SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL

VOLUME 38 • NUMBER 1 • MARCH 1984 605 THIRD AVENUE. NEW YORK, N.Y. 10158

Pendleton Herring Feted on His 80th Birthday

PENDLETON HERRING, PRESIDENT OF THE COUNCIL

from June 1948 through December 1968, was the guest of honor at a privately-organized dinner at the Century Club in New York on October 21,1983, held in honor of his 80th birthday. Joseph LaPalombara, professor of political science at Yale, was the chair­man of the organizing committee, and Austin Ran­ney, a political scientist at the American -Enterprise Institute, presided as master of ceremonies. The tone of the evening was set early, when Gabriel A. Al­mond, emeritus professor of political science at Stan­ford, announced that this was "the dinner of and at the Century."

Prior to joining the Council as president in 1948, . Mr. Herring had been an executive associate at the

Carnegie Corporation of New York and had served as director of the United Nations Atomic Energy Com­mission Group. He had also been a director of the Council since 1946, and a member of its Committee on Problems and Policy (P&P) since 1942. In fact, he contributed an article to the first issue of Items (March 1947), "The Social Sciences in Modern Society." His first year as president of the Council was the last year that Charles E. Merriam-who had been foremost among the founders of the Council in 1923-served on the Council's board. In 1979, he received the Charles E. Merriam Award of the American Political Science Association. The 60-year history of the Coun­cil was thus commemorated at this dinner held in Mr. Herring's honor.

* The author, a sociologist, is the executive associate of the Council.

President of the Council for 20 years, he is fondly remembered by his colleagues

by David L. Sills*

Mr. Herring being toasted during "the dinner of and at the Century"

For contents of this issue, see the box on page 2.

CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE Pendleton Herring Feted on His 80th Birthday­David L. Sills

3 Modern Chinese Short Stories-John Beminghausen

9 Activities of the joint Area Committees -Review of African studies (page 9) -State and society in Africa (page 9) -Syndicalism in contemporary Latin America

(page 10) -Law and japanese society (page II) -Health and illness in japan (page 11) -Family, law, and social change in the Middle East

(page 12) -Transition in small. peripheral economies (page 13) -Social inequality and gender hierarchy in Latin

America (page 14) 16 Other Current Activities at the Council

-The political economy of national statistics (page 16) -Workshop on the Survey of Income and Program

Participation (SIPP) (page 16) -Conference of feIlows in employment and training

(page 17) -International technology transfer (page 17) -The development of extraordinary moral responsi-

bility (page 18) -The comparative and cross-disciplinary study of edu­

cation (page 20) -Discontinuation of dissertation feIlowships in em­

ployment and training (page 24) 21 Newly-issued Council Publications

Most of the celebrants had been members of four outstanding Council committees that Mr. Herring helped organize. He raised funds for their programs and attended their meetings.

The first Committee on Political Behavior (1945-47) was chaired by Mr. Herring; the second, reconstituted committee (1949-64), was chaired ini­tially by V. O. Key, Jr. of Yale and then Harvard. From 1953 through 1964, it was chaired by David B. Truman of Columbia. Its successor committee, the Committee on Governmental and Legal Processes (1964-72), was chaired throughout its existence by Mr. Ranney, then of the University of Wisconsin. The Committee on Comparative Politics (1954-72) was chaired by Mr. Almond, then at Princeton, from 1954 through 1962; and by Lucian W. Pye, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from 1963 through 1972.1 Bryce Wood, an executive associate at the Council

1 For one review by a participant, see Austin Ranney, "The Committee on Political Behavior, 1949-64, and the Committee on Governmental and Legal Processes, 1964-72." Items, 28:(3), 37-41, September 1974. For another, see Pendleton Herring, "Introduction by the President," Social Science Research Council, Annual Report 1963-1964, devoted to the Committee on Political Behavior. The activities of the Committee on Comparative Poli­tiCs were frequently described in Annual Reports and in Items during the years 1954-72.

2

from 1950 through 1973, served as staff to these committees during most of their existence.

All three committees were successful in mobilizing and encouraging what have been called "invisible colleges" within the social sciences; at producing im­portant publications; and at encouraging the behav­ioral study of politics. Together, the three committees sponsored 26 books. Among these are The Politics of the Developing Areas (1960), edited by Gabriel A. Almond and James S. Coleman; Studying Politics Abroad (1964), edited by Robert E. Ward et al.; Politi­cal Culture and Political Development (1965), edited by Lucian W. Pye and Sidney Verba; Political Parties and Political Development (1966), edited by Joseph La­Palombara and Myron Weiner; and Political Science and Public Policy (1968), edited by Austin Ranney.

"Poets," Shelley declared, are "the unacknowledged legislators of the world." He wrote this in an essay in 1821 in order to oppose the then current view that the advance of civilization would inevitably render poetry obsolete. These views of the political and cul­tural importance of poetry were of course shared by the political scientists at this dinner; on this particular occasion, they used poetry not to legislate, but" to express deep feelings: to recall the past and to cele­brate the present. Mr. LaPalombara, using a some­times admired poetic style called Christmas-party dog­gerel, read a poem that concluded with the stanza:

And so I toast this paragon; This scholar and gourmet. We want his charm to march on Forever and a day.

Mr. Herring, to whom the birthday dinner had been a surprise, replied with a couplet that he had . recendy written for his grandson'S 19th birthday:

As I survey the passing scene I have no wish to be again 19.

One of the two sonnets that Mr. Almond had written especially for the occasion encapsulated much of the spirit of the evening:

As I reflected lost in Wintry gloom, Aching in limb, suffused with old man's rheum, Long in the tooth, and hairy in the ear, Hard of hearing and with sight unclear, With quavering voice, and hesitant of gait, Back bowed low, and lacking hair on pate, Full of foreboding and existential anguish, No longer able to consume a sandwich, Then did I think on Pen and all ashine, RecaDing Skytop and 230 Park, Fine talk, bowls, and vintage wine, And most wise counsel that illumed the dark, My youth returned, my limbs they did unbend At thought of dining here with this great friend.

VOLUME 38, NUMBER 1

During the weeks following the dinner, Mr. Her­ring, "in response to the celebration of my 80th birth­day," composed and distributed to his friends a com­plicated poem called a sestina. 2 The envoi captures the sentiments shared on this occasion:

We come together to recall this past; Old days are gone, but memories linger on, And freshest still-the happy moments shared!

At the conclusion of the poetry reading and other tributes and recollections, Mr. Pye presented Mr. Herring with a Korean chest, a gift from those pres­ent and from some 15 former colleagues who could not attend.

The friends and former colleagues of Mr. Herring who were present at the dinner were Gabriel A. Al­mond, Stanford University; R. Taylor Cole, Duke University; David J. Danelski, Stanford U niver­sity; Sebastian de Grazia, Rutgers University; Herbert H. Hyman, Wesleyan University; Samuel P. Hunt-

2 A sestina is a medieval Italian verse form that consists of six stanzas of six lines each of blank verse, followed by a three-line envoi. The key words in a sestina are repeated according to a precise formula. Dante wrote a number of sestinas, of which the most famous is that beginning Ai poco giorno ed ai gran cerchio d'ombra.

ington, Harvard University; Eleanor C. Isbell, Co­lumbia, Connecticut; Joseph LaPalombara, Yale Uni­versity; Rowland L. Mitchell, Jr., Scarsdale, New York; Lucian W. Pye, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Austin Ranney, American Enterprise Institute; Henry W. Riecken, University of Pennsyl­vania; David L. Sills, Social Science Research Council; David B. Truman, Hillsdale, New York; Robert E. Ward, Stanford University; Myron Weiner, Massa­chusetts Institute of Technology; and Aristede R. Zolberg, New School for Social Research. Those un­able to attend but who sent greetings were William M. Beaney, University of Denver; James S. Coleman, University of California, Los Angeles; Alfred de Grazia, Trenton, New Jersey; Robert A. Dahl, Yale University; Richard F. Fenno, Jr., University of Rochester; Alexander Heard, Vanderbilt University; Anthony King, University of Essex; Gardner Lindzey, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sci­ences; Roy C. Macridis, Brandeis University; Walter Murphy, Princeton University; Warren Miller, Ari­zona State University; Kenneth Prewitt, Social Sci­ence Research Council; Victor G. Rosenblum, Northwestern University; M. Brewster Smith, Univer­sity of California, Santa Cruz; and Sidney Verba, Harvard University. D

Modern Chinese Short Stories

This is a report on a workshop whose purpose was to examine and demonstrate how new critical methodologies may be applied to the analysis of modern Chinese short stories. It sought to bring the study of 20th century Chinese literature into closer integration with literary studies in the West. The workshop was held at the East-West Center in Honolulu from December 12-19, 1982.

The format of the workshop consisted primarily of discus­sions of papers that the participants had prepared on 12

* The author, an associate professor of Chinese language and literature, Middlebury College, was one of the workshop organi­zers.

MARCH 1984

A report on an international workshop on the literary analysis of Chinese literature

by John Berninghausen*

modern Chinese short stories. The earliest of these stories was published in 1915, the latest in 1973. In addition, Seymour Chatman gave a talk on several conventions used in begin­ning a film narrative, illustrated by excerpts from films; Lubomir Dolezel outlined some of his recent investigations and discoveries in the area of fictional modalities; William Tay provided an overview of recent developments in the study of literary theory, comparative literature, and literary criticism in Hong Kong and Taiwan; and Vue Daiyun spoke about the study of modern Chinese literature and literary theory in China during the past three decades.

The workshop was sponsored by the Joint Committee on Chinese Studies of the American Council of Learned

3

Societies and the Social Science Research Council. Funds were provided by grants from the Ford Foundation, the National Endowmentfor the Humanities, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In addition to the author, the orga­nizers were Cyril Birch, University of California, Berkeley; Milena Dolezelova-Velingerova, University of Toronto; and Theodore Huters, University of Minnesota. Sophie Sa served as staff.

WITH A FEW NOTEWORTHY EXCEPTIONS, the field of modern Chinese literature studies has always been a relatively neglected area of both modern China studies, with its preponderance of social scientists, and Sinology, with its preponderance of humanists interested in China before this century-many of them interested in the China of 500, 1,000, or even 2,000 years ago.

