Kinship and reciprocity, central themes in Andean ethnography, are interrogated in this book and linked to the active discursive practices of the people of Sullk'ata to produce relatedness (‘bonds of belonging and affiliation’, p. 1) in this small Quechua region of Bolivia. Van Vleet wants to contribute evidence of how kinship is not exclusively tied to consanguinity and affinity but is constructed in everyday relations through a web of meaning that includes the circulation of care, energy, and goods, and involves an economy of the expression of feelings. Reciprocity is also discussed, showing how asymmetry in these exchanges creates and reinforces hierarchies. Moreover, Van Vleet demonstrates how contingencies and ambiguities present in those exchanges can be a source of conflict that may result in violence between people involved in close, intimate relationships (such as those of siblings, husbands and wives, and mothers- and daughters-in-law).
The book's seven chapters are organised around stories the author collected during her fieldwork. Van Vleet treats each of these stories as dialogic texts, analysing the performative aspects of the story-telling as discursive practices that contribute to produce relatedness and a hierarchical social order. As a consistent pattern, in each chapter Van Vleet presents her version of the stories she selected, interwoven with her ethnography and relying (perhaps too closely) on Andean scholarship on the same issues.
An introductory chapter where the project is laid out is followed by a presentation of the national and historical context of a region affected by national and transnational migration. This context has altered the sense of belonging to a place, making it more fluid and flexible. Therefore, affects and the effort and energy people put into developing and confirming them become more important and elaborate, making the role of women in the process even more significant. The notion of relatedness is developed very convincingly in the third chapter. Here, a captivating description of the economy of the expression of feelings on the part of women shows it as a device women use when they want to publicly establish, renovate or reinforce their relationship with members of the larger community with whom they may not have a direct biological link.
The fourth chapter is perhaps the one with the weakest writing. It deals with the loss of relatives and feelings of sorrow. In examining these two topics the author sets out to work with them in parallel and as associated with each other. This approach does not really work, however, and the methodological issues raised in the chapter are not resolved either. The following three chapters before the conclusions contain the most significant contributions of Van Vleet's work. The reader is always aware of the nature of the evidence provided, and the grounds for interpretation that the author is allowing for herself. Chapter 5 is on desire and adolescence. Issues relating to the history of intergenerational agency regarding marriages are discussed, as well as the role of young men and women in establishing a couple. Van Vleet has clearly set limits on the material she has collected, due to the ideologically controversial topics involved while discussing drunkenness, elopement and stealing women, and the ambivalences towards what could be considered rape. Half-told stories, suppressed feelings and ambivalent opinions towards the set of practices associated with ‘stealing’ women before marriage are carefully considered in context.
Chapter 6 is about marriage. The sharp counterpoint between the contents of a course on marriage run by Catholic nuns for the Sullk'atas and the ethnography on weddings and everyday life for married couples is very illuminating, as is the candidly described journey Van Vleet takes to understand the differences and significance of the goods received by the bride before entering the groom's family household. The arrival of the new daughter-in-law into the domains of the husband's mother is perhaps the relationship most intensively explored in its complexity, showing the process of creating and establishing relatedness in a context of unequal power relationships. This leads quite naturally to the last chapter about domestic violence. This difficult topic is dealt with in the context of the development of public policies addressing domestic violence as linked to a struggle for rights and resources. Van Vleet skilfully presents the tensions that using state resources to fight domestic violence may bring into the kinship networks and internal resources women have within the community to guarantee reciprocity in their everyday life. Common assumptions about domestic violence occurring mostly between couples are challenged, with evidence of violence between women (in-laws) and siblings.
Van Vleet tries to surmount a few criticisms directed at Andean ethnography by bringing several important and relevant methodological issues to the attention of the reader; however, they are not always thoroughly addressed or resolved. References to whiteness, racial dynamics, and how the presence of the ‘gringa’ anthropologist may have influenced narratives and events are frequent, but insufficiently explored. There is evidence of a conscious effort to bridge the gap between cultural contextual analysis and the micro-analysis that sociolinguists offer of discourses and speech, but the results are uneven. The common criticism of Andean ethnography for not including the relationship between the communities and the national and global context is acknowledged, but again, the few times this relationship is brought up by the evidence, it is only modestly explored.
