Intoxicated Identities: Alcohol's Power in History and Culture, by Tim Mitchell (New York & London: Routledge, 2004), 211 pp., $22.95.Intoxicated Identities is an interesting and important book, but also an exasperating one. It is primarily a study of cultural meanings and locations of intoxication in Mexico, historically and now. But it also includes much material on history and organization of alcohol production in Mexico, and on role of alcohol and intoxication in domination and exploitation, at every level from colonial governance to intimate relationships.The main thread running through book is a focus on intoxication events and their meanings in a context. With current availability of estimates of alcohol's role in global burden of disease and injury, it can be seen that alcohol accounts for a greater proportion of burden in more developed parts of Latin America (including Mexico) than anywhere else in developing world (Rehm & Monteiro, in press). this suggests a need for concern, corollary is an obvious need to understand intoxication in Mexico. The survey data collected by Maria Elena Medina Mora and her colleagues at Institute of Psychiatry (referred to briefly by Mitchell) have long made clear that is not particularly frequent for non-elites in Mexico, but that occasions for males are very often occasions of intoxication.Despite inclusion of beloved cuates (drinking buddies) in acknowledgments, author provides little direct fieldwork data, instead relying on anthropological and other scholarly studies, on one hand, and cultural materials such as song lyrics, novels and films, on other. A third of way into book, Mitchell characterizes, justifies and apologizes for his analytical method:The need to keep this multiplicity [of outcomes of intoxication] in mind . . . has led me to adopt certain rhetorical devices in this book. I quote songs, skip from one end of Mexico to other, attempt witticisms, constantly cede podium to other voices, and occasionally digress in pseudo-barroom . . . style.. . . The reader's patience is much appreciated, (p. 62)The result is an uneven mixture. The book includes much straight analysis and argument, and scattered references to postmodern theorists (as to many others) are invariably ironic. But general structure is emergent rather than apparent, and some of arguments are unconvincing. example, against Stanley Brandes's assertion that growth of Alcoholics Anonymous in Mexico reflects its adaptation to popular Catholicism, Mitchell argues that, on other hand, Mexican religious traditions are also deeply implicated in, and often entirely complicit with, binge drinking (p. 31, emphasis in original). So far, so good. But so what? In my view, this does not end discussion, as Mitchell's next sentence does: If Mexicans drink because they are Catholic and refrain from because they are Catholic, where does that leave us?One of Mitchell's framings of intoxication is as a form of resistance and rebellion. For some groups is continuation of politics by other means, as a strategy of subversion (p. 6). His primarily historical material on this is interesting; besides everyday resistance of miners and others rejecting the time restrictions advocated by middle-class moralists and municipal officials (p. 105), Mitchell documents, from historical studies and novels, place of intoxication in active rebellion both in colonial times and in revolution. In this aspect, book is an important contribution to small literatures on intoxication as cultural resistance and in revolution and war.A second thread is of intoxication as a bending of time: A priority for Mexico's heavy drinkers, in Mitchell's formulation, is deliberate interference with stream of time, . …