Among anthropologists working in Ecuador, Norman Whitten Jr.’s 1981 edited volume Cultural Transformations and Ethnicity in Modern Ecuador (University of Illinois Press) is informally known as the “Green Bible.” That volume has stood as the primer for discussions of Ecuadorian social relations, and it is still not outdated in its essence. Whitten’s new volume has the same critical spirit, and it brings the discussions of cultural transformations squarely into the 21st century. Although Millennial Ecuador does not have the full range of themes of Cultural Transformations, it has rich descriptions and analyses of history, politics, religion, and social relations. Throughout, the volume dissects the politics of disenfranchisement and the struggles, both overt and subtle, to counter it.

There are no subheadings to organize the sequencing of the volume, yet when the chapters are read in order, certain themes the editor wishes to highlight emerge. For example, William Vickers’s contribution is a modern example of the impacts of the historical processes Kris Lane discusses. In a widely applicable and cautionary tale, Vickers documents how the Amazonian Secoya have come to be fully engaged in national and international political processes and demonstrates how this once “invisible minority” negotiates in a global world. Then, in a buoyantly written chapter destined to be cited prolifically, Lane deconstructs central themes of Ecuadorian history and disentangles colonial “realities” from colonial “mentalities.” With an enormous sweep of history, Lane documents Ecuador’s lamentable inability to move away from the politics of marginalization. Read together, these two chapters clearly reflect Whitten’s concern for positioning structural and contrastructural powers, the modern and the millennial.

The contributors of the next three chapters explore the complicated connections between religion, ideology, domination, and contestation. In examples from the highlands (Rachel Corr), Amazonia (Michael Uzendoski) and the coast (Diego Quiroga), the authors consider the meanings of religious symbols and practices and discuss the social relations that emerge from, and intersect with, belief. Corr and Quiroga show that Catholicism is only partially and contextually incorporated into local belief systems, creating a space for opposition. Uzendoski explores why evangelical Protestantism (and not Catholicism) is gaining ground among the Quichua of Napo (p. 129).

Whitten’s idea that there are transformative “millennial forces” (p. 31) is most clearly elucidated in his contribution coauthored with Dorothea Whitten and Alfonso Chango and that of Luis MacasLinda Belote, and Jim Belote, which document the struggles and symbolic creativity of Ecuador’s indigenous rights movements. These chapters represent true collaborations between anthropologists and political activists. Whitteng et al. chronicle the riveting story of the 1992 “March for Land and Life,” when thousands of indigenous people gathered in Quito, whereas Macas et al. describe the dynamics of indigenous movements through the experiences of one of Ecuador’s most prominent leaders, Macas himself. Experience matters in ethnography, too; these authors make it look easy.

The authors of the last four substantive chapters take urban orientations and explore identity politics. Dorothea Whitten provides a review of the political meanings of indigenous art, and Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld probes the lives of Tiguan artists. Resurrecting themes of the classic studies of squatter settlements, Colloredo-Mansfeld rejects the notion that “indigenous” means “rural,” arguing that residence in Quito provides a differential space for patterning ethnicity. In unusually revealing ethnography, Jean Rahier documents the impacts of racist and sexist stereotypes on the lives of Afro-Ecuadorian women in Quito. Racism and sexuality are further probed by Mary Weismantel, who deconstructs two female icons of Ecuadorian folklore. In her richly textured discussion Weismantel brilliantly reveals the persuasive power and violence of Ecuadorian social categories.

Individual chapters are all ethnographically and theoretically interesting, yet the volume disappoints just a little when taken as a whole. Whereas some themes (religion, indigenous political activism) are reworked extensively, other vibrant areas of research in the anthropology of Ecuador (and of great importance to poor, if not indigenous, Ecuadorians) are essentially ignored. The net could have been cast a good deal more broadly. Moreover, there is a disjuncture between Whitten’s goal that the issues discussed here have significance beyond the region and the narrow ethnographic focus of many of the chapters. Detailed descriptions of the transformations brought about by transnational migration, multinational business and marketing, neoliberalism and dollarization and the impacts on health of these and other factors, including infectious diseases, contamination, poverty, and even junk food, would have made more obvious the idea that Ecuador stands as a “microcosm of modern and millennial globality” (p. 34). That said, I still think that the volume speaks well for the state of the anthropology of Ecuador. Represented here are promising new ethnographers, scholars, and activists who are profoundly committed to Ecuador as well as anthropologists who have worked in the region for decades and whose perceptions are keenly honed through experience.