Showing papers in "The Journal of Asian Studies in 1989"

Science and Technology in Post-Mao China

Abstract: Along with the political and economic reforms that have characterized the post-Mao era in China there has been a potentially revolutionary change in Chinese science and technology. Here sixteen scholars examine various facets of the current science and technology scene, comparing it with the past and speculating about future trends. Two chapters dealing with science under the Nationalists and under Mao are followed by a section of extensive analysis of reforms under Deng Xiaoping, focusing on the organizational system, the use of human resources, and the emerging response to market forces. Chapters dealing with changes in medical care, agriculture, and military research and development demonstrate how these reforms have affected specific areas during the Chinese shift away from Party orthodoxy and Maoist populism toward professional expertise as the guiding principle in science and technology. Three further chapters deal with China's interface with the world at large in the process of technology transfer. Both the introductory and concluding chapters describe the tension between the Chinese Communist Party structure, with its inclinations toward strict vertical control, and the scientific and technological community's need for a free flow of information across organizational, disciplinary, and national boundaries.

Niangjia : Chinese Women and Their Natal Families

Abstract: The classic model of Chinese kinship organization, with its complementary emphases on patrilineality, patrilocality, and patriarchy, continues as a framework for research on Chinese social organization despite accumulating evidence of alternative models or of disjunctures within the elite model. This model has come under critical scrutiny from a variety of perspectives, most notably anthropologically informed historical research (Watson 1982; Watson 1985) that has led to a questioning of the lineage model (Freedman 1965) and field-based research that has drawn attention to the prevalence of uxorilocal and “small daughter-in-law” (tongyangxi) marriage and to the nurturing of uterine families (Wolf and Huang 1980; Wolf 1972). My purpose is to contribute to this reassessment with a discussion of customary practices of postmarital dual residence for women and continuing ties between married women and their natal families. These practices and ties cannot be accounted for within the framework of the structural-functionalist model and require an adaptation of practiceoriented theory. This may illuminate the specific structuring patterns and disjunctures described below as well as suggest possibly fruitful lines of analysis for other societies in which lineages are salient. The contribution of this article is to identify and explore a significant dimension of structuring practices in informal kinship relations in rural China.

Vietnamese Kinship: Structural Principles and the Socialist Transformation in Northern Vietnam

Abstract: In the literature on the process of socioeconomic transformation, a major debate centers on the questions of how and how much indigenous traditions, including kinship structures, are transformed by the larger political economic framework (Sahlins 1985, Hobsbawm 1983, Wolf 1982). Marxist theoretical analyses tend to emphasize the eventual demise of gender inequality and male-oriented (patrilineal, patrilocal, and patriarchical) kinship systems—kinship systems within which gender relations are also embedded (cf. Engels 1972). The analytical literature on Vietnamese kinship and gender in the socialist era is certainly not an exception in this regard. It is pervaded with general propositions regarding the nuclearization of the family (Houtart and Lemercinier 1981, Werner 1981) and the political-economy-based transformation of the system toward a structure of egalitarian gender relations (e.g., Le thḷ Nhâm-Tuyet 1973).

Sahibs, Babus , and Banias : Changes in Industrial Control in Eastern India, 1918–50

Abstract: T HE HISTORY OF INDUSTRIALIZATION of many developing countries in Asia is related to conflicts between foreigners and a growing local bourgeoisie over industrial ownership and control. This article analyzes one such country-India-from the end of World War I until a few years beyond independence. At the time of independence in 1947, India's manufacturing sector accounted for a mere 17 percent of the national income (Sivasubramonian 1965) and employed barely 10 percent of the country's work force (Krishnamurty 1983). The modern factory sector was even smaller in size. Concentrated largely around Calcutta, Bombay, and to a lesser extent Ahmedabad, Kanpur, and Madras, it accounted for 9 percent of net domestic product.' In spite of its relative smallness, the factory sector witnessed impressive growth, especially after World War I until 1947. Between 1900-1901 and 1918-19, its real value added grew at a compound rate of around 1. 7 percent per year. After World War I the growth was more rapid: between 1919-20 and 1946-47, output from factories grew at 5.3 percent per annum (Sivasubramonian 1965 and Heston 1983). Arguably the base was low. In 19001901 modern factories accounted for merely Rs. 298 million at constant 1938-39 prices (Sivasubramonian 1965: 2561. Nevertheless, an overall annual growth of 3.4 percent per year over forty-seven years was impressive enough, for it contributed to a more than sevenfold increase in output. This growth in the factory sector induced a boom in research on India's industrial development and systems of industrial organization. In the 1930s, P. S. Lokanathan published his classic work, Industrial Organisation in India, which demonstrated the immense power, prestige, and influence of European managing agency houses (similar to holding companies) in India's commerce and industry. Since then successive works

British business in Asia since 1860

Abstract: List of illustrations List of maps List of tables Preface 1. British business in Asia since 1860 R. P. T. Davenport-Hines and Geoffrey Jones 2. British business in Iran, 1860s-1970s Frances Bostock and Geoffrey Jones 3. British business in Russian Asia since the 1860s: an opportunity lost? Christine White 4. British business in India, 1860-1970 B. R. Tomlinson 5. Early British business in Thailand Malcolm Falkus 6. British business in Malaysia and Singapore since the 1870s Jean-Jacques van Helten and Geoffrey Jones 7. British business in China, 1860s-1950s Jurgen Osterhammel 8. British business in Japan since 1868 R. P. T. Davenport-Hines and Geoffrey Jones Notes Index.