For those very few scholars in the West or any­where outside of China who chose to specialize in modern Chinese literature, as well as for the many more numerous Chinese scholars and critics one would expect to find working with these materials, the dominant approach has long been one that em­phasized the sociological, historical, and political themes and implications of literary texts, including those that are unmistakably fictional works. In China, the tendency has been to emphasize the analysis of literary works in terms of how closely they "adhere to and thus confirm" or "deviate from and thus under­mine" a portrayal or "reflection" of social reality as it is-or in some cases as it is "supposed to be" according to some ideology or moral vision. For scholars outside China in the past three decades, the dominant concern-one closely related in its focus upon Chinese politics and social history, but nonetheless distinct from the typical Chinese approach-has been mainly an attempt to use literary works for the pur­pose of gaining more reliable and/or more richly var­iegated information and insights into the complexities of Chinese "reality." Until relatively recent times, China was, after all, a society apart and one to which direct access for outsiders was quite curtailed.

In such a situation-aggravated by the political spasms and distortions of the Cold War as well as by the high drama of China's own internal politics and the "roller coaster" effect of revolutionary ups and downs-it is not too surprising that there developed an "agenda" of questions to be asked (from a variety of attitudes and motives to be sure) about China which were thought to transcend the arbitrary boundaries of academic specialization and discipli­nary training. This agenda of basic problems and

4

issues had an impact upon the study of modern Chinese literature.

The traditional literature-and-society agenda

The traditional agenda focused almost exclusively on the relationships among 20th century Chinese lit­erature and history, social change, and revolutionary politics. Most of the scholars interested in modern Chinese literature, and even many of the small number who specialized in studying it, were unaware that scholars of Western literature and comparative literature follow an agenda of questions and prob­lematics quite different from this highly sociological or historical approach.

There are, of course, more than a few scholars of Western literature who also use a sociological or his­torical approach. But even when the object of the research is a body of writing characterized by obvi­ously ideological content-even revolutionary didac­ticism, militant nationalism, feminism, ethnicity, what have you-there is usually a significant representa­tion of scholars who deal with such literary artifacts from a formal approach which at least attempts to take fictionality, form, style, in short, the literariness of those works, into account. In the case of modern Chinese literature studies, however, such scholars are generally a small minority at any academic meeting or panel treating 20th century Chinese literature. The truly remarkable fact is that many if not most of the scholars studying modern Chinese literature are not comfortable with any approach that posits a qualita­tive difference between a newspaper story or editorial and a piece of fiction that seems to "report on" the same issue. It is almost as if students of American literature did not distinguish between Moby Dick and the logs kept on whaling ships.

Along with this indifference to literary quality there is often the justification that this is, after all, very much the way that scholars and critics in China write about their own literature. This particular ration­alization seems to go hand in hand with a great willingness to "make allowances" for China or to grant the Chinese a "specialness" that is not granted to other cultures or societies.

Perhaps without having much idea of what is going on vis a vis developments in other fields of literary studies, some of the people studying modern Chinese literature are unwittingly exacerbating their own in­tellectual and methodological isolationism by assum­ing .' that it is necessary to adopt one or another "Chinese angle of vision" if one is to be so bold as to

VOLUME 38, NUMBER 1

study China from without. China is so "unique," they seem to be saying, as to defeat any category or mode of analysis not generated from within China's own intellectual traditions or cultural consciousness. Since the Chinese people have so often thought of them­selves as "special," as a culture apart, what is wrong with foreigners following their lead? (Certainly this self-imposed and partially self-maintained intellectual and disciplinary isolationism is not limited to those few scholars who study modern Chinese cultural phenomena; it is also readily observable in many "China scholars" active in other disciplines.)

The fact of the matter is that while the study of literature in the West was developing and refining a wide variety of th~oretical propositions and analytical te.chniques which at least attempt to come to grips wIth questions concerning literature itself-in con­trast to its social or political context-most confer­ences and panels centering on modern Chinese lit­erature persist in devoting their attention to issues such as "Will The Dream of the Red Chamberl be de­clared a counter-revolutionary 'poison weed' this year or not?"; "Does this story appeal to the peasant masses or is it too complicated for them?"; "Guess who was posthumously 'rehabilitated' last week in Beijing?'" "Does this short story not show beyond a shadow of ~ doubt that the Chinese Communist Party discrimi­nated against its women members during the Sino­Japanese War?"; or "According to the nuances of this piece of writing, is it not likely that there has been a shake-up in the Central Committee?"

It may be difficult for those who have not been active in the field of contemporary China studies to believe, but all of the above questions were raised and did provoke serious, sustained discussion at confer­ences held on modern Chinese literature during the past 10 years. Nor are they extreme examples chosen out of context. For extreme examples, one would have to go much further away from normal academic discourse in conferences dealing with Western lit­erature and recall prolonged and heated arguments about whether or not some Chinese story written in

.1 This novel, considered China's greatest, was written in the mid-18th century and tells of the life of two households of the same extended family in Peking in which five generations live together with their innumerable retainers, servants, relatives, and other hangers-on. While the central story revolves around two youn? lovers who are cousins, the novel presents a rich tapestry of the hves of hundreds of others and a vivid portrayal of the character and quality of both the Imperial City and Chinese society in the 18th century.

MARCH 1984

1943 or 1973 proved how much the poor and lower middle peasants adored Chairman Mao. The predict­able excuse that such discussions merely reflected the "critical discourse" going on in China at the time hardly redounds to anyone's credit-neither the Chinese nor our own.

Why the neglect of literary analysis?

This is the situation that has generally prevailed in modern Chinese literature studies. Those scholars mainly interested in the literariness of these texts­along with those scholars who were most interested in investigating the interrelationships between such texts and pre-modern Chinese literature, Chinese culture and aesthetics (modern and pre-modern), other literary traditions, and issues of literary theory-all too often found themselves a minority at conferences.

Even at the most intellectually stimulating confer­ences prior to this workshop, most of the participating scholars seemed to follow the Chinese lead and find the biography of the writer or the political infighting among various literary cliques in China more com­pelling issues than the texts themselves. Whatever the meri.ts of the argument that disparages the literary qualIty of most modern Chinese fiction, the scholars w.ho tend toward literary analysis would be likely to dIspute any contention that all 20th century Chinese literature is of low literary value and would likewise disagree with those who think literary analysis is only for the most successful of literary texts.

Besides the rather obvious reasons for this situation that have been alluded to already, there are several others that are worth recalling:

• The Sinological training that many scholars in this field received in graduate school which often ne­glected both the modern period and methodologi­cal training

• The long years necessary for a non-Chinese to gain minimally adequate mastery over the language and the very rich cultural tradition (the primary reason for Sinology as a form of graduate training)

• An all-too-common "Eurocentrism" on the part of scholars specializing in Western literatures

• The structuring of academic institutions in most Western societies tending to isolate scholars in "exotic" (i.e., non-Western) studies

5

In case this analysis appears to be a bit abstract, we may consider an example that was not discussed at the workshop but perhaps will help to demonstrate the point being made. Because of the special position of the writer Lu Xun (1881-1936) as a Chinese "culture hero," a great deal of scholarly attention has been paid to him and his writings. 2 Certainly one of the greatest writers of highly sophisticated and stylisti­cally complex short stories in China in this century, Lu Xun's reputation among scholars who are in­terested in literature more than in politics rests mainly on his relatively small number of short stories and his prose poems, among them the disarmingly simple 1919 short story entitled "Kong Yiji" (also romanized as "K'ung I-chi").

The meaning of this story is strongly influenced by the fact, often overlooked in the secondary literature, that the primary "narrative voice" telling the story is clearly distinguishable from the voice of the historical person (Lu Xun) who was the author. There is a first person narrator, a fictional character of about 14 who works in a wine shop and who is retelling events that he has witnessed during the previous two years.

Thus, before attempting to demonstrate the his­torical implications and/or ideological significance of "Kong Yiji," it is only prudent for any scholar to define and if possible account for the possible com­plexities of irony, indeterminacy, or ambiguity that are engendered by the way in which the story is being narrated. In this instance, a great deal of the emo­tional force of the story is generated precisely by the divergence between the explicit moral stance of the matter-of-fact and self-centered boy who is telling the story and the implicit moral stance of a much older and much more humane consciousness whose pres­ence we also sense behind the story.

Lest the manifold advantages to this field of more integration between Chinese literature studies and the study of Western literature be overstated, it needs to be pointed out that there are undeniable connec­tions between modern Chinese literature and China's relatively "home-grown" literary heritage, as well as with Chinese history, society, and politics. Few of the scholars participating in the workshop, no matter how

2 The Joint Committee on Contemporary China, one of the two predecessor committees of the Joint Committee on Chinese Studies, sponsored a conference on "Lu Xun and His Legacy" in August 1981. Details about the conference can be found in Items, September 1981, pages 49-50. A conference volume edited by Leo Ou-Fan Lee, University of Chicago, will be published by the University of California Press.

6

insistent upon the relative autonomy of literary texts from any assumed perfect overlapping with the "real world," would deny the close connections between modern Chinese short stories and the "real world" of modern China.

Likewise, there is always a Charybdis, in which Chinese realities that are different from one's own are blended into some preexisting category or scheme de­rived from strictly non-Chinese experience and example, that goes along with the Scylla of assuming the inapplicability of non-Chinese-derived categories of analysis. Certainly all serious scholars of literature would argue for the great importance of reading texts in the original language and for the considerable de­gree of cultural familiarity that such a capacity pre­sumes.

There were several participants in the workshop whose scholarship has long involved research into the connections between modern Chinese literature and modern Chinese society. What was quite different about this workshop, among other things, was the explicit recognition given to the necessity of using whatever tools of formal or literary analysis are avail­able and appropriate in order to illuminate clearly what the text does and does not do, what it conveys and how it conveys it; in short, to analyze all the literary complexities along with the thematic dimen­sion and noting whatever influence those literary complexities have upon the overall meaning of the literary work before one goes beyond the text to draw those other connections.

Modern Chinese literature as a field of study

Although there have been several important schol­arly meetings centered around modern Chinese lit­erature and writers during the past two decades, it is probably fair to say that there had been no sense of identity as a distinct field of scholarship separate from traditional Sinology or from the study of pre-modern Chinese literature before a 1974 workshop and con­ference on May Fourth writers and writings.3 That successful conference could be considered the start­ing point of modern Chinese literature studies as a field. An important volume of papers4 and the Mod-

3 The conference on "Modern Chinese Literature: The Role of the Writer," organized by Merle Goldman, Boston University, was sponsored by the Joint Committee on Contemporary China.

