that Balinese bodieshave been sexualized through a history of globalizing contacts and relations(88)? Parallel arguments in each essay strike me as straightforwardly factualaccounts of real, complex transformations in the meanings and practices ofbodies, clothing, and cleanliness now visible in contemporary societies.I did ﬁnd problems in Masquelier’s introductory framing of the volume.First, it casts this kind of analysis as an insurgent response to an establishedorthodoxy. I would argue that the basic scholarly strategies in this volumeare the current orthodoxy, at least within history and anthropology. Second,it seems to me that we are still struggling with the residual force of a perspectivethat most of us disavow when it is made explicit: that modernity and colonial-ism have contaminated non-Western authenticities, and that the project of non-Western history and anthropology is to recover those authenticities on their ownterms. All of the contributors here are far too smart and theoretically sophisti-cated to deliberately reproduce this view. But it lurks around the edges: in theinsistence that the transformations of the colonial and the modern have alwaysproduced new instrumental forms of power over bodies and new kinds of poss-ible masteries, and in the understanding of the move from there to here, fromthen to now, as one of loss and tragedy. In reality, bodies that become nude,or clean, or fashionable gain as well as lose, and in some cases they are trans-formed in ways difﬁcult to notch on any sort of balance sheet.I ended up wishing this account were more banal and universal. I mean thisnot in the sense that bodies, nudity, clothing, and cleanliness have single, ﬁxedmeanings in all human societies. Rather, I would argue that some of the trans-formations we are inclined to describe as unique consequences of modernityand colonialism are in fact more widely distributed in historical experience.If we are to “provincialize the West,” the modern colonial encounter cannotbe understood as in every way unprecedented in human experience, as a462 C S S H N O T E Sunique and exclusive epistemological nightmare sharing no parallels with othertimes and places.For some of these essays, taking this approach would diminish their sense ofanalytic mission. But that might be a good thing, reminding us that in studyingsubjects like the body or clothing our project is partly descriptive. We canafford to be less reﬂexively antagonized by universalizing claims. Conceptslike “modernity” make no sense without some sort of general or comparativebaseline. Human bodies may mean and represent in very different waysacross time and space, but in material terms, a sixteenth-century non-Westernbody has much in common with a twenty-ﬁrst-century globalized body.Indeed, these authors make good use of both theoretical and empirical materialfrom the work of scholars exploring very different societies and practices. Sosome kind of comparative, even universalizing yardstick is in use here,though it enters through the back door of disciplinarity.None of this negates the great virtues of this anthology, nor is any of thiscritique conﬁned to this book. I only suggest that it is time for the framingof the rich research it contains to evolve in new directions.———Timothy Burke, Swarthmore CollegePei-Chia Lan, Global Cinderellas: Migrant Domestics and Newly RichEmployers in Taiwan. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2006.doi:10.1017/S0010417509001091In this dynamic study of domestic service in Taiwan, Pei-Chia Lan examines thecreation of social and spatial boundaries. Between 1998 and 2003, she carriedout ethnographic ﬁeldwork with employers and guest workers in Taiwan, andalso visited Indonesia and the Philippines. Lan makes an important contributionto the scholarly conversation about domestic service. This book ﬁlls a gap in theliterature by providing detailed information on Taiwan, and also breaks newground by examining transnational subjects and their use of space and space-imploding technologies, such as mobile phones and email. She explores themicro-dynamics of the employment relationship, analyzing how global inequal-ities play out in boundary maintenance activities in Taiwanese homes and cities.Setting the global context, Lan considers Taiwan’s ambiguous place in thecommunity of nations. Shadowed by China, the Taiwanese state uses itsemployment policy to forge political relationships with Asian labor-sendingcountries burdened by high debt and unemployment. She deftly illustrateshow labor migration shapes and is shaped by identities of race, ethnicity, andnationality. Examining how job agencies recruit, train, and place domestic ser-vants, Lan asserts that the use of ethnic stereotypes creates a segmented labormarket justifying differential treatment of Filipinos and Indonesians.C S S H N O T E S 463

Review Of  Dress, Undress, And Difference: Critical Perspectives On The Body\u27s Surface  Edited By A. Masquelier

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Review Of Dress, Undress, And Difference: Critical Perspectives On The Body\u27s Surface Edited By A. Masquelier

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