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empowerment of former slaves, post-Civil War eco-nomic turmoil, and the sociopolitical ascendancy ofAnglo-Americans enthralled by hypodescent, reducedthe Creoles of color's special status. Nevertheless, Cre-oles of color continued to view themselves as a dis-tinct population, and they utilized mechanisms such asendogamy to maintain difference (i.e., light pheno-type) from other African Americans up to the present.

The remaining four chapters will be of more inter-est to anthropologists. Nicholas Spitzer gives an in-depth ethnographic account of the rural "Creole"Mardi Gras, a pre-Lenten begging tour that differs fromthe New Orleans urban carnival. Barry Ancelet dis-cusses the accordion-led genre of Afro-French musicknown as zydeco. Albert Valdman overviews the Cre-ole French spoken by many Gulf Coast French (includ-ing some whites) and discusses it in relation to other"New World" French Creole dialects. James Dormonconcludes with an all-too-brief essay outlining the re-cent development of an Afro-French ethnic revitaliza-tion movement that has emerged in response to theCajun-French cultural revival.

Creoles of Color can be confusing because of itsincomplete intertwining of the "Creole of Color" and"Creole" experiences and the use of both terms inter-changeably throughout the volume. The book is billedas a study of a distinct light-skinned, Afro-Frenchpopulation. Valdman's essay, however, examines theCreole dialect spoken primarily by the dark-skinned,Afro-French descendants of gallicized slaves. Further-more, Ancelet and Spitzer's chapters are relevant tothe Afro-French in general. What is not made clear isthat the term Creole is self-ascribed by the Afro-French in general, not just Creoles of color. In Dor-mon's concluding chapter, however, the focus returnsto Creoles of color, and dark-skinned Creoles, who arealso active in ethnic revival activities, are only coveredminimally. Dormon causes further confusion by usingthe term Creole only in reference to Creoles of colorrather than the broader Afro-French population thatrecently has achieved a degree of unity under the labelCreole. The overall diversity, past and present, withinthe Afro-French population should have been betterforegrounded in a more comprehensive preface andconcluding chapter. Unnecessary ambiguity surround-ing labels like Creole of Color and Creole could havebeen avoided if these terms had been better clarifiedat the outset and used consistently in the volume.

All criticisms aside, Creoles of Color is a path-breaking work. It provides temporal and spatial cover-age of the Creole of color/Creole experience(s) thatextend beyond the colonial era and New Orleans, top-ics that have long dominated the regional literature.Caribbeanists will find Creoles of Color to be a valu-able source of comparative data, and it should also be

of interest to African Americanists who are unfamiliarwith the unique Gulf Coast, Afro-French population. •

Clothing Matters: Dress and Identity in India. EmmaTarlo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. 360 pp.

HILDI HENDRICKSON

Long Island University

By focusing on Hindu society in India over the last100 years, Emma Tarlo makes a welcome contributionto the growing list of literature on dress. Tarlo investi-gates "the problem of what to wear" in each of themain castes in a rural northwestern Indian village.Combining ethnographic and primary historical data,she produces a tight comparative analysis with un-usual scope.

Before the 19th century, Hindu dress consisted ofdraped and wrapped cloths of varying kinds. In thecolonial period, elite men in particular graduallyadopted British-style clothing, and the British stayed astep ahead in order to distance themselves from theircolonial subjects. The Indians' "apparent quest for in-tegration was not so much motivated by admirationfor the British as by acceptance of the idea that India'sdevelopment could be brought about through coopera-tion with European values and ideas of progress" (p.320). So men used European fabrics to make Indian-style clothes, had Indian clothes tailored in a Euro-pean way, or changed each back and forth betweentwo sets of Indian and European styles.

These were mostly private solutions: dress did notbecome a public, political issue until the 1920s whenMohandas Gandhi called for a return to homemade(swadeshi) cloth as a major part of his plan to unifyIndia and end British colonial rule. Tarlo argues thatGandhi had a particular theory about the undyed,handspun, handwoven cloth (khadi) that he beganwearing. He was not expressing religious asceticism ordignity in poverty but rather chose the simplest, mostaustere dress to reflect his inner response to povertyand colonialism in India. He also saw wearing khadi aspenance that could restore its wearer to spiritual andpatriotic purity.

Tarlo labors to show why Gandhi's vision of a sim-plified, shared, sacred national costume was neverfully realized. Village women, for example, did notwant to wear white cloth as it was associated withbeing a widow. And while they participated in publicburnings of their European clothes, many elites foundkhadi ugly, heavy, uncomfortable to wear, and tooclosely associated with those who did manual laborand lacked education. The problem still is, "how couldthe Indian elite, conscious of its relationship to the

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West, look modern without appearing Western, andlook Indian without appearing traditional'?" (p. 332).

Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of inde-pendent India, developed his "Nehru jacket" out of adesire to use khadi but also wear a well-made, close-fitting garment. Others accommodated Gandhi's politi-cal message by wearing dyed khadi, swadeshi silk,smoother mill-made imitation khadi, or half khadi,which was handwoven and machine-spun.

Tarlo revealingly explores the rural resistance toGandhi's message. One of the principal strengths ofthe book is her illumination of the choices made byvillage women, who have had the fewest sartorial op-tions. Using examples from villagers' daily lives, Tarloprobes cases of conflict and compliance with changingstandards of dress among Brahman elites, Kanbi farm-ers and diamond-cutters, Kharak farmers and cattle-raisers, Bharwad shepherds, and Harijan weavers.

The greatest change has occurred among theBrahmans and the Haiijan "untouchables." These groupshave had the least to lose by changing their dress; theelites want to express their connection to the wealthycosmopolitan world and the untouchables want to putthe ignominy of their past status behind them.

Kanbi and Kharak farmers have had many thingsin common historically, but the Kanbi have been up-wardly mobile, and Kanbi women no longer wear andembroider a stylized skirt (ghagros). Instead, theywear a local style of sari. In contrast, Kharak womenfeel much more strictly bound to making and wearingthis skirt, even though they too think it looks old-fashioned. Kharaks have not ventured into educationand new economic ventures like the Kanbis, and theysay it would be disloyal to their caste to dress as ifthey had. Kharak women, however, have elaboratedextensively on the skirt's embroidered designs.

Most conservative of all are the Bharwad shep-herds, who say, "If you change your clothes, then youchange your nature... . Better to die than to changeyour clothes" (p. 257). Tarlo suggests that this casteneeds to dress uniformly to lessen the risk of not rec-ognizing one another as they have moved to followtheir herds.

Tarlo's account is rich in detail and insight. Welearn, for instance, that a bridal trousseau, which takesthe bride and her mother years to construct, containsfrom 15 to 35 complete outfits of matched, finelycrafted clothes along with other handmade items andjewelry. Tarlo also explores, as ethnic chic, such iro-nies as recent high-fashion purveyors buying and sell-ing old embroidered skirts that some village womennow use as rags.

This volume succeeds in illuminating and integrat-ing over a century of change in Indian dress. Its onlyweaknesses have to do with emphasis. In particular, a

reader might question how Hindu spirituality affectschoices about dress. Some people are afraid to jeop-ardize their chances for a fortunate reincarnation bychanging caste dress. Yet Tarlo dismisses ratherquickly the idea that religion might still play a part inshaping sartorial decisions. Overall, Clothing Mattersis a powerful comparative analysis of the choices andconstraints upon people's styles of dress in a highlydifferentiated yet culturally cohesive social and his-torical context. •

The Northern Nadars of Tamil Nadu: An Indian Castein the Process of Cliange. Dennis Templeman. Delhi: Ox-ford University Press, 1996. 284 pp.

GEOFFREY BURKHART

American University

The southern Indian caste of Nadars has been we.lldocumented for over 100 years and constitutes an im-portant example of successful upward mobility of agroup originally accorded low ritual status. Amongcontemporary studies, Templeman's focus on one sec-tion of Nadars and on the development of local casteassociations complements the broad sweep of RobertL. Hardgrave's classic political and historical study,The Nadars of Tamilnad: The Political Culture of aCommunity in Change (Berkeley: University of Cali-fornia Press, 1969). Templeman aims to documentchanges in the organization and activities of severalcaste associations (uravinmurai) in a few towns andvillages and in the large city of Madurai. Material fromresearch in 1968-70 figures importantly in core chap-ters (revised from his dissertation, Political Dynamicsand Social Change in India: The Nadars of TamilNadu, Berkeley, 1974), and Templeman has added ma-terial from further fieldwork in 1986 and 1990 (theduration of which is not specified) critical for discus-sion of recent changes.

Northern Nadars emerged from the migrationfrom southernmost regions of the state of Tamil Nadu,taking advantage of economic changes under Britishrule. Subcaste (sub-jati) distinctions were minimizedor abandoned, and differentiation between Northernand Southern Nadars became dominant. Templemanalso argues that fierce, sometimes violent, resistanceof high-ranking castes to Nadar status claims was criti-cal to Northern Nadar solidarity. Nadar tactics inclaiming elevated rank included Sanskritization, in thiscase a successful emulation of upper-caste ideologyand practices in the 19th and early 20th centuries(marked early in this century in the census of Indiaadoption of "Nadar" in place of the pejorative label"Shanar"). With improved economic status, manyNadars rejected Sanskritic models and embraced the