170
BOOK REVIEWS
Japanese villages, Mexican villages and, indeed, European villages. It is precisely through looking for parallels and differences in social structure (despite what might be great differences in culture) that generalizations about the village as a form of social organization and human association may in fact be forthcoming.
What would seem to be required now is a two-fold effort in which the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society might fruitfully participate. The first effort should be the accumulation of data in archival form which would be available to scholars in Hong Kong to use for comparative purposes. This archival effort would have to be well enough subsidized to be able to reproduce and store data, the original copies of which no author would willingly leave behind.
The second effort usefully could be a conference of people actively involved or likely to be involved in research about Hong Kong villages (or indeed any villages) in which discussions could be held concerning what current researchers in the field think are the major issues and research problems. Perhaps through this conference a programmatic series of research efforts, which would have greater final scientific value than any single research effort could have, would be forthcoming.
Open-ended books like Mr. Baker's can help to stimulate thinking of this kind and as a consequence must be rated as both useful and important.
STRANGERS AT THE GATE, SOCIAL DISORDER IN SOUTH CHINA, 1839-1861. Frederic Wakeman, Jr., University of California Press, 1966, pp. 276, US$6.
This fairly short book provides a narrative of the main events of twenty-three years of British dealings with Canton and Kwang-
11 The Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, has recently begun such a project. A conference has been held in which problems of research have been discussed: this is a hopeful beginning. It may be further aided by the forthcoming publication of a new bibliography of materials about Hong Kong, to be published shortly by the Department of Extramural Studies, of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Editor's note: the proceedings of the conference mentioned in Dr. Berkowitz's note 11 have now been published. See Marjorie Topley (compiler) Anthropology and Sociology in Hong Kong. Field Projects and Problems of Overseas Scholars. Hong Kong, Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1969.
170
BOOK REVIEWS
Japanese villages, Mexican villages and, indeed, European villages. It is precisely through looking for parallels and differences in social structure (despite what might be great differences in culture) that generalizations about the village as a form of social organiza- tion and human association may in fact be forthcoming.
What would seem to be required now is a two-fold effort in which the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society might fruitfully participate. The first effort should be the accumulation of data in archival form which would be available to scholars in Hong Kong to use for comparative purposes. This archival effort would have to be well enough subsidized to be able to reproduce and store data, the original copies of which no author would willingly leave behind.
The second effort usefully could be a conference of people actively involved or likely to be involved in research about Hong Kong villages (or indeed any villages) in which discussions could be held concerning what current researchers in the field think are the major issues and research problems. Perhaps through this conference a programmatic series of research efforts, which would have greater final scientific value than any single research effort could have, would be forthcoming.
Open-ended books like Mr. Baker's can help to stimulate thinking of this kind and as a consequence must be rated as both useful and important.
STRANGERS AT THE GATE, SOCIAL DISORDER IN SOUTH CHINA, 1839-1861. Frederic Wakeman, Jr., University of California Press, 1966, pp. 276, US$6.
This fairly short book provides a narrative of the main events of twenty-three years of British dealings with Canton and Kwang-
11 The Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, has recently begun such a project. A conference has been held in which problems of research have been discussed: this is a hopeful beginning. It may be further aided by the forthcoming publication of a new bibliography of materials about Hong Kong, to be published shortly by the Department of Extramural Studies, of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Editor's note: the proceedings of the conference mentioned in Dr. Berkowitz's note 11 have now been published. See Marjorie Topley (compiler) Anthropology and Sociology in Hong Kong. Field Projects and Problems of Overseas Scholars. Hong Kong, Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1969.
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