988 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST
refreshing. But the sense in which the Virgin
Islands have a cultural distinctiveness of
their own, to be contrasted with the distinc-
tiveness of other West Indian islands, is not
as evident in the book as this anthropologist
would like.
Gordon Lewis is a political scientist, and
a very good one. He may reject, therefore,
an anthropological yardstick as the measure
of his work. But the issues he raises are too
important-both to the scholarly community
and to the people of whom he writes-not to
be the subject of diverse academic comment.
References Cited
Brathwaite, Edward
1971 Development of Creole Society in
Jamaica, 1770-1820. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Westergaard, Waldemar
1917 The Danish West Indies Under
Company Rule. New York: Macmillan.
Amazonia: Man and Culture in a Counterfeit
Paradise. BETTY J. MEGGERS. Worlds
of Man: Studies in Cultural Ecology.
Chicago: Aldine-Atherton, 1971. vii +
182 pp., figures, illustration, maps, tables,
bibliography, suggested reading, glossary,
index. $7.50 (cloth), $2.95 (paper).
Reviewed by DONALD W. LATHRAP
University o f Illinois, Urbana
This concise, well written book makes at
least two important points and makes them
well: the Indian cultures still surviving in the Murphy are missing from Meggers’ bibliog-
tropical forests of the Amazon Basin are
depleting the key resources of their environ-
ment at a much slower rate than is modern
industrial society; and a full exploitation of
the Amazon Basin through the agricultural
and industrial systems developed in the
Western tradition will inevitably lead to a
total environmental disaster for the Amazon Reference Cited
Basin and quite possibly for the whole Reichel-Dolmatoff, Gerard0
world. If man is to survive beyond this
century he must realize that the resources of
this world are finite, and that any cultural
system which depletes these resources rapid-
ly and irreversibly is in the long run a Town and Country in Brazil. MARVIN
non-viable system. Any book which is effec-
tive in getting these points across is, of
necessity, a good book, and Meggers’ book is
effective .
[75,1973]
Meggers suggests (p. 43) that an anthro-
pological approach to problems of human
ecology in the Amazon Basin must be piece-
meal and at the level of particular institu-
tions and cultural practices. She is successful
in showing how certain practices work to
keep population levels more or less in equili-
brium, but she is less successful in suggesting
how a total cultural system might be arti-
culated as an adjustment to its setting.
Reichel-Dolmatoff’s recent book, Amazon-
ian Cosmos, treats the same problem in a
way which I would regard as more “anthro-
pological.” He is able to demonstrate with
total clarity how most Desana cultural prac-
tices relate to a consistent theory of man
and his relationship to limited resources in a
finite universe. Since ecology can be handled
only within a structure like systems theory,
and not within a framework of simple cause-
effect relationships, Reichel-Dolmatoff’s
systemic approach has far more promise in
terms of ultimate understanding of these
problems, but Meggers’ simple and straight-
forward discussion will be a good introduc-
tion for the layman.
It would be unfair to review this book as
if it were a serious scientific contribution.
The problems of the dynamic relationship
between cultural systems and the various
environmental niches afforded by the
Amazon Basin are complex, and in recent
years have given rise to a considerable body
of excellent, technical literature. The fact
that the works of Carneiro, Harner, Gold-
man, Denevan, Reichel-Dolmatoff, and
raphy indicates that she had no pretensions
to intensive scholarship. The mass communi-
cation of scientific information relevant to
man’s survival is an important endeavor and
we must be grateful to Meggers that she has
done her job so adequately.
1971 Amazonian Cosmos. Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press.
HARRIS. Columbia University Contribu-
tions to Anthropology, N573. New York:
W. W. Norton (The Norton Library),
1971; Toronto: George J. McLeod, 1971.