Ignition Stories: Indigenous Fire Ecology in the Indo-Australian Monsoon Zone

Abstract

Ignition Stories: Indigenous Fire Ecology in Indo-Australian Monsoon Zone Cynthia Fowler Carolina Academic Press Ritual Studies Monograph Series, Durham, NC, 2013 302 pp. $38.00 paperback Reviewed by Michael R. CoughlanThe use and control of fire is one of defining char- acteristics of being human. Yet, fire remains remark- ably understudied from a social science perspective. As a book-length ethnographic monograph, Cynthia Fowler's Ignition Stories is first of its kind to focus almost entirely on subject of fire and its use by a specific people. Ignition Stories sets out to enlighten us on how fire is intricately tied to primordial concerns of identity, kinship, marriage, gender, exchange, religion, and politics, while at same time contributing to scientific understandings of fire and environmental change (p. 8). Although this may seem like a logical and straightforward path narrative to take, addressing these dual concerns is an ambitious undertaking. It requires narrative to simultaneously focus on cultural importance of fire to a people (the ethnography of fire) and importance of people to fire (the fire ecology). Ignition Stories has trouble delivering on its promise to overlay these foci.Through a compassionate and humanistic narrative, Ignition Stories describes how fire and fire practice are imbricated in social and psychological fabric of people of Sumba, Eastern Indonesia. Fowler draws heavily on anthropological writing styles of Clifford Geertz and Tim Ingold to create a work she herself calls a textual analysis of fire stories and nonfic- tion (p. 8). The author clearly excels at creative and interpretive ethnographic writing. The ethnographic vignettes are well crafted and interesting. The use of fire metaphors in chapter titles and in narrative more generally, are on par with those of Stephen Pyne (1982), though some readers may tire of this rhetorical device.Fowler also represents Ignition Stories as a work of envi- ronmental anthropology, with an objective of illuminat- ing too often ignored perspective. The narrative clearly embraces environmental anthropology's liberal application of ecological (in both term and con- cept) and its claims to policy relevance. Throughout narrative, promise of a policy-relevant indigenous fire is hinted at and outlined as a major contri- bution of book to fire studies. However, analyses lack rigor and resulting portrait of indigenous fire remains vague. This is notably problematic with Fowler's description of Kodi's fire regimes (p. 131 -134) which she outlines for purpose of describing a key mechanism of region's disturbance ecology (p.131). Fowler defines fire regime concept as the frequency, intensity, severity, and/or seasonality of fire together with fuel consumption, fire spread, and size and distribution of burned patches (p.131), yet fails to provide more than a general qualitative summary of monsoon-driven fire seasonality her field site. The reader is left to wonder what percent of a village landscape burns in a given year or season. What are actual sizes and distributions of dif- ferent types of fires she documented? How much land does a single household burn and how frequently do they burn it? If ENSO climate events are significant fire regime, how exactly do Kodi work within and capitalize upon climatic patterns that produce Island's fire-adapted landscapes (p. 144)? These are temporal and spatial parameters that ethnographers can contribute to inform evidence-based fire policy.As an introductory chapter, Chapter 1 reflects holistic viewpoint imparted throughout book. In addition to some basic background information, chapter touches on a wide breadth of theoretical topics including issues of scale, cosmology, kinship, tenets of interpretive anthropology, and emergent properties in systems. …