Puyo Runa: Imagery and Power in Modern Amazonia is the culmination of nearly four decades of anthropological research by two of the most prolific ethnographers of Ecuador. The book provides both an in-depth ethnographic account of Quichua-speaking (Runa) people in and around the Canelos and Puyo areas, as well as a fascinating personal reflection on the authors' experiences with these Amerindian people in urban and rural contexts. It builds on the series of ethnographic texts published by the Whittens since the 1970s as well as their more recent work engaging contemporary political and economic transformations in the region. In combining both new and previously published material, Puyo Runa constitutes one of the richest and far-reaching anthropological texts on Amazonian Ecuador. It recognises the transformative historical processes in which Runa communities were established in and around Puyo, as well as those in which the Runa have (along with other indigenous peoples of Ecuador) claimed their own place as Ecuadorean citizens despite the prejudice and discrimination from many mestizo Ecuadoreans. In examining Runa experiences of inter-cultural relations, the authors' sustained experiences in indigenous communities allow them to relate modern political and economic processes to Runa symbolic practices, mythology, cosmology and cultural values more generally.

One of the central claims of the book is that Quichua-speaking (Runa) peoples of Amazonian Ecuador have for far too long been viewed as ‘acculturated’ or ‘inauthentic’ remnants of colonial history. This view is in part a result of their speaking an indigenous language generally associated with the Andes (Quichua) and centuries of Runa involvement in various Catholic churches. The Whittens argue that the Runa presence between more visible indigenous groups with more identifiable social boundaries, such as the Shuar and Huaorani, has led to Runa people being viewed as less ‘traditional’ than other indigenous groups. The book fundamentally challenges the assumed division between so-called ‘tame’ or ‘civilised’ Runa and their so-called ‘pristine’ or ‘savage’ Jivaroan neighbours by demonstrating the long history of connection between these groups in terms of marriage, descent, economic relations, shamanism, subsistence practices and contemporary political activism. They make a convincing case that the Runa and their neighbours can be better understood as part of an inter-connected regional system, rather than bounded, independent cultural groups.

The highly personalised, reflexive accounts of the Whittens span multiple decades and go a long way in demonstrating the historicity of specific locations, practices and relationships described in Puyo Runa. The authors place this reflexivity as a challenge to the nature/culture binaries of Levi-Straussian structuralism and base much of their analysis in terms of Geertz and Turner's interpretive and symbolic anthropology of the 1970s. The self-reflexive style of writing in the book is also importantly extended to Runa people themselves, whose historical narratives and pottery designs are shown to be self-conscious reflections on the temporal dimensions of experience in a rapidly changing world. This becomes particularly interesting in the context of shamanism and in Dorothea Whitten's chapter on the pottery tradition of Runa women, whose ‘creative powers are grounded in … deep knowledge of history, mythology, and natural and supernatural beings, and in … existential experiences’ (p. 108). Like the male shaman who acquires the power ‘to know’ by mediating various forms of alterity between the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’, master potters become ‘paradigm builders’ as they control processes of syncretism by mediating relations between Runa communities and the outside world. Photographs of polychrome pottery in the book are a testament to the role of master potters in cultural syncretism, as they combine images of mythical figures, the Catholic Church, and various elements of ‘modernity’.

Each chapter of Puyo Runa is led by in-depth ethnographic accounts ranging from shamanic hallucinations, ritual drinking and pottery-making to museum exhibitions, indigenous protests in the national capital and a Runa visit to the United States. The result of these diverse settings is a broad and convincing picture of the lived world of Runa people, who appear as active participants not only in local networks of kinship and ritual, but equally in inter-ethnic relations at regional, national and international levels. This becomes particularly clear in chapter eight, where the Whittens describe Runa and other indigenous peoples of Amazonian Ecuador joining Andean peoples in the famous march to the capital to demand their land rights in 1992. In this context, as in urban museum exhibitions of fine Runa pottery (chapter seven), we see indigenous people not as passive recipients of the colonial legacy and state power, but rather as people who bring their own unique cosmology and cultural values into their interactions with powerful outsiders.

The book is most successful in placing Runa culture within the modern political history of Ecuador, where Runa men and women are shown convincingly to be active makers of ‘history’. In examining Runa resistance to state regimes as an example of ‘alternative modernities’, the Whittens critique the age-old notion of acculturation and join the scores of Amazonianists working in North America who dismiss Levi-Strauss's famous characterisation of Amazonian peoples as ‘cold societies’. While it is generally accepted that there are no societies ‘without history’, what this critique appears to lack is an examination of how indigenous cosmology and mythology (including those that appear to ignore historical change) are themselves transformed by events over time.

Rather than attempting to put their ethnography to the service of a new or fashionable theory, the Whittens are particularly successful in allowing Runa practices and commentaries to lead the book's analysis. This is in part what should make Puyo Runa such an enjoyable and important read for specialist researchers working in Ecuador and undergraduate students in anthropology and Latin American Studies. The book should also be of interest to scholars working on Latin American social movements that cut across rural and urban contexts. Its main shortcoming is the general lack of engagement with the growing literature on Amazonian personhood and ontology, which is somewhat surprising given the book's nuanced attention to Runa cosmology and particularly notions of humanity and predation. Its ethnographic richness and historical contextualisation, however, more than make up for the authors' scant attention to debates among regional scholars.