4 Merle Goldman, editor, Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Prl'!ss, 1977.

VOLUME 38, NUMBER 1

~ > ~ C') x -to 00

*"

-..,J

Modem Chinese Short Stories: Summary of a Workshop

Story

Su Manshu, "Broken Hairpin" (1915)

Lu Xun, "Diary of a Madman" (1918)

Ye Shaojun, "Solitude" (1923)

Zhang Tianyi, "A Lackadaisical Love Story" (1931)

Wu Zuxiang, "Young Master Guanguan Gets His Tonic" (1932)

Lao She, "Black Li and White Li" (1934)

Xiao Jun, "Goats" (1935)

Mao Dun, "Algae" (1936-37)

Shi Tuo, "A Kiss" (1944)

Ru Zhijuan, "Water Lilies" (1958)

Zhu Xining, "Daybreak" (1963)

Huang Chunming, "Sayonara, Goodbye" (1973)

Presenter Mode of Analysis

Chang Han-liang Discourse versus story National Taiwan University

Milena Dolezelova-Velingerova Semiotics of the language of modernity University of Toronto

Jeanette Faurot The subjective narrator University of Texas

John Berninghausen Narrative strategies including authorial comment Middlebury College

Michael Egan Unreliable narration Toronto, Canada

Leo Ou-fan Lee Psychological structure University of Chicago

Marston Anderson Hermeneutic codes University of California, Berkeley

Yi-tsi Mei Feuerwerker Fictionality of "realism": personal versus social University of Michigan

Theodore Huters Reader response University of Minnesota

Don Rimmington Theme as deep structure; use of figurative language University of Leeds

Robert E. Hegel Archetypal theme Washington University

Cyril Birch Intertextuality University of California, Berkeley

Wolfgang Kubin Narrative structure and satire Free University of Berlin

ern Chinese Literature Newsletter grew out of it. There was a creative tension between what Merle Goldman terms, in her Introduction (pages 3-8), the "extrinsic" versus the "intrinsic" approach to May Fourth period literature that fueled the most productive discussion in that meeting a decade ago.

There have been, as well, academic conferences on 20th century Chinese literature and the arts held in Europe and elsewhere since 1974, some of an in­ternational nature, others less so. It goes without saying that some of these scholarly gatherings played an important role in establishing and broadening the field of modern Chinese literature studies. However, for several reasons, it also appears that heretofore there has not been any international meeting which has achieved the same sharpness of focus upon the literariness of modern Chinese fiction.

Goals of the workshop

The goals toward which the organizers of this workshop aspired included the following:

• An improvement in the theoretical foundations of scholarship in the field of modern Chinese lit­erature and an upgrading of critical standards

• A promotion of a greater degree of intellectual exchange and integration between the various dis­ciplines and subdisciplines of literary studies deal­ing, on the one hand, with Western literature and Western theoretical work on literature and, on the other, with the field of modern Chinese literature studies

• The stimulation of a set of analytic studies of sig­nificant Chinese short stories which would concen­trate much more on the literary features of those stories than has been usual in most scholarship in this area

Toward these ends, the organizers were careful to adopt a consciously pedagogical format that would maximize both discussion and the learning experi­ence that the workshop was intended to provide. Rather than soliciting reports on long-term research

8

projects already in progress, stories and topics were assigned as exercises in the practical application of one critical method or another to a specific text.

I t is difficult to summarize the quite complicated issues dealt with in the papers and in the discussions. However, the following are representative of the types of problems around which the discussions re­volved:

• What are the distinguishing features of modern Chinese fiction?

• How is the literary form of a 20th century Chinese short story linked to its content, and how is the content influenced by the form?

• What is meant by the categorization of "realistic" applied to a short story-in particular. to a Chinese short story?

• In what ways can the identity and the discursive stance of the "narrative voice" provide a context in which the reader is directed toward one interpreta­tion of a story rather than another?

• Is there a necessary distinction to be drawn between the "real author" and the "implied author"?

Far more problems were raised than resolved in the course of the workshop. Yet most of the 21 scholars who participated agreed that what was achieved was something of a watershed in the development of this small but lively field of scholarship, a field which exists at an intersection between Sinology (classical Chinese literature, history, philosophy, and philol­ogy), modern China studies (especially the social sci­ences), and the study of literature itself.

The short stories discussed at this workshop are listed on page 7, along with the name of the person who made the initial presentation of each story and a summary of the mode of analysis used. Other discus­sants were Seymour Chatman, University of Califor­nia, Berkeley; Lubomir Dolezel, University of To­ronto; William Tay, Chinese University of Hong Kong; and Yue Dai-yun, Beijing University. Also participating in the workshop were Susan Chen, Harvard University; Gilbert Fong, York University; David J. Liu, University of California, Berkeley; and Jing Wang. Middlebury College. 0

VOLUME 38, NUMBER 1

Activities of the Joint Area Committees

Review of African studies

In order to stimulate a dialogue that will assess the state of social scientific and humanistic research on Mrica, the Joint Committee on Mrican Studies con­tinues to commission papers, reviewing the state of theory and research on particular topics, for presen­tation at special sessions at the annual meetings of the African Studies Association. A review paper pre­sented at the 1982 meeting of the Association pre­pared by Paul Richards, U niversity ~~ege, Lon~on, on "Ecological Change and the Politics of Mncan Land Use," has been published together with a critical commentary by Michael J. Watts, University of California, Berkeley entided "'Good Try Mr. Paul': Populism and the Politics of Mrican Land Use." ~ a special issue of the Association's journal, the A/ncan Studies Review, 26, 2, June 1983: 1-72; 73-83 (see page 21, below).

At the December 1983 meeting of the Association, commissioned papers were presented by Sara S. Berry, Boston University, on "Agrarian Crisis in ~­rica? A Review and an Interpretation," and by Bill Freund, Harvard University, on "Labor and Labor History in Mrica: A Review of the Litera~r~." The papers will be published together as a special ISSue of the African Studies Review in 1984. Copies of the pa­pers can also be obtained by contacting Marth~ A. Gephart at the Council, (212) 557-9492. (Prices: Within North America (1st class): $2.50 each; $4.00 for both. Overseas (Airmail): $4.00 each; $7.00 for both.) Please make checks payable to the Social Sci­ence Research Council.

Topics of future review papers include: The Social Study of Health in Mrica; African Philosophy; Class, Ethnicity and Nationalism; Literature and Oral Traditions; The Person and the Life-Cycle in African Social Life and Thought; The Visual Arts; Compara­tive Religious Movements; Peasants and Rural Social Protest; and The Popular Arts.

State and society in Africa

The declining capacity of many African states to seaire conditions for capital accumulation and to manage the political lives of their societies with au­thority and legitimacy has become a central issue for

MARCH 1984

researchers and policy makers concerned with Mrica. Dominant theories in the social sciences, including structural-functionalist, Marxist and neo-Marxist, and autonomous state perspectives have proved in­adequate to explain this empirical reality. Recendy, however, a resurgence of interest in theory and re­search on state and society in Mrica among Mrican scholars and other Mricanists has begun to produce innovative hypotheses. Reflecting this renewed inter­est, a graduate and research program on State and Society in Mrica has been ~tablished at El Colegio de Mexico, where during the past two years a number of visiting Mrican scholars have led seminars on aspects of this problem. Taking advantage of this develop­ment, and of the interest of researchers in and on Latin America in state-and-society relationships, the Joint Committee on Mrican Studies cosponsored an international conference on this topic with the Center for Asian and African Studies of El Colegio de Mexico.

The conference, which was organized by P. Any­ang' Nyong'o, El Colegio de Mexico, in Oaxtupec, Mexico on October 24-29, 1983, brought together Mrican, Latin American, and North American schol­ars concerned with theory and research on state-and­society relationships. Conference papers s:ought. to describe and analyze the nature of the state m Mnca, focusing in particular on its variability over time as an outgrowth of relationships among people, values, re­sources, and external forces, viewed within the con­text of political action. The analysis was based on the following country case studies which were selected to represent the diversity found among states and re­gime types in sub-Saharan Mrica: Ethiopia, G~ana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, and Zaire.

Conference participants were:

Celma Aguero Lourdes Arizpe Simone Bencheikh Flora Botton Ahmed Boudroua Hugo Brown Jorge Castaiieda

Mbye Baboucar Cham Kassahun Checole Salvadore Cordero

El Colegio de Mexico El Colegio de Mexico El Colegio de Mexico El Colegio de Mexico El Colegio de Mexico El Diu. (Mexico City) Universidad Nacional

Autonoma de Mexico Howard University Rutgers University El Colegio de Mexico

9

Martha A. Gephart

Carmen Gonzalez

Harry Goulbourne Kwazi Cobie A. Harris

Rene Herrera Frank Holmquist Allen F. Isaacman Willard R. Johnson

Richard Joseph Massimango Kagabo M. Kaplan Fassil G. Kiros Silvia Leal Salim Lone Paul M. Lubeck

Archie Mafeje

Kintambu Mafuku Ali Mazrui Antonio Garcia Mundo Nzongola Ntalaja P. Anyang' Nyong'o Jorge Padua Charles Gerard Pierre

Guillermo Quartucci Santiago Quintana Manuel Ruiz Jeggan C. Senghor Bereket Habte Selassie Rodolfo Stavenhagen Lancine Sylla

Hilda Varela Raj Virashawmy Michael J. Watts

Ernest J. Wilson III Naude Antonio Yunez

Social Science Research Council

Centro de Estudios de Africa y Medio Oriente (Havana)

University of the West Indies University of California, Los

Angeles EI Colegio de Mexico Hampshire College University of Minnesota Massachusetts Institute of

Technology Dartmouth College EI Colegio de Mexico EI Colegio de Mexico Addis Ababa University Universidad de Guadalajara United Nations University of California, Santa

Cruz American University in Cairo

and The Hague University of Lububaski University of Michigan University of Veracruz Howard University EI Colegio de Mexico EI Colegio de Mexico Universidad Nacional

Autonoma de Mexico EI Colegio de Mexico EI Colegio de Mexico EI Colegio de Mexico United Nations Howard University EI Colegio de Mexico National University of the

Ivory Coast CEESTEM (Mexico City) University of Mauritius University of California,

Berkeley University of Michigan EI Colegio de Mexico.

Syndicalism in contemporary Latin America

At a workshop sponsored by the Joint Committee on' Latin American Studies, held May 9-11, 1983, in Buenos Aires, scholars discussed the chal1enges and responses of Latin American labor movements to political and economic changes over the last decade. The project, coordinated by Elizabeth Jelin, Center for the Study of State and Society (CEDES, Buenos Aires), is an effort to stimulate new empirical studies and to develop comparative frameworks towards a deeper understanding of the changing nature and social consequences of Latin American syndicalism in the 1970s and early 1980s.

