206
BOOK REVIEWS
social organization). The main body of the book follows, consisting of four chapters describing the villagers' religious practices in the old and new settings, classified into "Yearly Festivals," "The Worship of Supernatural Beings," "Rites de Passage," and "Ancestor Worship and Related Practices." Throughout these chapters, there are many informative footnotes, including references to a wide range of works on Chinese religion and the sociology of religion. The book concludes with a brief methodological appendix. The research methodology used was that of participant observation, and the information was gathered by three Hakka-speaking students who lived in the resettlement area and participated in the villagers' daily activities for three months. However, these observers were instructed by the directors of the project "not to breach the topic of religion during the first two months of the study, while during the last one and one-half months they were allowed to conduct "cautious semi-structured interviews" with friends they had made among the villagers (but the authors give us no information as to the numbers or characteristics of the people interviewed, and without this information, it is difficult to assess the validity of the data)3. These methodological constraints, and the fact that the observers were also gathering data on other topics, may help to explain why the book does not offer as much original information as one might expect from three months' participant observation by three investigators.
The authors state that the book's first chapter is directed primarily at specialists, and advise the general reader to postpone reading it (for this reason, it might better have been put at the end of the book). It consists of a brief exposition of the theory of structural-functionalism, which is said to be the framework on which the research was based, and a discussion of the meaning of religion, with particular reference to Chinese society. In actuality, the book is primarily descriptive, and the sociological theory is not systematically applied to the materials. This chapter does not make any mention of the extensive literature on the theory of social change, which would seem to be particularly relevant to the problem which the authors are studying, of "Hakka villagers in transition.”
The study of social change is probably the most challenging type of research for the social scientist to face, far more difficult
206
BOOK REVIEWS
social organization). The main body of the book follows, consist- ing of four chapters describing the villagers' religious practices in the old and new settings, classified into "Yearly Festivals," "The Worship of Supernatural Beings," "Rites de Passage," and “An- cestor Worship and Related Practices." Throughout these chapters there are many informative footnotes, including references to a wide range of works on Chinese religion and the sociology of religion. The books concludes with a brief methodological ap- pendix. The research methodology used was that of participant observation, and the information was gathered by three Hakka- speaking students who lived in the resettlement area and par- ticipated in the villagers' daily activities for three months. How- ever, these observers were instructed by the directors of the project "not to breach the topic of religion during the first two months of the study, while during the last one and one-half months they were allowed to conduct "cautious semi-structured interviews" with friends they had made among the villagers (but the authors give us no information as to the numbers or characteristics of the people interviewed, and without this in- formation it is difficult to assess the validity of the data)3. These methodological constraints, and the fact that the observers were also gathering data on other topics, may help to explain why the book does not offer as much original information as one might expect from three months' participant observation by three investi- gators.
The authors state that the book's first chapter is directed primarily at specialists, and advise the general reader to postpone reading it (for this reason, it might better have been put at the end of the book). It consists of a brief exposition of the theory of structural-functionalism, which is said to be the framework on which the research was based, and a discussion of the meaning of religion, with particular reference to Chinese society. In actuality, the book is primarily descriptive and the sociological theory is not systematically applied to the materials. This chapter does not make any mention of the extensive literature on the theory of social change, which would seem to be particularly relevant to the problem which the authors are studying, of "Hakka villagers in transition.”
The study of social change is probably the most challenging type of research for the social scientist to face, far more difficult
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