Inscriptions on the body, especially tattoo, scarification, and body paint, have been part of ethnographic literature since before the birth of anthropology as a discipline. Anthropology's origins as the study of the exotic Other can be seen in the early descriptions of the body art of non-Westem peoples. Anthropologists have generally focused on how the inscribed body serves as a marker of identity in terms of gender, age, and political status. More recently, scholars interested in this subject have looked also at issues of modemity, authenticity, and representation. The recent focus on the inscribed body responds to postmodem theory, the importance of body art in contemporary Westem culture, reflections on the meaning of representations of the exotic, and an interest in the visible surface of the body as the interface between the individual and society. This article reviews recent literature in anthropology and related disciplines pertaining to the cultural construction of the inscribed body. OVERVIEW: WRITING ON THE SKIN As possibly the first, and certainly the most obvious, canvas upon which human differences can be written and read, skin has been a topic of continuous interest in anthropology and related disciplines from the earliest descriptions of exotic people to postmodem theorizing about the body in contemporary society. Skin, as a visible way of defining individual identity and cultural difference, is not only a highly elaborated preoccupation in many cultures; it is also the subject of wideranging and evolving scholarly discourse in the humanities eind social sciences. Although my focus is mainly on the anthropological literature, it is impossible to ignore work in other fields. Today, archaeologists and historians are rewriting the history of the body using evidence from newly discovered ancient bodies, artworks, and texts. Discussions of contemporary "body work" (Benson 2000, p. 236) merge the perspectives of anthropology, sociology, psychology, cultural studies, philosophy, and gender studies, each discipline mapping onto the body its shifting theoretical preoccupations. Much recent theorizing on the body is devoted to the idea of inscription. Derrida's focus on writing (1976, 1978), and Foucault's on the body as a text upon which social reality is inscribed (Csordas 1994, p.

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Dr Schildkrout probes questions of ethnicity, religion, cultural change and the African national identity in this study of the immigrant community of Kumasi, Ghana's second largest city. She compares first- and second-generation immigrants - those born in their rural homelands, and those born in Ghana - in terms of their orientation to politics, to kinship, and to community participation. The author explores the meaning of ethnic identity for rural- and urban-born immigrants, and establishes certain generalizations about ethnicity based on these comparisons. The book discusses the issues of migration, particularly interregional migration; the position of the 'stranger'; questions of cultural change in modern Africa; the 'generational gap' in the African context; the questions of citizenship and national identity in Africa today, and the emergence of new identities, regional, national and religious. This book has importance not only as a local case study that gives a full description of West African urban life, but also as a theoretical reconsideration of ethnicity that has application outside the African context.