10

To date, most analysis of labor movements and unionism in Latin America has focused on the origins and development of mass syndicalism during the 1930s and its link to populist regimes, which tended to control and legitimate "official" unions. Over the past 20 years, Latin America's more industrialized countries have experienced profound political and economic changes which have undermined the older forms of syndicalism and given rise to more confron­tational and political forms of working class organiza­tion. The relationship of organized workers to the state and the social composition and strategies of labor movements have changed, as workers have be­come increasingly marginalized both politically and economical1y. Yet social scientists have only begun to study systematical1y the effects of postpopulist politi­cal changes and of the general decline in living stan­dards on Latin American labor movements. To deepen a comparative understanding of recent labor movements, participants in this workshop were in­vited to analyze the extent to which a new kind of syndicalism has emerged in the 1970s, outside the institutional and ideological confines of the traditional mass unions organized from above. Par­ticipants discussed the social origins and charac­teristics of current labor movements in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. In addition, three papers encouraged the comparative analysis of labor movements in these countries around specific problems and themes.

A central issue that framed the debate and under­pinned several of the empirical studies is the distinctly different political contexts in which new labor move­ments operate. Comparisons were drawn, for exam­ple, between the forms and impact of dissident or alternative labor groups in countries where older, traditional unions continue to exist, stil1 very much under the aegis of the state (as in Colombia and Mexico), and those of the embryonic, grass-roots (often illegal) labor movements that have confronted authoritarian regimes (as in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile). Participants also compared the complex, changing relationship between "alternative unionism" and the formation of new political parties or new political al1iances. The group explored whether re­cent syndicalist movements in certain countries signal the emergence of a new political identity and ideology among sectors of the working class. Final1y, confer­ence papers compared the response of labor move­ments, beyond traditional union strategies of eco­nomic defensiveness, to the acute economic crisis of the 1970s and the sharply deteriorated real wages of workers.

VOLUME 38, NUMBER 1

The participants in the workshop were:

Luis Gonzaga Belluzzo Charles W. Bergquist Juan C. Blasco Guillermo Campero

Adolfo Canitrot

Marcelo Cavarozzi

Hector Cordone

Liliana De Riz

Roberto Frenkel

Elizabeth Jelln

Ernesto Pastrana

Guillermo Perry Ian Roxborough

Jaime Rulz Tagle

Maria Herminia Tavares de Almeida

Juan Carlos Torre

State University of Campinas Duke University Buenos Aires Latin American Institute for

Transnational Studies (I LET, Mexico City)

Center for the Study of State and Society (CEDES, Buenos Aires)

Center for the Study of State and Society (CEDES, Buenos Aires)

Center for Labor Studies and Investigations (CEIL, Buenos Aires)

Center for the Study of State and Society (CEDES, Buenos Aires) and National Autonomous University of Mexico

Center for the Study of State and Society (CEDES, Buenos Aires)

Center for the Study of State and Society (CEDES, Buenos Aires)

Center for Urban and Regional Studies (CEUR, Buenos Aires)

Bogota London School of Economics

and Political Science Academy of Christian

Humanism (Santiago)

State University of Campinas (Siio Paulo)

Instituto Torcuato di Tella (Buenos Aires)

Law and Japanese society

Underlying much that is written on japanese soci­ety are basic assumptions about the nature of law, legal institutions, and the legal process. Scholarship on japan frequently relies on prevailing generalities about legal institutions and processes that were devel­oped through the study of other societies in different historical periods. Although japan has adopted legal concepts and institutions of other nations at various points in its history, often these are applied in japan in very different ways from their use in the legal systems of other societies.

In recent years, a small number of legal com­parativists has begun to examine the social context of japanese law, and the joint Committee on japanese Studies sponsored a conference on Law and japanese

MARCH 1984

Society, which was organized by john O. Haley, Uni­versity of Washington, and held at the Lake Wilder­ness Conference Center near Seattle, August 17-19, 1983. At the conference, 10 papers were presented that discussed the legacy of Tokugawa legal institu­tions, contemporary issues in constitutional law, the structure of legal institutions and regulatory mech­anisms, the nature of contract law, and legal processes as mechanisms for social change. Mr. Haley is cur­rently preparing the papers for publication.

Participants in the conference were:

Richard Abel

Michael Bechsler Lawrence W. Beer Robert Dziubla Koichiro Fujikura William Gay B. James George Whitmore Gray Eliott J. Hahn

John O. Haley Dan F. Henderson Temple Jorden Susanne Lee Akio Morishima Lawrence Repeta Stephen Salzberg Douglas E. Sanders Kenji Sanekata Malcolm D. H. Smith Gary Thomas Frank K. Upham David Walsh Michael K. Young Theodore C. Bestor

University of California, Los Angeles

University of British Columbia Lafayette College University of Washington University of Tokyo University of Washington New York Law School University of Michigan California Western School of

Law University of Washington University of Washington University of Washington University of Washington University of Nagoya Tokyo University of Washington University of British Columbia University of Hokkaido University of British Columbia Tokyo Boston College University of Washington Columbia University Social Science Research

Council, staff

Health and illness in Japan

In an effort to stimulate research on japanese health practices, the joint Committee on japanese Studies sponsored a panel and workshop on Health and Illness in japan, held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the American Anthropological As­sociation, Chicago, Illinois, November 16-20, 1983. The panel and workshop, organized by Edward Nor­beck, Rice University, brought together anthro­pologists and public health specialists to examine conceptual, ideological, and other cultural factors re­lating to perceptions of health, illness, and well-being in japanese society, as well as the organization, ad­ministration, and delivery of health care. At the work­shop, tentative plans were made to develop future research agendas for comparative studies of health

11

and illness in advanced industrial societies, and in other societies within the East Asian medical tradi­tion. It is anticipated that future projects growing out of this workshop will include the participation of American, European, japanese, and Korean scholars who specialize in the study of medical practices in their respective societies. Mr. Norbeck is editing the papers presented at the panel for publication.

Participants in the panel (on November 19) and the workshop (November 21) were:

George A. DeVos

Christie W. Kiefer

Margaret Lock. Susan O. Long Nailcy R. Morrison Edward Norbeck Michael R. Reich David K. Reynolds William E. Steslicke Jane Teas Theodore C. Restor

University of California, Berkeley

University of California, San Francisco

McGill University Western Illinois University University of Michigan Rice University Harvard University ToDo Institute (Los Angeles) University of Michigan Harvard University Social Science Research

Council, staff

Family, law, and social change in the Middle East

Sponsored by the Subcommittee on Law and Social Structure of the joint Committee on the Near and Middle East, a conference on family, law, and social change in the Middle East was held in Tuxedo, New York, on October 27-29, 1983.

The decision to hold the conference arose from the subcommittee's feeling that the rapid social transformation of the Middle East and the current resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism in the political domain have intensified public concern with two re­lated issues: the "proper" role of women in society and the question of "preserving" the traditional fam­ily. Ideal models of both are usually evoked in terms of a timeless and universal Islamic ethic.

joined in the public debates on these topics are the representatives of the religious establishment and secular reformers, as well as different women ac­tivists. The cutting edge of such public debates usu­ally revolves around the laws of personal status, which regulate interpersonal relations within the family. This, of course, is an area that falls directly within the domain of the state, whose role in legislation is cru­cial. Thus, any inquiry into the family and change in the Middle East is invariably ~ inquiry into the inter-

12

faces between values, material conditions, and politi­cal ideology.

In the West, the historical struggle between the state and religious institutions for influence and con­trol over the family has resulted in the success of the former, as reflected in the civil status of the laws that regulate marriage, divorce, child custody, inher­itance, etc. In the Middle East, the case is different. Whereas Islamic law has been generally relinquished in civil and criminal areas of the law, its influence over the laws of personal status remains important and, in fact, may be increasing in some muntries. Even where radical reform was introduced, as in Tunisia, the Is­lamic framework of the law was not directly rejected, nor was any ideological break. explicidy made. The variations that exist today between the cases of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, for example, reflect the complexity of this important issue and caution against any easy generalizations.

The conference, the third sponsored by the sub­committee over the past three years, brought together scholars who work on the many different aspects of women's roles and the family in the Middle East. Its major aims were (1) to relate the accumulated fieldwork and scholarship to the current theoretical debates in women's studies and the family; (2) to examine the different ideological forces and struc­tural constraints that shape the current transforma­tion in women's roles and the family in the Middle East; and (3) to identify the important issues for fu­ture research in this most vital area of interdiscipli­nary scholarship.

Organized by Amal Rassam, Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, the conference was structured around three themati­cally focused sessions, and included the following participants and papers:

(1) Religion, Kinship, and Politics: Ideology and the Family

Chair: Jeswald w. Salaruse, Southern Methodist University Bcubara F. Stowasser. GeorgetoWD University

"Religious IdeOlogy, Women, and the Family: The Islamic Paradigm"

Shahla Haeri, University of California, Los Angeles "Uses of the Mut'a/Sigheh Marriage in Iran"

Adele K. Ferdows, University of Louisville "Islamic Revolution and the Family: Iran"

(2) Socioeconomic Change, Sex Roles, and the Family

Chair: Laura Nader, University of California, Berkeley Nennin Abadan-Unat, University of Ankara

"Socioeconomic Change, Sex Roles, and the Family: Turkey" Cynthia Nelson, American University in Cairo

"Socioeconomic Change, Sex Roles, and the Family: Egypt"

VOLUME 38, NUMBER 1

Soheir Morsy, Center of Sociological and Criminological Re­search (Cairo)

"Effects of Migration on Sex Roles and Family Structure in Egypt"

(3) The State and the Family

Chair: Hossam Issa, Ain Sh:uns University Mounira Charrad, University of California, San Diego

"Politics of Kinship and Family Law: North Mrica" Yamina Kebir, University of Algiers

"The Status of Children in Algeria in Law and in Reality" Afaf Mahfouz, Helwan University

"Politics, the State, and the Family: Egypt" Halim Barakat, Georgetown University

"State, Society, and the Family in the Middle East"

Along with otJ:ter participants, Lois Beck, Wash­ington University; Robert J. Lapham, National Re­search Council; and Ann Elizabeth Mayer, University of Pennsylvania, served as commentators. Louise Tilly, University of Michigan, and SatIa Mohsen, State University of New York, Binghamton, were general discussants. P. Nikiforos Diamandouros served as staff.

Transition in small, peripheral economies

A workshop on "Transition in Small, Peripheral Economies," sponsored by the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies, met on October 18 and 19, 1983, in Washington, D.C. The 11 scholars present came from Central America,_Europe, and the United States. Two additional invitees, from Grenada and EI Salvador, were unable to attend because of the politi­cal situation in those two countries at the time.