Justices and Paṇḍitas : Some Ironies in Contemporary Readings of the Hindu Legal Past

Abstract: India's history provides one of the best documented examples of colonialism. The British kept meticulous records of their attempts to improve, govern, and even exploit the people and institutions of the subcontinent. Improvement and government often occurred at the expense of traditional institutions, especially in the area of the legal tradition. The British are responsible for the decline and eventual demise of the living dharmaśāstra (science of orthodox behavior) tradition. The tradition has not been resuscitated in independent India. Nevertheless, even though the office of Paṇḍita (traditional expert) has long been abolished from the courts and the very training of modern Paṇḍitas has become rare, the texts of the dharmaśāstra tradition continue to be used in a very “paṇḍitic” fashion by the courts of modern India. The justices function as Paṇḍitas, and the texts they cite are mere window dressing for the interpretations of Hindu law they seek to promulgate.

Ethnic Diversity and the Control of Natural Resources in Southeast Asia

Abstract: The authors consider the ways in which the high degree of ethnic diversity within the region is related to the nature of tropical Asian environments, on the one hand, and the nature of Southeast Asian political systems and the ways in which they manipulate natural resources, on the other. Rather than focus on defining the phenomenon of ethnicity, this book examines the different social evolutionary contexts in which the phenomenon is manifested. Companion volume to Cultural Values and Human Ecology in Southeast Asia (Michigan Papers no. 27)

Hijackers, Bombers, and Bank Robbers: Managerial Style in the Japanese Red Army

Abstract: A tiny, radical student group seems at first glance to be an unlikely vantage point from which to evaluate continuity and change in the social organization of Japan. Yet social scientists often study extremes and misfits in order to gain new perspective on the conventional and normative. Whatever the people on the margin share unquestioningly with the rest of the society hints at the breadth and power of social norms; whatever they question, or have trouble doing, points to the inevitable cracks in the social order. Moreover, when a society seems to emphasize harmony and order, it is particularly important to examine the points and processes of conflict. Points of conflict are the harbingers of social change, and processes for managing conflict reveal the price that is paid for order.

Chinese Hierarchy in Comparative Perspective

Abstract: How are we to understand the history of a nonmodern civilization without refracting and distorting what we see through the prism of the ostensibly individualistic and egalitarian modern culture in which most of us live and which we tend to take as normative? In this article I invite other modern-minded readers to turn our worldview upside down and look at Chinese society over the long term from the perspective of its official ideology and not from the perspective of a universalized modern worldview in which economic relations are privileged above all others.

Mirror in the Shrine: American Encounters with Meiji Japan . By Robert A. Rosenstone. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988. xiv, 315 pp. $25.00.

Abstract: Based on the travels of Griffis, Morse, and Hearn in the late 1800s, these stories evoke the immediacy of daily experience in Meiji, Japan, a nation still feudal in many of its habits yet captivating to Westerners for its gentleness, beauty, and pure charm. Illustrated.

A Social History of Language Change in Highland East Java

Abstract: Throughout east and southeast asia multilingual speech communities are the norm rather than the exception. In most countries in the region, nonstandard dialects and ethnic languages survive and even thrive despite the introduction of national languages and their utilization in government, business, and education. Where communicative isolation is not the cause of their survival, the persistence of such regional languages often signals the continuing importance of distinctive infranational identities, operating within (and sometimes across) the boundaries of the modern nation state. Although surely not the only important marker of ethnic or social distinctiveness, language is a particularly rich medium for the expression of social identity. Conversely, the adoption of a new linguistic standard often requires the resolution of what are perceived as competing social identities. In much of developing Asia, therefore, researchers on language history regularly encounter some variant of the same question: what social and historical conditions determine the ways that speakers in multilingual communities resolve problems of language and identity? More specifically, what mix of cultural and political forces ensures that some linguistic varieties persist while others decline or even disappear?

Buddhist Allegory in the Journey to the West

Abstract: The narrative richness of the Chinese Ming (1368–1644) novel known as the Hsi-yu chi, or The Journey to the West, presents a daunting challenge to the interpreter. The bewildering array of cultural lore—especially from the three major religious traditions of China (Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism)—is so diverse and boldly interwoven that it almost appears as “simply furniture thrown in to impress, or mock, the reader” (Plaks 1977:181). Thus any interpretation faces the danger of exaggerating the importance of these cultural and religious elements, only to discover that the author offered them in jest.

Chinese Ideas About Nature and Society: Studies in Honour of Derk Bodde

Abstract: The main theme that pervades this Festschrift, written by fellow-scholars and students of Bodde for his seventy-fifth birthday, is that of the proper ordering of the universe as it obtains in the Chinese tradition.