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disqualify it from considerationin a fashion that is more offhand than lawyerly. McIntosh returns to this midpoint between reflex and intention when she describes 'linguistic atonement', a post-colonial regret among settlers' grandchildren. They don't quite get the apology right: they learn KiSwahili in good faith, seeking to belong as equals in Kenya, but then they insult its native speakers by describing it as a pre-modern, romantic tongue. As a skilled linguistic anthropologist, McIntosh listens carefully and captures whites' code-switching as it happens. Regarding the way in which she wrote Unsettled, I am ceaselessly impressed by the book's means of 'studying up'. Wealthy, educated informants write back, and a thinskinned critic-insider can undercut the success of any publication. On the other side, an ethnography that appeals to elites too much can undercut one's credibility within the larger society. McIntosh threaded this needle, and she did it in a most daring fashion. Early in Unsettled, she describes whites as becoming aware of a 'double consciousness'. Although she admits to a seeming absurdity in applying W.E.B. DuBois's interpretation of African Americans, McIntosh's admirably nuanced ethnography shows Kenyan whites negotiating their identity, belonging, and internal exile in a way analogous to any stigmatised social group. Ultimately, Kenyan whites face a conundrum: as McIntosh relates, they have surpassed or suppressed their own past bigotry in order to belong in a Kenya where some Kenyans practice 'tribalist' bigotry with increasing fervour. Perhaps, Euro-Kenyans' striving for unity sets them apart fromrather than belonging amongfellow citizens. Should whites, then, seek to be a tribe among other Kenyan tribes? McIntosh raises this question, one that no outside anthropologist can answer. Unsettled should help white Kenyans and those who care about them to consider this and other post-colonial options as thoughtfully as possible.

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