For purposes of the workshop, "small, peripheral economies" were defined as national economies that are essentially open to world market and financial forces, economies that are-by virtue of their small scale-"price takers" (that is, they do not influence to any substantial degree the ways in which international markets and patterns of exchange operate). "Transi­tion" is loosely conceptualized as the process (or pro­cesses) by which such small, peripheral economies move or attempt to move from what might be called standard patterns of capitalist accumulation and dis­tribution to patterns which respond to what one par­ticipant called "the logic of the majority." Ad­ditionally, it was assumed that, in the foreseeable fu­ture, such systems-in-transition would continue to be characterized by a heavy dependence on the export sector (usually agro-exports) as the main source of accumulation and thus of development. Examples of such systems are Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and, to a lesser extent, Cuba.

MARCH 1984

Because of the sponsorship of this workshop by the Latin America committee, both the participants in and the substantive focus of the workshop were heavily influenced by the Latin American experience, and more particularly by the current experiment in transformation under way in Nicaragua. Neverthe­less, it was recognized that the African and Asian experiences are relevant as well, and that theoretical advances must reflect a comparative perspective. One of the papers presented, Barbara Stalling's "External Finance for Countries in Transition to Socialism," was openly comparative, incorporating data from Chile (1970-73), Cuba, Mozambique, Nicaragua, and Tan­zania. E.V.K. Fitzgerald's paper, "The Problem of Balance in the Peripheral Socialist Economy," was not tied to specific national examples or data and thus allowed for a comparative approach. The same was true of Richard R. Fagen's paper on "The Politics of Transition in the Peripheral Socialist Economy." Of the two papers presented, one was closely tied to the historical specificity- of the Caribbean: Roger Bur­bach, "The United States and the Process of Transi­tion in the Caribbean Basin." The remaining paper, by Orlando Nunez, "The Possibility of Transition in Small, Peripheral Economies" (in Spanish), was heavily influenced by the Nicaraguan experience.

It was not possible within the compass of this work­shop to achieve the full geographical, historical, and theoretical coverage that the subject warrants. The workshop was, however, quite successful in clarifying the main lines of debate and in suggesting a number of topics for further research and theoretical speculation. Foremost among the issues discussed are the following:

Transition to what? For the Washington workshop, the term "socialism" was used as shorthand for a variety of experiments as different as the Tanzanian, the Cuban, and the Chilean. In future work, this everyday usage will have to be clarified and made more specific.

The national and international parameters which define and limit the kinds of transition that are possible in small, peripheral economies. Although the workshop touched on many points relevant to this problematic, the gen­eral consensus was that much more work is needed. Inherited productive structures, class relations, and the nature of national liberation struggles, for exam­ple, deeply condition what is possible (and not possi­ble) in a process of transition.

The functioning oj the transitional state. Participants in the workshop all agreed that the functioning of the transitional state is central to the processes under consideration. There was also substantial agreement

13

that the "question of democracy" must be addressed in the context of the transition. There was, of course, less agreement on exactly what constitutes democratic practice in the concrete situations in which transitions are attempted. But certainly it is clear that these large questions deserve more attention than they received.

Accumulation and basic needs. Different vocabularies and approaches were used with respect to this basic problem, but again there was widespread agreement that the relationship between accumulation and the satisfaction of the needs (and demands) of the major­ity is at the heart of the problematic of transition. The Fitzgerald paper addressed this issue under the rubric of the problems of "balance." Other papers and much of the discussion approached it in dif­ferent but not necessarily incompatible ways. No one felt, however, that the topic was exhausted by the papers or discussions at the workshop.

The participants in the workshop were: Roger Burbach, Center for the Study of the Americas (CENSA,

Berkeley), Policy Alternatives for the Caribbean and Central America (PACCA, Berkeley)

Jose Luis Coraggio, Managua, Nicaragua Carmen Diana Deere, University of Massachusetts Richard R. Fagen, Stanford University E.V.K. Fitzgerald, Institute for Economic and Social Research

(INIES, Managua) Xabier Gorostiaga, Institute for Economic and Social Research

(INIES, Managua) William LeoGrande, American University Orlando Nunez, Institute for Economic and Social Research

(INIES, Managua) Marcia Rivera Quintero, Center for the Study of' Puerto Rican

Reality (CEREP, Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico) Barbara Stallings, University of Wisconsin Edelberto Torres Rivas, Central American Institute of Doc­

umentation and Social Investigation (I CADIS, San Jose, Costa Rica)

Social inequality and gender hierarchy in Latin America

The Joint Committee on Latin American Studies sponsored a conference on Social Inequality and Gender Hierarchy in Latin America, held September 27-28, 1983 in Mexico City. Coordinated by Verena Stokke, Autonomous University of Barcelona, the conference provided an opportunity for an interdis­ciplinary group of scholars to reassess recent empiri­cal and theoretical advances in the study of gender relations in Latin America and to explore research needs and strategies for the future. The conference was oriented around the following issues: the degree to which capitalist development (understood as the commodification of social relations) in Latin America

14

has undermined or altered traditional forms of per­sonal dependence based on gender. In a theoretical paper prepared by Ms. Stokke in advance of the conference, participants were invited to address this issue, taking into account the extraordinarily diverse impact, unevenness, and contradictory nature of capitalist development in Latin America, on the one hand, and the growing evidence of the resilience of gender hierarchy and ideology in the face of socio­economic change, on the other.

Until recently, it was generally assumed that capitalist penetration of agriculture and women's participation in wage work restructured the sexual division of labor and eroded women's subordination to men. Several recent studies, however, suggest that the increased commodification of social relations in Latin America often incorporates and reinforces preexisting patterns of gender hierarchy. One aim of the conference was to advance the dialogue beyond the long-standing debate about the relative erosion or persistence of the sexual division of labor. Partici­pants were asked to consider historically and compar­atively the complex interaction of gender and class relations as they shaped the contours of gender hierarchy. A second aim was to explore the implica­tions of culture, ideology, values, and perceptions for understanding gender relations.

During the first day of the conference, participants explored the sources of continuity and discontinuity of gender inequality under different historical cir­cumstances of capitalist (or socialist) development. Papers examined the dynamics and complexity of gender relations in such contexts as rural Peru, where the impact of industrialization in the early 20th cen­tury increasingly undermined the viability of the local peasant economy; the United States-Mexican border, with the rapid growth of an export processing zone; and Nicaragua, during the current transformation of state and society. Participants explored the effects that economic development has not only on women's material conditions, but (by changing women's relative position in society) on household structure, conjugal relations, and the ways in which women's experiences, options, and constraints are related to and determined by those of men. Much attention was also paid to women's experience and consciousness of subordination, as well as to the role of ideology among the dominant elites in using and legitimizing gender subordination.

On the second day, participants concentrated dis­cussion on questions concerning the ideology, per­ception, and interpretation of gender hierarchy in

VOLUME 38, NUMBER 1

Latin America. Papers explored the relative impact of the work experience on class consciousness and con­jugal relations, as well as how women's consciousness and ideology are expressed in political struggles, both inside and outside the workplace, that are surfacing in certain parts of Latin America today. Papers also compared patterns of consciousness and ideology of gender relations among native groups in rural Peru and Africa.

A final session was devoted to issues of sexuality, biological and social reproduction, and demography. Participants discussed the relationships among changing rates of fertility, gender relations and sex­ual norms, and wider processes of socioeconomic change. Attention was also paid to the shifting cur­rents of ideology and politics of gender relations that are embedded in specific national and international policies of population control.

The following papers were presented:

The Resilience of Gender Hierarchy in the Context of Economic Change (I)

(I) Lourdes Arizpe, "Desigualidad Social y Jerarquia de Ge-. nero: Un Estudio de la Ideologia Sobre la Mujer en Michoacan,

Mexico" (Social Inequality and Gender Hierarchy: A Study of Ideology about Women and Social Inequality in Michoacan, Mexico)

(2) Florencia Mallon, "Gender and Class in the Transition to Capitalism: Household and Mode of Production in Central Peru, 1860-1950"

The Resilience of Gender Hierarchy in the Context of Economic Change (II)

(3) Lourdes Beneda, "The Labor Process, Subcontracting and Gender Relations"

(4) Patricia Fernandez Kelly, "A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Export-Processing Zones in Asia and the U.S.-Mexican Border"

(5) Carmen Diana Deere, "Cooperative Development and Women's Participation in the Nicaraguan Agrarian Reform"

Ideology and Politics of Perception and Meaning

(6) Martha Rolda~, "Reflexiones Sobre el Tema 'Jerarquias Genericas y Penetracion Capitalista en America Latina': en base a un estudio de caso sobre trabajo industrial domicilario en la

MARCH 1984

ciudad de Mexico" (Reflections on the Theme of 'Gender Hierar­chy and Capitalist Penetration in Latin America' : A Case Study of Industrial Piecework in Mexico City)

(7) Mariza Correa. "Mulher e Familia" (Women and Family in Brazil)

(8) Fiona Wilson. "The Reproduction of Gender in Current Indigenous Thought"

(9) Pauline Peters, "Gender. Development Cycles and Histori­cal Process: A Critique of Recent Research on Women in Bots­wana"

(10) Pauline Peters. "Commentary on Issues Arising from Verena Stokke's Position Paper"

Sexuality, Reproduction, and Demography

(11) Teresita de Barbieri. "Notes on the Politics of Population. and on Images of Women in Mexico"

(12) Kate Young. "Reproduction and Gender Hierarchy" (13) Virginia Vargas. ''Jerarquia de Genero y Desigualdad So­

cial: EI Caso de Mujeres de Barrios Marginales de Lima Met­ropolitana" (Gender Hierarchy and Social Inequality: The Case of Women in the Marginal Slums of Metropolitan Lima)

(14) Carmen Barroso. "Notes on the U.N.'s Population Policies and the Ideology of Gender Relations"

The participants at the conference were:

Lourdes Arizpe Teresita de Barbieri

Carmen Barroso

Lourdes Beneda Mariza Correa

Carmen Diana Deere Patricia Fernandez Kelly

Brooke Larson

Florencia Mallon Pauline Peters

Martha Roldan Verena Stokke

Virginia Vargas Fiona Wilson

Kate Young

EI Colegio de Mexico Instituto de Investigaciones

Sociales (Mexico City) Funda!;ao Carlos Chagas. Sao

Paulo Rutgers University Universidade Estadual de

Campinas University of Massachusetts University of California. San

Diego Social Science Research

Council University of Wisconsin Harvard Institute for

International Development Buenos Aires Autonomous University of

Barcelona Centro de la Mujer (Lima) Center for Development

Research (Copenhagen) Institute for Development

Studies. University of Sussex

15

Other Current Activities at the Council

The political economy of national statistics

The Committee for Research on the 1980 Census sponsored a conference in Washington, D.C., on Oc­tober 13-15, 1983, on the political economy of na­tional statistics. The conference was cochaired by William Alonso and Paul Starr, both of Harvard U ni­versity, who will co-edit the planned volume based on the conference.

