This impressive study applies the best of anthropological fieldwork to an extended temporal and spatial scope. The study's object is nothing less than the landscape of associations in the border area between present-day Nigeria and Cameroon from the era of the slave trade until now. Ute Röschenthaler's primary sources are interviews, specifically oral histories and traditions such as ‘village histories’, complemented by quite extensive archival research in Nigeria, Cameroon, Britain, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, and the United States.

The associations, in the older literature often referred to as ‘secret societies’, have been an object of both anthropological and colonial interest since the beginning of the nineteenth century, anthropologists being more concerned with the functions and the material expressions of the associations while colonial governments were more interested in the practical knowledge of how to govern societies without centralized political structures. Röschenthaler's study adds at least two welcome aspects to these perspectives. First is the complementarity of male and female associations. Her thick description of the transregional network of ekpe is a fine example of historical anthropology. We read about the institution of the ‘woman chief’ and the post-menopause women in the inner circle of ekpe. The activities of the women (the most important ones being performed at night while naked) were a source of considerable power for the women and the community as a whole. In many localities, the inner circles of female and male associations consulted each other before making decisions. The relatively well-known ‘women's wars’ in the late 1920s in south-east Nigeria were organized through existing women's associations in the region, as Röschenthaler shows. However, historically Röschenthaler acknowledges a shift from complementary to more asymmetric relations between male and female associations – partly explained by the male bias of colonial policies.

The second important contribution of Röschenthaler's study is the active part individuals and communities took in acquiring associations, thus countering conventional models of diffusion. Röschenthaler shows how both material and immaterial property, a term she takes from current judicial discourse, is purchased by a community. Culture, in her terms, thus becomes purchasable. The more valuable and powerful the associations were deemed, the higher the price to be paid for them. Röschenthaler therefore argues for the incorporation of associations into the economic sphere, while earlier views might have romanticized them into a religious or merely aesthetic realm. Röschenthaler very convincingly connects the dissemination of the associations with the transatlantic (slave) trade and its complex repercussions in the hinterland. Here she shows that while the associations, with ekpe being the most important one, originated in the Atlantic trade ports and were directly spread through the trade networks, the process became polycentric during the dissemination process. Röschenthaler therefore highlights the multidimensional and ever unfinished ‘biography’ of any given association in its local presence. Röschenthaler argues that repressive colonial politics, especially the wars of 1898 and 1904, the consequent village amalgamations, and the suppression of economic activities in the area hindered further extension of ekpe and other associations. Christian missionaries and, more recently, independent and especially Pentecostal churches further diminished the associations’ importance, as did campaigns against female circumcision. Röschenthaler, however, also observes trends for a ‘retraditionalization’ in the late-twentieth and twenty-first century and thus a revival of associations such as ekpe– especially in ‘diasporic’ settings within Cameroon and overseas.

The study is extensive in scope and in detail, which is both a blessing and a curse. Take the case of the illustrations: the book contains 160 photographs, the majority being taken by the author between 1987 and 2001, some from historic books, and a few hard to come by ones from private archives. This outstanding collection of photographs could be a valuable source for scholars engaging in visual practices of selfhood or constructions of female beauty. But in the context of this book the impressive amount of ethnographic knowledge Röschenthaler displays might prevent the reader from seeing the wood for the trees. 130 interviews conducted in 81 villages served as Röschenthaler's main sources and form the bulk of her expertise and experience. Röschenthaler makes herself very much a part of the story. We follow her fieldwork encounters and her thoughts while she reads a description of a colonial officer, yet there are times when the temporality and positionality of the story seems lost. The book is certainly no skip-through-read, but requires serious engagement. The reader willing to do so will be rewarded with a deep understanding not only of a regional history but also with a view of the actual materialisation of the ever so often proposed entanglements between micro and macro levels.