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The Politics of Egalitarianism: Theory and Practice. Jacqueline Solway, ed. New York: Berghahn, 2006. 260 pp.
The Politics of Egalitarianism: Theory and Practice, edited and introduced by Jacqueline Solway, is a Festschrift in honor of Richard B. Lee. This collection began as conference sessions in 2001, and many of the articles that appear in the current volume were also published in an earlier form in AHthropologica in 2003. The concept of "egalitarianism," both in relation to Lee's theoretical work in the Kalahari and his more applied recent work there, is the central theme. The assertion that human equality is possible is followed by the more difficult task of making it real for ethnic minorities in a modern state.
The first of three sections focuses on the theoretical influence of Lee's work in political anthropology, specifically his assertions of egalitarianism in San society. His presentation of foragers as nonhierarchical conflicted with the contemporary image of hunting societies led by male hunters. Thomas C. Patterson concentrates on the theoretical divide on this issue between Marxist scholars and those working from a liberal social thought perspective. Christine Ward Gailey reviews of the influence of Karl Marx's Ethnological Notebooks on the debate. Jacqueline Solway celebrates Marshall Sahlins's article, "Notes on the Original Affluent Society" (1968), as part of the "anthropological oral tradition" (p. 67). Her review...