The Special Period was declared in Cuba when the collapse of the Soviet Bloc plunged the country into economic crisis. Overnight the island lost 86 per cent of its trade, and many Cubans were forced to live a harsh daily existence in the midst of severe material shortages. As Cuba adapted to a newly globalised world, the revolutionary process and the value system it had promoted since 1959 faced new and unprecedented challenges. The introduction of reforms designed to alleviate the crisis, such as the legalisation of the US dollar and partial marketisation, led to the creation of a dual economy, rising social inequalities, an influx of foreigners and increasing commercialism. To the surprise of many, the revolution's socialist project survived and embarked on a process of redefinition. Within this process, culture was deemed to be the key battleground in the regime's continued resistance to neoliberal hegemony. Ariana Hernandez-Reguant's edited volume, about the culture and ideology of the Special Period, is a welcome addition to the already considerable literature on this difficult but fascinating moment in Cuban history.

The book gathers together a multidisciplinary group of scholars, including anthropologists, ethnographers, musicologists and literary, film and art critics, who address the dual impact of the Special Period reforms and the official turn to culture across a range of Cuban cultural fields. The well-researched essays, covering topics as diverse as literature, art, santería, cinema, rap and issues of identity and ethnicity, provide rich accounts of the key themes and contradictions of the Special Period and how they affected specific groups of cultural producers and expressive communities. Linking them together is the question of how the combination of weakened state institutions, economic crisis and new access to transnational flows of capital and ideas fostered the conditions for new modes of expression and the re-articulation of identities. Each individual essay offers a detailed and at times nuanced interpretation of the complex relationship between culture and ideology and, as such, will be of interest to any student or follower of Cuban culture.

The volume is divided thematically into three sections. The first concerns the new relations that writers, filmmakers and santeros developed mostly for pragmatic reasons with foreign commerce, and how these raised questions about content and cultural authenticity. For example, Esther Whitfield outlines how the near-total disintegration of the national publishing industry forced Cuban writers to seek new outlets for their writing in foreign markets. She notes how the external demand for stock representations of an exotic socialist state in el boom cubano unleashed a debate on the island about what was considered ‘true literature’ versus ‘literary tourism’ (p. 23). Yet she also demonstrates the ways in which writers themselves explored and critiqued these new, unequal commercial relationships with foreigners in their literature. Kevin Delgado analyses how foreigners' demands for authentic spiritual experiences led to an increase in religious tourism to Cuba, encouraging certain santeros to convert their spiritual capital into economic capital and to adapt their religious practice accordingly. This part also includes a survey by Cristina Venegas of the complex relationship between foreign capital and Cuban cinematic production during the 1990s, with co-productions often being the only option for the cash-starved domestic film industry.

The section entitled ‘Plural Nation’ deals with how the 1990s engendered challenges to the nature of cubanidad, or Cuban identity. Here Hernandez-Reguant introduces the interesting concept of ‘multicubanidad’ to describe how new and diverse claims to cubanidad loosened its historical ties to a notion of political community. She argues that the combination of a Cuban government seeking to foster a more inclusive definition of national culture, the adoption of discourses of multiculturalism and identity politics, and new levels of interaction between island and diaspora created a plural, deterritorialised version of Cuban culture. Other developments in cubanidad are outlined in Jacqueline Loss' analysis of the artistic production of Russian-Cubans, Laurie Frederik's essay on how opportunism and pragmatism challenged the uncontaminated version of campesino identity promoted by teatro comunitario, and Kenneth Routon's account of the interplay between institutional support and ritual authority in different santería factions.

The final section, ‘Transnational Publics’, concentrates on the flow of music, ideas and images in and out of Cuba. Of particular note is the article by Roberto Zurbano, a protagonist in the Cuban rap movement. He demonstrates the dynamic interchange between transnational discourse and localised marginality in Cuban rap, but also the continued importance of the national context and support for revolutionary ideals. He believes rap lyrics create a ‘new space for dialogue, both within, and outside of Cuban culture and society’ (p. 150), and he particularly highlights the issue of race. Another transnational public can be seen at work in Lisa Maya Knauer's chapter on audiovisual remittances. In this, she both describes and plays a role in decoding messages sent between Cubans and émigrés in the United States that are used to construct narratives about life and cultural practices allá (p. 172). Elsewhere, the art critic Tonel looks at the critical power of the juxtaposition of Cuban and transnational images in artworks displayed both in Cuba and abroad.

Overall, the book is an excellent account of how certain Cuban artists and cultural agents in the 1990s negotiated a path between different ‘regimes of value’. It is particularly to be applauded for the self-reflexivity of its non-Cuban authors, who are aware of their own role in shaping interpretations of what the editor describes as ‘an experience that they could never fully own’ (p. 13). Collectively, however, the volume neglects the continued importance of discourses of national sovereignty in Cuban culture of the period. Although many essays allude to the role of the Cuban government in promoting internal cultural debate, the importance of this is often sidelined in favour of a depiction of the Cuban state as monolithic and unchanging.

This is most apparent in the introduction by Hernandez-Reguant. She reveals her liberal assumptions about the nature of Cuban civil society when she asserts that many of the ‘emergent public spheres’ and possibilities for a cosmopolitan Cuban identity described in the book were shut down towards the end of the 1990s. This leaves the question open as to the nature of cultural developments after this period: is it a case of a resurgence of government propaganda propagating a ‘timeless eternal’, as the editor seems to suggest, or has a greater plurality of Cuban voices been winning the battle of ideas? Thus, in focusing only on particular groups, and in emphasising the transnational and local at the expense of the national, the volume has a tendency to exclude the bigger picture and the implications of how the Special Period was experienced by wider Cuban society.