Throughout his career E. Paul Durrenberger has been an outspoken champion for the integration of class into ethnographic understandings of social, political, and economic dynamics of cultures around the world. In The Anthropological Study of Class and Consciousness, Durrenberger has sampled a broad spectrum of ethnohistorical studies, ranging from prehistory to the present, to illustrate the value of conceptualizing complex dynamics of power not only through an anthropological lens but through the filter of awareness of class and social stratification among those most affected by the whims of the powerful elite.
A central theme of this collection is the importance of the discrepancy between the ideological perception of status and the reality of life experienced within a given class. This tension is masterfully illustrated by several authors in the volume, most notably in the chapters by Barbara J. Dilly, Sharryn Kasmir, and Kate Golterman. Kasmir and Golterman, in their...