Andrew Canessa has written a longed-for book that consolidates his position as one of the most engaging contemporary scholars of Andean anthropology. Drawing on more than 20 years of ethnographic engagement with the people of the village he chooses to call Wila Kjarka in the Bolivian Andes, Canessa writes insightfully about what it means to be ‘indian’, ‘indigenous’, and ‘jaqi’ (proper people) in the changing (and in some respects not so changing) socio-political context of contemporary Bolivia; how such identities and concepts are not only raced and classed but also gendered and sexed; how they are enmeshed in state politics; how they stem from notions of historical injustices; and, most importantly, how different features of indigeneity are practised and embodied, negotiated and contested in the ‘small spaces’ of everyday rural life.

This is in most respects a superb book, but for those of us who have had the pleasure of following Canessa's inspiring work over the last 15 years or so, there are not that many entirely new insights to be gained. We are rather familiar with the main bulk of the theoretical arguments, with quite a lot of the ethnographic data and with the overall approach of contrasting local views on indigeneity with ‘state indigeneity’ as promoted by the Morales administration; in short, we know where Canessa is headed. However, when the anthropological craftsmanship is practised so eloquently, so insightfully, so respectfully and yet so critically, there is no need for surprises. Certainly, for students and scholars who do not know Canessa's work or for those who are just recently entering into the world of Andean ethnography, this book is an ethnographic and anthropological goldmine.

The strength of the book stems from Canessa's explicit intention not to offer a ‘view of village life under a microscope’ but instead to give us ‘a view through a telescope of what the world looks like from the perspectives of people in a small village’ (p. 11). The extent to which he actually manages to do so throughout the entire book is open to discussion. Nonetheless, this aim in itself sets the basis for the captivating intimacy of the book and points to the importance of thorough ethnography for understanding how identities are formed, experienced and negotiated and how history, power and national politics are present in people's everyday lives. And Canessa's ethnography is as thorough as it gets.

The book explores the semantics, politics and phenomenologies of indigeneity without delivering any simple truths. Anyone hoping for an unambiguous definition of indigeneity in contemporary Bolivia will be left disappointed. As soon as Canessa gets close to what appears to be the defining element (food, language, dress, religious practices, notions of historical injustices, etc.), he withdraws and approaches other elements. This might be frustrating for the reader, but it is the only correct thing to do in a process where context is everything; where an individual might be considered indio in one specific setting, only to be considered mestizo in another; where money and urban life whitens; and where identities are not simply given but are grown in relations, practices and everyday life in a national socio-political context of enormous inequalities that are legitimised, reproduced and naturalised by institutions such as the school and the army. Consequently, Canessa unsettles essentialist and primordialist notions of indigeneity. However, he also makes it very clear that identity formation processes are not to be likened to a postmodern smorgasbord from which autonomous individuals can pick and choose freely. Racialised social structures limit choices and form subjectivities. Identity formation is therefore a profoundly social and political process informed, not least, by a colonial history of exploitation and domination.

As long as Canessa dwells with his keen analytical eye and his compassionate attention in Wila Kjarka and its surroundings, he has a masterful command of his material and the book is a delight to read, not least the chapters on history, religion, life cycles and ritual practice. However, when he deals with indigenous identity politics, and the last eight years of profound national political change, his arguments are more commonplace, his claims somewhat more sweeping and his insights in a sense shallower. For instance, Canessa's will to understand seems less passionate when his gaze is directed towards the activists he calls ‘Aymara nationalists’. He expresses a certain amount of surprise over the fact that the notion of indigeneity held by radical Aymara leader Felipe Quispe – who, apropos, holds a university degree in history – should owe so much to Western nationalist concepts such as ‘nation’, ‘state’ and ‘national culture’. This, of course, is not how indigeneity is conceptualised or experienced in Wila Kjarka, but does this fact make Quispe's discourse any less legitimate, any less meaningful? Canessa shows brilliantly and enthusiastically that creativity – the appropriation, incorporation and vernacularisation of Christian elements – is what characterises Andean spiritual practices and expressions. If Canessa would have looked with the same scholarly enthusiasm at the incorporation and appropriation of notions of linear history, genealogical ancestry and nationhood into Aymara political discourse, I believe something really interesting would have come out – not in order to embrace these notions, but rather to explore how indigenous people often face a genuine dilemma in that in order to be listened to, they have to articulate their political aspirations within the hegemonic discourse of dominant society. If they, as Canessa relates, had a football field in Wila Kjarka even before football was written fútbol in Spanish – that is, quite some time ago – why should it surprise us that an indigenous political leader and activist uses a more or less conventional nationalist idiom to further his political claims? As Canessa himself argues, indigenous Andeans have been part of globalisation for almost 500 years.

This being said, it should be reiterated that Intimate Indigeneities is a major contribution to our understanding of indigeneity, race and sex in contemporary Bolivia and, I would argue, the most important and engaging anthropological work on Andean Bolivia written in recent years.