Not everything I read is listed here, and it is not intended to be a collection of reviews. Nugget Coombs' Legacy in Indigenous Affairs. I read this book for a review I had to write for the Journal Pacific Affairs . I was not disappointed, but I preferred White Flour. Obliged to be difficult is an interesting and well documented book for those interested to know more about the historical and political background of Australian Indigenous organisation, councils, and intelligentsia, more about policies of assimilation and self-determination, and about Dr. H.C. Coombs' political thinking and activities.
Contributions are varied, as well as in what concerns regional interests as thematic attention.
Nuttal discusses kinship among Inuit people in Greenland and shows how kinship is a means to express relatedness that does not have to be genealogical. On the other hand, kinship terminology can be applied to somebody in order to solidify a relationship that is reproducing a behaviour associated to a kinship term used. This chapter, with the paper by White on kinship reciprocity and small scale production in Turkey, were the contributions I preferred. Mader and Gippelhauser discuss the importance of kinship in politics and shamanism among Shuar and Ashuar people in lowland South-America. They conclude kinship has to be taken into account, but has not much importance.