This is a collection of a dozen anthropological essays that draw on ethnographic and other cultural or literary data to explore how and why we strive for authenticity. The essays interrogate the concept and the practices associated with authenticity, illuminating the role that markets and commodity fetishism play in creating the alienation that it promises to cure, the racial and exclusionary politics of authenticating, and the moral discourse of authenticity with regard to nature and branding. Different authors argue for the scientific usefulness of the concept as well as its ideological function. Many essays are fairly region-specific ( e.g. Ireland, America, Spain, France, Saudi Arabia, and Africa). Other essays raise more general questions about primitivism and art, for example. The contributors are European social-anthropologists. Annotation ©2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)