At a dinner meeting on October 13, a panel discus­sion introduced the theme of the next two days. The topic was "Experiences with National Statistics"; the panel consisted of Bruce Chapman, director, Office of Planning and Evaluation, The White House; Janet L. Norwood, commissioner for the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor; Kenneth Prewitt, president, Social Science Research Council (chair); and Albert Rees, president, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

The speakers and discussants at the conference were the following:

William Alonso and Paul Starr. Harvard University "The Politics of Official Numbers"

William P. Butz. U.S. Bureau of the Census Discussant

Harvey M. Choldin, University of Illinois Discussant

Margo Conk, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee "The 1980 Census in Historical Perspective"

judith Innes de Neufville, University of California, Berkeley "Statistics in State and Local Politics"

joseph W. Duncan, Dun & Bradstreet (New York) "Technology. Costs. and Economics of Statistics"

Daniel Garnick, U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis Discussant

Andrew Hacker, Queens College, City University of New York Discussant

Christopher jencks, Northwestern University "The Politics of Income Measurement"

Steven Kelman, Harvard University "The Politics of Statistical Policy Making"

Nathan Keyfitz, Harvard University "The Social and Political Context of Population Forecasting"

Ira Lowry, Rand Corporation (Santa Monica, California) "The Political Economy of Housing Statistics"

Daniel Melnick, Congressional Research Service Discussant

Richard Nathan, Princeton University "The Politics of Printouts: The Use of Official Numbers to Allocate Federal Grants-in-Aid"

Mancur Olson, University of Maryland Discussant

16

Mark PerIman, University of Pittsburgh ''The Formation of Macroeconomic Measures"

William Petersen, Cannel, California "Politics and the Measurement of Ethnicity"

Albert Rees, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (New York) Discussant

Bryant Robey, American Demographics Discussant

Richard C. Rockwell, Social Science Research Council Discussant

Jacob S. Siegel, Georgetown University Discussant

Paul Starr and Ross Corson, Harvard University "Who Will Have the Numbers: The Rise of the Statistical Ser­vices Industry and the Politics of Public Data"

cOnrad Taeuber, Georgetown University Discussant

Abigail Thernstrom, The Twentieth Century Fund (Cambridge, Massachusetts) "Affirmative Redistricting: Statistics and Politics in Enforce­ment of the Voting Rights Act"

Raymond Vernon, Harvard University "The Politics of Comparative National Statistics"

Katherine Wallman, Council of Professional Associations on Federal Statistics (Washington, D.C.) Discussant

Workshop on the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP)

The Council's Working Group on the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) held a workshop for potential users of the data from this major new survey, now being conducted by the U .S_ Bureau of the Census. The workshop, held in Balti­more, Maryland, on December 10, 1983, was at­tended by 73 persons, including some who were also attending the National Bureau of Economic Research Conference on Income and Wealth.

The workshop provided an opportunity for re­searchers to inquire into the analytical possibilities of the SIPP's longitudinal design, monthly measures, detailed socioeconomic content, and individual sam­ple design. The analytical papers presented were based on research using data from the 1979 Research Panel of the Income Survey Development Program (ISDP), which was the pilot study for the SIPP. The papers considered new insights into income distribu­tion, methodological problems in analyzing these data, present and future activity of the SIPP, and access to the SIPP and ISDP data. Researchers from

VOLUME 38, NUMBER 1

academic institutions, research institutes, the U.S. Bureau of the Census, and other government agen­cies both spoke and answered questions.

The SI PP has been designed as an ongoing series of national panels, each consisting of about 20,000 interviewed households and having a duration of 2Y2 · years. Every four months, the Census Bureau will interview each individual of age 15 years or older in the panel. Information will be collected on a monthly basis for most sources of money and nonmoney in­come, participation in various governmental transfer programs, labor force status, and household compo­sition. During the life of the panel, information will also be collected on assets and liabilities, household and work expenses, disability payments, taxes paid, pension coverage, and marital and work history. The SIPP began field work in October 1983.

The ISDP collected data from national panels in the late 1970s. The 1979 panel had an area sample of 8,200 households, interviewed on six separate occa­sions from February 1979 through May 1980.

More information about the SIPP may be found in the November 1982 issue of the Social Security Bulletin and in the proceedings of a 1982 conference spon­sored by the Social Science Research Council, Techni­cal, Administrative, and Conceptual Lessons of the Income Survey Development Program, available for $5.00 from Richard C. Rockwell at the Council.

Conference of fellows in employment and training

The Committee on Dissertation Fellowships in Em­ployment and Training sponsored a conference on October 20, 1983, for recent fellows in employment and training. The conference-chaired by Paula Stephan, Georgia State University-was an integral part of a program of doctoral dissertation fellowships formerly supported by a grant from the U.S. De­partment of Labor. Recent recipients of these awards met annually in Washington with both policy makers and scholars to discuss national problems and issues related to employment and training and to acquire an understanding of the broader implications of the re­search in which they are engaged-while sharing their research through interdisciplinary conversa­tions with other fellowship recipients.

The conference included reports of dissertation re­search by fellows, and panel discussions on the devel­opment of labor markets in advanced industrial countries, the Job Training and Partnership Act of 1982, and the consequences of automation in the workplace.

MARCH 1984

Presentations included:

(I) Descriptions of dissertation research in employment and training

Nancy Breen, New School for Social Research "Shedding Light 011 Women's Work and Wages: Consequences of

Protective Legislation" Janet Holtzblatt, University of Wisconsin "The Effects of Plant Closings on Workers' Earnings and

Transfer Recipients" Freada Klein, Brandeis University "Sexual Harrassment in Service Employment: Factors Affecting

Its Incidence, Severity, and Relationship to Productivity" Walter S. McManus, University of California, Los Angeles "Effects of Language Characteristics on Earnings: Hispanic Men

in the United States" Loriann Roberson, University of Minnesota "The Work Concerns Inventory: A New Approach to the Mea­

surement of Work Motivation" Douglas W. Roblin, University of Michigan "Labor Market Behavior of Disadvantaged Immigrants: A Case

Study of Samoans in the San Francisco Bay Area" Amy Wharton, University of Oregon "Blue-Collar Sex Segregation: The Role of Occupation and In­

dustrial Organization" Moderator: Robert W. Pearson, Social Science Research

Council

(2) Comparative changes in the United States and other developed labor markets

Presentation: Moderator:

Richard Freeman, Harvard University Paula Stephan, Georgia State University

(3) The Job Training and Partnership Act of 1982

Presentations: Susan Grayson McGuire, Subcommittee on Employment Opportunities of the United States House of Representatives

Randall Ripley, Ohio State University Moderator: Burt Barnow, U.S. Department of Labor

(4) Automation and Employment

Presentations: Steven Miller. Carnegie-Mellon University Dennis Chamot, AFL-CIO

Moderator: Marjory S. Blumenthal. Office of Technology Assessment

International technology transfer

On June 2-3, 1983, the Council's Subcommittee on Science and Technology Indicators (part of the Committee on Social Indicators) sponsored a confer­ence on international technology transfer. Chaired by Nathan Rosenberg, Stanford University, the confer­ence explored opportunities for a quantitative under­standing of international technology transfer. Con­ference papers attended to descriptions and In-

17

terpretations of trends in the transfer of technology to and from a variety of countries by a diversity of mechanisms. Papers were presented at three sessions:

(1) Transfer in the context of the newly-emerging international division of labor

Jack Baranson and Robin Roark, "Trends in North-South Transfer of High Technology"

Discussant: Ronald Findlay Keith Pavitt, "Technology Transfer Amongst the Industrially

Advanced Countries: An Overview" Discussant: Raymond Vernon

(2) The historical experiences of individual countries

Sanjaya Lall, "Trade in Technology by a Slowly Industrializing Country: India"

Discussant: Claudio R. Frischtak Leonard H. Lynn. "Technology Transfer to Japan: What We

Know, What We Need to Know, and What We Know That May Not Be So"

Discussant: Richard P. Suttmeier Lynn K. Mytelka, "Technology Transfer: The Case of Textiles in

Africa" Discussant: Thomas J. Biersteker Terutomo Ozawa, "Macroeconomic Factors Affecting Technol­

ogy Inflows to and Outflows hom Japan: The Postwar Expe­rience"

Discussant: Gary R. Saxonhouse Gordon B. Smith, "Western Technology in the U.S.S.R.: Scope

and Impact" Larry E. Westphal, Alice Amsden, and Linsu Kim, "Capacity­

Augmenting Trade and Korean Industrialization" Discussant: Richard R. Nelson

(3) The mechanisms of transfer

Farok J. Contractor, "The Importance of Licensing versus For­eign Direct Investment in U.S. Corporate Strategy: An Analysis of Aggregate U.S. Data"

Discussant: David J. Teece Jorge M. Katz, "Domestic Technological Innovations and

Dynamic Comparative Advantages" Discussant: Richard Newfarmer Anthony A. Romeo, "Direct Foreign Investment and Technology

Transfer" Discussant: Alan Rapoport Dorothy S. Zinberg, "Sending Ideas Abroad: Science and En­

gineering Education as Technology Transfer" Discussant: Lois Peters

The papers drew from a substantial body of re­search and data about the transfer of technology. As later summarized by one conference participant, the papers drew parallel conclusions about (1) the highly specific and differentiated nature of technologies, (2) the wide range of sources of knowledge that are drawn on to improve specific technologies, (3) the importance of understanding the eventual users' needs, and (4) the critical need for indigenous

18

capabilities to absorb, assimilate, and modify im­ported technologies (Keith Pavitt, "Harnessing De­velopment to Specific Objectives," The Times Higher Education Supplement, August 12, 1983, page 17). A volume of edited papers will be published later this year by Praeger.

