Book Review Living Kinship, Fearing Spirits: Sociality among the Khmu of Northern Laos

Unlike other ethnographies, Rosalie Stolz’s Living Kinship, Fearing Spirits does not beat around the bush before introducing her readers to her project. She keeps her piece in the acknowledgment itself and informs beforehand of the parts of this book being drawn on previously published materials. She has written the whole book as a monograph presenting a detailed analysis of every ritual and custom that has taken place during her stay. Her book is situated against the backdrop of a village named Pliya, a small village in northern Laos wherein she resides with the Khmu tribe. She casts light upon their lifestyle, rituals, traditions, beliefs, and kinship. The word kinship is the keyword to the whole book, and Stolz has done justice to the word in her work. She begins the introduction by describing a scene in the midst of the harvest season, giving her readers a glimpse of another important word in her work: “spirits.” Stolz attempts to answer the following questions through this book: "Does consanguinity play a role here? Are totemic groups of relevance? What is entailed in the notion of family?" (p. 28).