Laura McClusky lived in a Mopan Maya village in Belize, where she studied “lashings,” or male-to-female partner violence. She introduces her beautifully storied ethnography as the first focused specifically on domestic violence among Maya; in fact, hers is among the first full-length monographs focused on domestic violence in any world region. Following faithfully from an introduction that pledges allegiance to narrative ethnography, McClusky organizes her chapters around person-centered, real-time narratives, followed by analytical sections that draw connections between violence and other themes as played out among the villagers: the importance of work and a gendered division of labor, how beatings can be construed as legitimate, daughters constrained by obligations to mothers and mothers-in-law, and the role of formal education in altering gender roles.

McClusky tells us that her narrative approach “is not unique, nor is it especially innovative” (p. 17), but I would argue that she takes it to a level that is indeed singular. She so eschews abstraction and decontextualized generalization (p. 164) that she hazards no analytical arguments unless she can organically tease them from her novelesque narrative. She consistently provides a wealth of detail, at times bordering on extraneous but always helping to paint vivid scenes--“I lean back in my chair, tipping it up on two legs. Uncomfortable in this new balance, I ease the front legs back down” (p. 192)--that demonstrate how McClusky exceeds the models she cites, practicing narrativity in a uniquely stringent sense.

One of the most difficult challenges authors of issue-specific ethnographies face is to provide adequate background, contextualization, and complexity; in this regard, McClusky’s approach contends admirably. Indeed, readers learn as much about Mayan Belizean ethnic identity and language use, child rearing, hand washing of clothes, and tortilla making--not to mention uncomfortable moments participant-observers face--as we do about violent encounters between men and women. Because of this richness, the monograph would be most valuable for introducing beginning anthropology students or lay readers to how intimate and vivid ethnography can be. The book’s final ethnographic chapter, “Traveling Spirits,” chronicles the author’s participation in a funeral for a woman who, we learn, had a contentious relationship with her daughter-in-law. For the first 24 pages of the chapter, critical readers might appreciate all we learn about Mopan funeral practices but wonder what, if anything, the events so carefully narrated have to do with the work’s focus on domestic violence. It comes as a pleasurable discovery, then, when in the analysis section we realize that the reason the dead woman’s son once struck his wife cannot be grasped without understanding child-fostering practices and related conflicts between the two women. When the dead woman’s grandchildren experience health threats after her death, we realize that she is “calling” the children to be with her in death, again for reasons tied to the unresolved issues between the deceased mother-in-law and living daughter-in-law and the son’s violent behavior in the face of these conflicts. This is a level of complexity and nuance that only ethnography can bring to an exploration of interpersonal violence.

One hesitates to criticize ethnography as well crafted and rich as this, and yet there are ways in which McClusky’s modest, stalwart particularism leads her to overlook the ethnological significance of her case. Just three examples may illustrate the point. First, anthropological literature on domestic violence cited in McClusky’s bibliography discusses a significant cross-cultural phenomenon some call the “token-torturer,” the mother-in-law who incites or is complicit in a son’s beating of his wife. The mother-in-law is a “token” because she represents and reproduces patriarchal oppression of women as she achieves greater status and power through age. McClusky’s treatment eloquently grounds patterns of violence linked to mothers-in-law in Mopan Mayan concepts of tsik (respect) and naab’l (the soul), but she never acknowledges how the Mopan case might fit into broader, cross-cultural patterns. Second, McClusky underlines how violent behavior might be exacerbated by young women’s “rebellion” around issues such as arranged patrilocal marriage, double standards for marital fidelity, expectations around work, and freedom to travel. Although she again draws from broader Mayan literature in analyzing such rebellions, at no time does she seek to relate them to rapid shifts in gender roles sweeping nearly all of the world’s societies and the increasing tensions, insecurities, and violence that some authors are beginning to associate with diverse women’s movements and concomitant gender transformations. Finally, and perhaps most significant, McClusky finds that as women age and gain status, “abusive husbands in the village apparently ‘stop feeling jealous’ as they get older and subsequently stop hitting their wives” (p. 169). Such a finding flies directly in the face of the received wisdom in most Western industrial societies that domestic violence inherently worsens with time and that violent men’s recidivism is inevitable. Because developing countries tend all too easily to incorporate such “facts” from more developed nations into their own institutional response strategies, the significance of McClusky’s counterexample, along with others from the cross-cultural record, deserves to be underlined more forcefully.

In her introduction, McClusky recounts being told that she would never get funding to study domestic violence, because it is a “closed topic” (p. 7). She objects, systematically dismissing reasons she believes such violence might be so viewed: It is not exotic enough, it is “too ugly” (p. 8), it is too close to home. I am struck, however, that in a work otherwise so epistemologically honest the author overlooks a central reason partner violence might be viewed as a closed topic: Acts that occur behind closed doors, that are linked to anger, pain, and shame, are often simply not accessible to participant-observers for firsthand study. In fact, as the book’s subtitle suggests, this work analyzes stories about domestic violence--and only women’s stories--for McClusky never witnessed the behavior that forms her topic. Critical exploration of the elusiveness of interpersonal violence as a subject of study would have enhanced this already worthy contribution.