This is a superbly written and thought-provoking ethnographic study of what might be termed the ‘performative’ politics of marginality in contemporary urban Bolivia. It is based on anthropological research carried out in Villa Sebastián Pagador, a poor barrio in Cochabamba, the country's second city, and focuses on two local collective practices, namely the folkloric festival of San Miguel, on the one hand, and vigilante lynching on the other. Goldstein argues that both of these constitute ‘spectacular performances’ through which marginalised communities make themselves visible and lay claim to forms of citizenship and inclusion in Bolivia. While the performative aspects of both carnival and violence are well-established, it is rare to read about them linked in this way; the last study of note to do so is probably Daniel Touro Linger's excellent study of carnival and briga in the Brazilian city of São Luís, Dangerous Encounters (Stanford, 1992). A particularly original aspect of Goldstein's book, however, is that he refuses to simplify a complex reality, and provides us with a fascinating portrait of the tensions, contradictions and ambiguities that imbue both the festival of San Miguel and lynching in Villa Pagador, and furthermore traces their evolving logic over time, linking this to the broader changing political economy of Bolivia, and more specifically to the spread of neoliberalism from the early 1990s onwards.

The introduction and first chapter of the book introduce the topic in relation to broader notions of order and urban planning, rural-urban migration, marginality and citizenship, and methodology. Goldstein's discussion about the logic of urban planning in Latin America is one of the best short syntheses on the subject that this reviewer has ever read, and his reflexive discussion of his fieldwork is similarly up there with the best of this genre of ethnographic writing. He deftly weaves himself into the picture and confidently uses his own experiences as tropes through which to introduce basic facets of barrio life such as the prevalence of desconfianza and the complex politics of representation. Chapters two and three provide a historical and ethnographic portrait of Villa Pagador's urban development since its foundation in the early 1970s by rural-urban migrants from the Oruro highlands. The former chapter focuses principally on the perspective of the city authorities, and explores the contradictory processes of inclusion and exclusion that the barrio has undergone, tracing the evolution of state intervention from initial rejection and repression of the rural-urban migrants to increasing efforts to legalise land titles and provide basic services. Goldstein links this transition to the evolving nature of community organisation and internal barrio politics in the latter chapter, showing how the emergence of local patrons, and the increasingly efficient mobilisation of the community, led to the city authorities seeing it in a new light.

Goldstein then turns to some of the specific mechanisms underlying this evolving social relation. In Chapter four he looks at the festival of San Miguel, a local imitation of the more famous Oruro carnival, and interprets its political, economic and performative aspects in relation both to the production of local community identity and reputation. He describes the complex barrio political economy of cultural consumption, highlighting in particular how the festival serves as a vehicle for the constitution of local ‘big men’ while simultaneously creating a sense of common purpose and community unity. At the same time, however, Goldstein contends that the festival also constitutes a projection of a sense of belonging to the wider Bolivian nation that serves to call attention to the state's neglect of the local community inhabitants' rights as citizens. ‘By basing their own local fiesta on [a] national cultural event, barrio residents labour to produce and publicize a collective identity derived from their self-proclaimed mastery of national folklore, in order to enhance the legitimacy of their community and to foster integration with the Bolivian nation’ (p. 27). This is a highly original and counter-intuitive depiction of what might be labelled ‘citizenship through folklore’.

Goldstein shows how the festival is successful in projecting a positive image of Villa Pagador as a highly organised and ‘deserving’ neighbourhood which has led to enhanced state intervention, but also describes how the state has become much less present with the advent of neoliberalism, and is increasingly widely perceived as failing in its obligations to citizens. This is particularly the case in relation to the rising of insecurity in Villa Pagador, which has led to numerous instances of vigilante lynching, as inhabitants ‘make justice by [their] own hands’ (p. 3). Goldstein's description of the lynching phenomenon includes a rare consideration of the role that women play in such practices, but it is his analysis of lynching as a ‘spectacular performance’ aiming to attract the attention of the state that is most insightful, particularly when he perceptively highlights how most instances of lynching in Villa Pagador have not actually resulted in death, and suggests that this is because they must involve a ‘delay in executing the suspects’ to allow ‘the authorities and the press – the audience – time to arrive and witness the proceedings’ (p. 217). In other words, lynching – or the threat of lynching, to be exact – constitutes ‘a dramatic way to capture the attention of an inattentive audience’ (p. 25).

Goldstein expands on this insight with a nuanced discursive exploration of the ‘interpretative struggle’ surrounding lynching, arguing that a ‘spectacular performance on its own is not enough to get one's message across; controlling a spectacle's subsequent interpretation and evaluation by the audience is critical to enabling one's view of events to compete for recognition in public discourse’ (pp. 218–19). He shows how this is always imperfectly and contradictorily achieved, highlighting in particular the way that lynching in Villa Pagador has given the neighbourhood a bad reputation but also simultaneously elicited positive action by the state, insofar as an official participatory vigilance programme was set up, involving the creation of paid Neighbourhood Security Brigades. In this respect, Bolivia is clearly very different from Central America or Brazil, for example, where state responses to instances of lynching – and violence more generally – have more often than not been highly repressive. Indeed, when considered in this comparative light, ‘spectacular performance’ arguably emerges not just as a feature of the politics of the marginalised but also increasingly of states, with repressive actions – such as sending the army into Rio de Janeiro's Rocinha favela or the anti-gang Mano Dura campaigns in El Salvador – constituting clear examples of such dramatic political action. This however only makes Goldstein's volume all the more pertinent and likely to become a key reference point within the field of Latin American studies as one of the first coherent and systematic studies of the phenomenon.