Given that sustainable development is nowadays the explicit goal of many international and national state and non-state agencies, anthropological analyses of projects and processes that incarnate this hegemonic mandate are always welcomed – even more so when they address the role of NGOs as mediators between the local and the global.

Amidst such a backdrop, the main value of Laurie Occhipinti's book is that it is focused on religious idioms of development, that is, on visions and voices by which ‘religious organizations bring their ideological legitimacy to bear on questions of equity and development (pg. xix).’ The point of departure is that the ideological frameworks on which religious development organisations rely to move development projects forward are different in important and significant ways from those of mainstream, nonreligious NGOs. Religious idioms of development – Occhipinti claims – construct a discourse that infuses their goals with higher purposes than the merely material.

To prove the case, the author tackles initiatives of two very different religious NGOs – OCLADE and Fundapaz – working respectively among two very different indigenous peoples (Kolla cultivators-herders and Wichí hunter-gatherers) in two very different regions (Iruya and Los Blancos) of the Argentine province of Salta. To meet her goals and develop her research problem, Occhipinti offers in the first chapter a detailed description of Iruya's setting and OCLADE's history and organisation, providing a similar context for Los Blancos and Fundapaz in the second chapter. On this basis she introduces a critical perspective on development discourse in chapter three, to go on to examine the emergence of religious idioms of development in chapter four. In the last two chapters, the author focuses on the most consistent and enduring indigenous claims in Argentina. Therefore, while chapter five explores local perceptions of indigenous lands and natural resources, chapter six analyses the evolution of land claims in each case study.

As Occhipinti explains, both Fundapaz and OCLADE have institutional and philosophical ties to the branch of the Catholic church committed once to liberation theology. The politicisation of religious faith has led them both to stress ideas of ‘social justice’. However, the former has experienced an overt process of secularisation which is unknown to the latter – a process resulting in Fundapaz's focus on the mission of developing productive economies among indigenous and non-indigenous counterparts of the NGOs' projects. Moreover, while OCLADE's work in Iruya develops amidst a predominantly, but no longer homogeneous, Catholic environment, Fundapaz needs to cope with a more complex backdrop. Even if non-indigenous or criollo neighbors of Los Blancos are Catholic, the missionisation of the Wichí people of the area has been led by the Anglican Church.

In any event, Occhipinti's historieisation of both NGOs aims at identifying each organisation's particular views on development. In this regard, the author argues that OCLADE's trajectory results in its ambivalence vis-à-vis subsistence production, which is seen as nobler and more ethnically appropriate than production for a market or wage labour. Such a perspective results in ‘OCLADE's failure to consider transformative strategies of local development’ (p. 107). By contrast, Fundapaz's gradual professionalisation and adaptation to local conditions has prompted its shift ‘from an explicitly religious idiom of development to one which is more technically oriented’ (p. 109), and concerned with economic efficiency and political empowerment.

As for each NGO advocating local land claims, Occhipinti points out OCLADE's role in the politicisation of Iruya's indigenous identities and ties to the land, and relates this trend to the efforts toward the indigenisation of religion that pervades the agenda of the liberationist church. Regarding Fundapaz's critical role in fomenting the process of land reclamation, Occhipinti argues that ‘the increasing tension between criollos and Wichí led Fundapaz to begin to work with the criollo communities around Los Blancos’, and that ‘creating a consensus between the two populations about property boundaries became one of the NGOs’ central projects' (p. 15).

In terms of convergences, however, both NGOs have advocated land titles, stressing the indigenous peoples' particular relation with their land – land acting as the means for the communities to live in dignity. Occhipinti contends that these views of indigenous communal life as an alternative model ‘emerge from the religious background of both NGOs in question’ (p. 191). In this regard, the betterment of the communities' material conditions is less an issue of growth or economic improvement than of social justice and, as such, an inherent goal of the NGOs' holistic and encompassing mission of indigenous empowerment.

Yet, this mission has been accompanied in the case of OCLADE by idealising the people of Iruya – as if they lived collectively and communally as the early Christians did. Based upon subsistence production and local self-sufficiency, their very poverty has somehow been deemed ‘noble’ (p. 191) in itself. Stressing that the Wichís live in harmony with their natural environment – much more so than the non-indigenous society – Fundapaz has rather stressed that the deterioration of the environment endangers the Wichí's very existence. Nevertheless and despite these conceptions, the author's main contention is that neither OCLADE nor Fundapaz can escape the ‘implicit tension that underlies the work of development: mediating between sustaining an indigenous culture, often idealized and conceived of in the timeless past, and creating projects that promote material and social change’ (p. 193).