The conference participants and their institutional affiliations are as follows:

Jack Baranson

Thomas J. Biersteker Jennifer Sue Bond Farok J. Contractor Ronald Findlay Claudio R. Frischtak Jorge M. Katz

Linsu Kim

Sanjaya Lall Leonard H. Lynn Lynn K. Mytelka Richard R. Nelson Richard Newfarmer

Terutomo Ozawa Keith Pavitt Robert W. Pearson

Lois Peters Rolf R. Piekarz Alan Rapoport Anthony A. Romeo Nathan Rosenberg Gary R. Saxonhouse Gordon B. Smith Richard P. Suttmeier David J. Teece

Raymond Vernon Larry E. Westphal

Dorothy S. Zinberg

Developing World Industry and Technology, Inc. (Washington, D.C.)

Yale University National Science Foundation Rutgers University Columbia University Stanford University U.N. Economic Commission for

Latin America (Buenos Aires)

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Seoul)

University of Oxford Carnegie- Mellon University Carleton University Yale University Overseas Development Council

(Washington, D.C.) Colorado State University University of Sussex Social Science Research

Council New York University National Science Foundation National Science Foundation University of Connecticut Stanford University University of Michigan University of South Carolina Hamilton College University of California,

Berkeley Harvard University The World Bank (Washington,

D.C.) Harvard University

The development of extraordinary moral responsibility

The Committee on Development, Giftedness, and the Learning Process, with the support of a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is sponsor­ing a number of activities to examine the nature and origins of exceptional performance in specific do­mains, including the visual arts and music. One aspect of this work has involved a consideration of what constitutes a "domain" and how the nature of the

VOLUME 38, NUMBER 1

domain itself interacts with individual abilities and training in the emergence of extraordinary ability.

In these discussions, the committee has considered moral responsibility as a potential domain of human action in which exceptional ability could be identified. Some of the more renowned examples are obvious, such as Mahatma Gandhi and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. There is an extensive psychological literature on the nature of moral development; the committee concluded that it would be useful to plan a meeting to explore moral responsibility as a domain in which some individuals might excel.

The relationship between the concept of giftedness and the domain of moral responsibility was viewed in two ways. First, some individuals can possess unusual talent in another domain such as music or mathemat­ics, but at some point in their careers choose to devote a portion of their time, energy, and talent to social concerns. Albert Einstein is a prime example of such an individual. In another sense, it appears that some individuals early demonstrate an unusual sensitivity to critical social issues and a capacity to lead others in the advancement of social causes. In either instance, individuals display exceptional abilities and choose to devote some of their time to issues they consider of great moral importance.

How does an awareness of an ability to act effec­tively in the moral domain emerge and develop? Does exceptionality in another domain complement or conflict with a commitment to moral action? Is adolescence a period of development in which moral issues are uniquely germane and thus a time when exceptional moral responsibility is likely to develop? These were some of the questions which guided the committee's plans for a workshop held on November 10-12, 1983, at Yale University.

The workshop was cosponsored by Yale's Bush Center for Child Development and Social Policy. One evening was devoted to a discussion with eight high school and college students who are actively involved in the antinuclear war movement. In fact, a consider­able portion of the workshop revolved around the nuclear war issue and how involvement in this current social concern can be used to help understand the meaning of moral responsibility and action.

The agenda for the workshop was organized around two panels: (1) "Moral Responsibility: Re­search Needs" (Elliot Turiel, Helen Weinrich-Haste, and Robert Holt); and (2) "Research on Moral Re­sponsibility: Practical Implications" (Fayneese Miller, Carol Gilligan, and George Hogenson).

With respect to the current status of research on moral development and its relationship to extraordi-

MARCH 1984

nary moral responsibility, the following points were among those raised at the meeting:

( 1) Research on moral judgment is largely devel­opmental in character, following lines established by Jean Piaget and elaborated by Lawrence Kohlberg and others; research on moral action, however, is largely nondevelopmental in character and con­ducted under the rubrics of prosocial behavior and altruism. The domains are rareiy connected. More­over, the major research traditions do not consider larger issues of world citizenship, species member­ship, and collective action. The focus of attention in both domains is on the isolated individual faced with some individual problem arising in ordinary life.

(2) Research on moral feeling is practically non­existent, despite the fact that it appears to be a critical component of moral commitment and action.

(3) There has been little theory or research on the notion of "moral giftedness," the possibility' that moral responsibility represents a domain (or family of domains) in which some human beings are extraordi­nary. If the solution of human problems requires the emergence of some individuals with such gifts, we may need to develop methods for identifying and nurturing them-just as we now do for young musi­cians or chess players.

(4) Little attention has been given to the personal struggle that a young person may undergo in shaping his or her career, caught between the demands of high achievement in such recognized domains as science and art and the (perhaps) competing de­mands of conscience.

(5) Stage theories of moral judgment are con­structed so that cognitive and moral development are practically identical-by definition. What is known about their actual empirical relationships?

The committee is preparing a summary report of the discussions and plans to continue exploration of moral responsibility as a domain with the potential for exceptional performance.

The participants in the workshop were:

David Bakan

Michael Basseches

Anne Colby

William Damon

David H. Feldman

Department of Psychology York University Department of Human

Development and Family Studies

Cornell University Department of Psychology Radcliffe College Department of Psychology Clark University Department of Child Study Tufts University

19

Carol Gilligan

Edmund W. Gordon

Howard E. Gruber

Aaron Hershkowitz

Martin L. Hoffman

George B. Hogenson

Robert R. Holt

Georg Lind Fayneese Miller

Samuel Nash

Maljorie Osherow

Peter B. Read

Victor Saraivia

Gloria Small

Elliott Turiel

Doris Wallace

Helen Weinrich-Haste

Edward Zigler

Graduate School of Education Harvard University Department of Psychology Yale University Institute for Cognitive Studies Rutgers University Department of Psychology Yeshiva University

Department of Psychology University of Michigan School of Organization and

Management Yale University Department of Psychology New York University University of Constance

Department of Psychology North Florida University Research and Evaluation New Haven Board of

Education

Social Science Research Council

Social Science Research Council

Institute for Cognitive Studies Rutgers University

Bush Center for Child Development and Social Policy

Yale University Department of Education University of California,

Berkeley Department of Education Bank Street College of

Education Department of Humanities

and Social Sciences University of Bath

Bush Center for Child Development and Social Policy

Yale University

The comparative and cross-disciplinary study of education

In the past few years a number of the Council's board members have suggested that there is a need for fresh perspectives and innovative research to in­form ongoing public debates about the effectiveness and consequences of schooling. In particular, they have noted that relatively few studies of education are interdisciplinary or cross-cultural. Furthermore, while there have been a number of extensive investi­gations of the impact of schooling upon individual

20

mobility and career patterns, relatively few studies have focused on · the more macrolevel effects of in­creased levels of schooling for greater proportions or particular segments of a society's population. For example, how does the introduction of mass formal education in developing nations or the expansion of higher education in advanced industrialized nations influence the social, economic, and political structures and processes of these countries? Building an ade­quate knowledge of these effects requires methods and expertise from many disciplines and demands a comparative framework.

On June 10, 1983, the Council convened a small group of researchers to discuss these issues. A number of specific themes emerged as promising new research topics:

( I) Comparison of formal schooling with other learning environments:

How do the processes and outcomes differ? What are the most appropriate methodologies to study the nature of learning in different settings and demonstrate the relationship of process to outcome?

(2) Impact of the state and students upon the structure and curriculum of schools

In what ways are schools responsive to student interests and societal requirements? Has American society reached a point where it is overeducating its youth? To what extent does school­ing provide the training required for a changing occupational structure?

(3) Relationship of families to schools

How does socialization in the home interact with formal learn­ing in the schools? What are the various ways in which parents do (or can) interact with the schools to complement or obstruct learning objectives?

(4) Impact of school variations

Within a society, what is the influence of different school orga­nizational structures and curricula on learning and career out­comes?

(5) Relationship of schooling to nonacademic outcomes

How do schools influence moral development and the political and social behavior of its students? At the macrolevel, how are basic political and economic structures influenced?

(6) Utilizing existing data

How can national data sets be better utilized by researchers to conduct new comparative studies of the impact of schooling? Are new data required or only an improvement of existing data col­lections?

While discussion at this workshop indicated that there are a number of important areas for new re­search on education, further explorations are needed

VOLUME 38, NUMBER 1

to identify ways in which the Council might encour­age this new work.

The participants in this workshop were:

Philip Altbach

Ivar Berg

James S. Coleman

Joseph Glick

Steven Heyneman

Educational Organization. Organization and Policy

State University of New York at Buffalo

Department of Sociology University of Pennsylvania Department of Sociology University of Chicago

Departwent of Psychology Graduate Center. City

University of New York Education Department The World Bank (Washington.

D.C.)

Barbara Heyns

Philip W. Jackson

Carl Kaestle

Robert A. LeVine

Kenneth Prewitt

Sophie Sa

Sylvia Scribner

Center for Applied Social Science Research

New York University

Department of Education University of Chicago

Department of History University of Wisconsin

Laboratory of Human Development

Harvard University

Social Science Research Council

Social Science Research Council

Department of Psychology Graduate Center. City

University of New York

Newly-issued Council Publications

J Social Science and Humanistic Research on Africa: An Assessment. Special issue, African Studies Review, 26(2), June 1983.

This is the second in a series of special issues of the African Studies Review which contain research over­view papers commissioned by the Joint Committee on African Studies to review the state of theory and research on particular topics for presentation at the annual meetings of the African Studies Association. This issue includes a review paper on "Ecological Change and the Politics of African Land Use" (pages 1-72), by Paul Richards, University College, London, presented at the Twenty-fifth Annual Meeting of the African Studies Association, held in November 1982, in Washington, D.C., and a critical commentary entitled, " 'Good Try, Mr. Paul': Populism and the Politics of African Land Use" (pages 73-83), by Michael J. Watts, University of California, Berkeley, based in part on comments on the review paper solicited by the committee from a wide range of scholars in the field.

Mr. Richards' paper addresses the question of to what extent and in what ways are ecological ideas also political ideas. In the discussion, which is divided into five main sections, he endeavors to steer a course between the shoals of environmental determinism, on

MARCH 1984

the one hand, and economic reductionism, on the other. He first addresses the link between population processes and land use, contrasting explanations which stress population increase as the driving force behind agricultural change with arguments in which demographic fluctuations are treated as responses to economic imperatives. Next he focuses on the topic of the ecology of disease in Africa, giving special atten­tion to John Ford's The Role of Trypanasomiasis in Afri­can Ecology (1971), as an illustration of the ecological complexity characteristic of trypanosomiasis and a number of other African epidemic diseases, and of the importance of local knowledge and initiative in adapting to such diseases. The dangers inherent in a universalist approach and the corresponding im­portance of local knowledge and local level adap­tations recur as major themes in the third section of the paper dealing with agricultural ecology. The fourth section considers the literature on drought and famine in Africa. The tendency for ecology to serve as a disguise for complex political issues is ex­plored further in the final section on the production and ownership of ecological knowledge.

In his critical commentary, Mr. Watts enumerates some of the major inconsistencies, contradictions, and omissions in the paper, suggesting that there IS a

21

correspondence between them and the "populist" theoretical perspective which he believes Mr. Richards adopts. He concludes by examining some of the critical weaknesses of Mr. Richards' anarchistic approach-both as a type of knowledge adequate to its object of investigation, and as a type of politics.

I Spanish in the Western Hemisphere in Contact with English, Portuguese, and the Amerindian Lan­guages, edited by Eugenio Chang-Rodriguez. Special issue, Word: Journal of the International Linguistic Association, 33 (1-2), April-August 1982. Based on conferences sponsored by the joint Committee on Latin American Studies.

The essays included in this double issue of Word were prepared as a result of two conferences on the multidisciplinary study of the Spanish language in contact with other languages in the Western Hemi­sphere, held under the auspices of the joint Com­mittee on Latin American Studies. The aims of the conferences were to explore sociolinguistic trends emanating from the changing intercultural realities on the inner and outer linguistic frontiers of the Hemisphere and to develop new research strategies and initiatives to study cross-language contact in a sociohistorical context.

The essays in the volume explore both profound structural changes and alterations which rarely affect a language's "basic path of development" (page 9). Lexical and syntactical borrowings, semantic shifts, interferences, and linguistic trends are studied in fluid contexts of interacting cultures and socioeco­nomic change. The essays encompass Spanish in contact with (1) English in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Panama; (2) Amerindian languages in Mexico and Peru; and (3) other Romance languages (such as Portuguese) in Uruguay.

The contributors to the volume are:

Elsie Alvarado de Ricord University of Panama Theodore S. Beardsley, Jr. The Hispanic Society of

America (New York) D. Lincoln Canfield University of Southern Illinois Daniel N. Cardenas California State University at

Long Beach Paul V. Cassano University of Windsor Eugenio Chang-Rodriguez Queens College, City

University of New York Juan Clemente Zamora University of Massachusetts Jorge M. Guitart State University of New York

at Buffalo M. J. Hardman-de-Bautista University of Florida

22

Fritz G. Hensey Rose Nash Rudolph C. Troike Ana Celia Zentella

University of Texas University of Puerto Rico University of Illinois Hunter College, City

University of New York

Work and Lifecourse in Japan, edited by David W. Plath. Papers from a conference sponsored by the joint Committee on japanese Studies. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983. xii + 267 pages. Cloth, $30.50; paper, $9.95.

japan is often portrayed as a society distinguished by "lifetime employment." While the average japanese does not change jobs as many times during the course of his or her career as do most Americans, for the majority of japanese lifelong job tenure is more a dream than a reasonable expectation. Yet for more than a generation, sociological writings on japan have suggested that the nation is populated by replicas of the Organization Man and his mate, the Professional Housewife, a view that confuses the goals of organizations with the personal aims and aspira­tions of their employees. Like adults in all societies, however, japanese must struggle to reconcile the duties and demands of their careers with their indi­vidual interests and obligations to families, com­munities, and other institutions. This struggle often leads to career changes (both planned and unforseen), as well as uncertainty at each stage, rather than to a preordained progression through unproblematic stages. Seen from the individual's point of view, career outcomes and lifecourses in japan are not as predictable as the image of "lifetime employment" would lead many to believe.

The present volume contains 12 papers that ex­amine lifecourse development and the social organi­zation of industrial work in terms of currents of em­ployment, patterns of career development, and the influence of life events and family cycles on career paths. The contributors are:

Samuel Coleman North Carolina State University

Theodore F. Cook, Jr. Washington, D.C.

Karen C. Holden University of Wisconsin

Jill Kleinberg University of California, Los Angeles

Solomon B. Levine University of Wisconsin

Jack G. Lewis University of Southern California

Susan O. Long Western Illinois University

VOLUME 38, NUMBER 1

v

James McLendon Paul H. Noguchi David W. Plath Julius A. Roth Kenneth A. Skinner

Amherst College Bucknell University University of Illinois University of California, Davis Widener University

Yuan Thought: Chinese Thought and Religion Under the Mongols, edited by Hok-Iam Chan and Wm. Theodore de Bary. Papers from a conference sponsored by the Committee on Studies of Chinese Civilization of the American Council of Learned Societies. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. xiv + 545 pages. Cloth, $35.00

The Yuan period (1260-1368) in Chinese history was one in which China was subjugated and ruled by an alien people, the Mongols, and exposed to foreign ideas and influences from the larger, multicultural Mongolian empire. The period thus presented both great challenges and unusual opportunities for Chinese civilization, and was uniquely important for testing the strength of the Chinese tradition and the vitality of Chinese thought.

The papers in this volume address areas of thought and religion that, in response to alien rule, reaffirmed the classical heritage and provided the basis for further intellectual growth in the Ming (1368-1644) and Ch'ing (1644-1911) periods. The focus is on the Yuan literati's attempts to repossess and rejuvenate the indigenous traditions of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism through adaption and syncretism.

This publication is the outgrowth of a 1978 confer­ence organized by coeditor Hok-Iam Chan, University of Washington. It is the fourth volume on premodern Chinese thought that has resulted from conferences sponsored by the Subcommittee on Thought and Re­ligion of the Committee on Studies of Chinese Civili­zation, one of the two predecessor committees of the joint Committee on Chinese Studies.

In addition to contributions by coeditors Wm. Theodore de Bary, Columbia University, and Mr. Chan, the volume includes papers by:

Judith A. Berling Wing-tsit Chan John W. Dardess Herbert Franke David Gedalecia Jan Yiinhua John D. Langlois, Jr. Liu Ts'un-yan

Tu Wei-ming Chiin-Fang Yii

MARCH 1984

Indiana University Dartmouth College University of Kansas Bavarian Academy of Sciences College of Wooster McMaster University Bowdoin College The Australian National

University Harvard University Rutgers University

Agricultural and Rural Development in China Today, edited by Randolph Barker and Beth Rose. Papers from a workshop joindy sponsored by Cornell University'S Program in International Agriculture, Rural Development Committee of the Center for In­ternational Studies, Center for the Analysis of World Food Issues, Department of Agricultural Economics, Department of Rural Sociology, and China-japan Program; and by the Mellon Program in Chinese Studies of the Committee on Chinese Civilization of the American Council of Learned Societies and the joint Committee on Contemporary China. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University, November 1983. Cor­nell International Agriculture Mimeograph 102. iv+ 149 pages.

China's agricultural economy has undergone many changes as a result of the Chinese government's re­cent policy changes designed to encourage agricul­tural production and increase productivity. As China reaches out to "learn from the West," American scholars in the agricultural and social sciences are asking how we can assist China in achieving a more rapid rate of agricultural development and a higher standard of living for its pebple. In turn, scholars question how the United States can learn from the unique development of Chinese agriculture.

A workshop chaired by Randolph Barker, Cornell University, was held in April 1981 at Cornell Univer­sity to provide an exchange among scholars and ex­perts working on problems of agricultural and rural development, and to provide a forum for the ex­change of information and methodology between ag­ricultural and social scientists engaged in research on Chinese agriculture and rural society. Of the 20 pa­pers prepared for the workshop, the following eight are included in this volume:

"Advances in Rice Technology in the People's Republic of China," by W. R. Coffman, Cornell University, and S. S. Virmani, International Rice Research Institute, Los Banos, The Philippines

"Forestry in China Today: Implications for the 1980s," by Les­ter Ross, Purdue University

"Environmental Factors in China's Agriculture," by Baruch Boxer, Rutgers University

"The Limits to Agricultural Intensification: The Suzhou Expe­rience," by Thomas B. Wiens, The World Bank (Washington, D.C.)

"Household, Kinship and Women in Taitou Village, Shandong Province," by Norma Diamond, University of Michigan

"The Struggle Over the Harvest and the Politics of Local Grain Reserves," by Jean C. Oi, Lehigh University

"Agricultural Economics-U.S. and Chinese: Is There a Meet­ing Ground?" by Peter A. Calkins, Iowa State University

"Perceptions of the Learning Process in Chinese Higher Edu­cation in Agriculture," by Cheung Lau, Cornell University

23

Discontinuation of Dissertation Fellowships in Employment and Training

I n October 1983, the Congress passed and sent to the president an appropriations bill for the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) that earmarked a substantial portion of DOL's research budget for rural employment programs.

I n response to this unfortunate reduction in research funds, the Employment and Training Administration of DOL informed the Council that it would no longer support its program of dissertation fellowships in employment and training. The Council will continue to administer awards that are still in progress, but no new awards will be made in 1984.

SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL

605 THIRD AVENUE, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10158

Incorporated In tlte Slate oj Illinois, December 27, 1924, for the /JUrpose of advancing research in tlte social sciences

Directon, 1983-84: Sn:I'~IEN E. FIENBERG, Carnegie-Mellon University; HOWARD GARDNER, Veterans Administration Medical Center (Boston); CHARLES O. JONES, University of Virginia; ROBERT W. KATES, Clark University; ROBERT A. LEVINE, Harvard University; GARDNER LiNDZEY, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; El.EANOR E. MACCOBY, Stanford University; MARC NERLOVE, University of Pennsylvania; HUGH T . PATRICK, Yale University; KENNETH PREWITT, Social Science Research Council; MURRAY L. SCHWARTZ, University of California, Los Angeles; DONNA E. SIIALALA, Huntel' College, City University of New York; STEPHEN M. STIGLER, University of Chicago; LOUISE A. TILLY, University of Michigan; SIDNEY VERBA, Harvard University; IMMANU"-L WALLERSTEIN, State University of New York, Binghamton; WILLIAM jul.Ius WII.SON, University of Chicago.

Ojlicers and Staff KENNETII PRt:\\ ITT, President; DAVID L. SIl.LS, Executive Associate; RONALD J. PELECK, ContTOller; TIIEODORt: C. BESTOR, JOAN DASSIN, P. NIKIFOROS DIAMANDOl'ROS, \fARTIlA A. GEI'I-IART, ROBERT W. PEARSON, PETER B. READ, RICHARD C. ROCKWt:l.I., SOI'I-IIE SA, l.ONNIE R. SHERROD, DA \"1Il L. SZANTON.

24 VOLUME 38, NUMBER 1