8/4/2019 Book Reviews Jane Jacobs

1/3

Book Reuiews 907cen t from Pak istan to Japan-an area influenced for the most pa rt by the monsoonsan d therefore known as Monsoon Asia.Of the five par ts into w hich the book is divided, th e first sketches th e physical se ttingan d m ans influence, an d the last, th e economic a n d political geography of Mon soon Asiaasa whole, while th e other p art s are devoted to regional analyses, w ith m ajor em phasison patterns of land use. Dobby distinguishes three major realms: Southern, Southeast,an d E aste rn Asia, each of which is fur the r divided into regions. His bound ary betweenEastern and Southeast Asia including North Vietnam, and the Philippines in EasternAsia rather than in Southeast Asia, comes as a surprise.Of grea t value are the num erous sketch maps as well assections of topographic mapswhich illustrate the settle m ent and land use patt ern s of representative rural landscapes.A large body of sta tist ica l information is compressed into tables summarizing demo-graphic, agricultural, industrial, trade, and other economic data. These tables con-tribu te sub stan tially to th e value of the chapters dealing with th e economic an d politicalgeography of M onsoo n Asia.Percevals Narrative: A Palietats Account of His Psychosis, 1830-1832. GREGORYBATESONEd.) Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1961. xxii, 331 pp .,footnote s, frontispiece. $6.75.

Reviewed by S . H. POSINSKY,ew York CityJohn Perceval(1803-1876), son of an assassinated prime minister of England, wroteand published this book two decades before the birth of F r e u d - a n d long before thewords psychiatry an d schizophrenia had been coined. Percevals insights into hisown symptoms, into m ental dysfunction in general, and in to the n atur e of the thera-peutic interaction a re surprisingly m odern. At a ny rat e, a fter three years of schizo-phrenic illness and despite the ministrations of friends, relatives, and physicians, heexperienced a spontaneous remission of his delusional symptoms. Percevals memoirsare relatively free of turgidity, and, than ks to Batesons editing, the repetition an dcontentiousness which generally characterize such a document are not unnecessarilyburdensome. In the Introduction, Bateson touches on Percevals Freudianism,though he places the authors theoretical position as perhaps midway between th at ofFreud and William Blake; he indicates that Percevals language is often that of

theology, where his thou gh ts are those of a scientist; h e reminds us th a t contemporarytherapy an d hospitalization a re not free of th e defects which Perceval observed am on gthe lunatic doctors of the 1830s; nd, most significantly, he n otes th a t schizophrenia,conventionally regarded as a disease, is more like some vast and painful initiatoryceremony conducted by the self. By making this important and rare book easilyavailable, Bateson h as done a service for st ud en ts and practitioners of the behavioralsciences and therape utic arts.The Death and Life of Great American Cities. JANE JACOBS. New York: Random House,

Reviewed b y PAUL UTSCHE,he Colorado CollegeOn the face of it this book has nothing to do with anthropology, a nd i t belongs inthe realm of polemical journalism (along with L incoln Steffens Tke Shame ofthe C ities,McClure, Phillips, 1904) rather than of scholarship. Bu t i t should in terest ethnolo-gists who w ant to see how f ar beyond the discipline anthropological ideas have pene-

1961. 458 pp., index. $5.95.

8/4/2019 Book Reviews Jane Jacobs

2/3

908 American Anthropologist [64,19621trated. And it will be a useful source of insights to ethnographers who are asked toinvolve themselves in th e problems of man in mass society.Miss Jacobs point of dep arture is an atta ck . . on the principles and aims t ha thave shaped modern, orthodox city planning and rebuilding (p. 3) sta rtin g withEbenezer Howards garden c ity and proceeding strai gh t through the prophets of theR ad iant Garden City Beautiful-Patrick Geddes, Le Corbusier, Lewis Mu mford,and the rest. She says they h ave bu ilt, and presentday planners use, an alm ost paranoidsystem of suburbanized ideals, and when their planning efforts fail to provide livelycities they seek remedies by proceeding fu rth er in the same direction. Successful citydistricts create themselves entirely with ou t relation to, an d sometimes in sp ite of theefforts of, city planners an d their pupils, the banks an d othe r lending agencies. SuccessMiss Jacobs defines as concentrated use, high diversity, and experimentation withnew enterprise. Such districts are Greenwich Village, th e No rth En d of Boston, a ndBack of the Y ards in Chicago, the last two of which survived m ortgage blacklists.T he authors poin t is th a t planning for city renewal makes sense only as a sequelto the stu dy of whole cities and city neighborhoods as they actually function, w ith asmuch atte ntion paid to wh at works as t o w hat fails. A large portion of the book (espe-cially Part 1, The Peculiar Nature of Cities and Part 3, Forces of Decline andRegeneration) reports her own partic ipa nt observation of the way cities function andmalfunction. She is particularly aware of the importance of informal social structure,which she refers to as th e network of casual contacts between neighbors, forminga basis of tru st underlying whatever joint action may be necessary for the neighborhoodto achieve or ma intain v itali ty. H er guides for the study of neighborhoods read like amanual on ethnographic field method.Ideal urban con dition s-am ong them street safety, dense occupance, and cheek-by-jowl heterogeneity-are approached from something very close to the structu ral-functional point of view: A sidewalk life . . .arises out of no mysterious qualities ortalents for i t in this or th at type of population. It arises only when the concretetangible facilities it requires are present (p. 70). The conditons for generating thediversity which she regads as so important are all concrete and tangible: 1) eachdistrict must serve more than one primary function, the hours of use of which shouldbe staggered so th at people are on the streets a maximum portion of th e day ; 2) mostblocks must be short, to give frequent opportunities to turn corners, hence knit theneighborhood together with a multitude of casual contacts; 3) buildings must vary inage and condition, so as to vary in the economic yield needed to b reak even, andat tr ac t different kinds of use; 4)people, including residents, must be densely concen-trated.Possibly the w orst sin which planners hav e perpetra ted on th e bodies of grea t citiesis the housing project for people with low incomes. Miss Jacobs devo tes considerablespace to th e dullness, danger, and social formlessness of life behind these uniform greywalls. Some of her best criticisms were anticipated in a little-known book written byA.F.C.Wallace for th e Ph iladelphia Housing Authority (Bowing u td Social Strudwe,Philadelphia, 1952). Applying the concept of culture to the microcosm of housingprojects, Wallace noted th a t the destruction of old buildings which precedes construc-tion of pro jects disperses an d often destroys a hea lthy existing social fabric. T he newproject usually stan ds architecturally d istin ct from its surroundings-e.g., the elevatorpark apartme nt in the midstof row housing-thus po intin go ut its tena nts as invidiouslydifferent. And project authorities prevent the re-creation of effective social networksby paternalistic control and by income ceilings which tend to expel community leadersjust at the point where they become recognized by heir neighbors.

8/4/2019 Book Reviews Jane Jacobs

3/3

New Polbldtations Received 909The Death aad L4fe o j Gr& Americas Cities has faults which will f r us t r a t e the

e thnologis t seeking more than inspira tion f rom i t . T he auth or is apparent ly innocentof such work n the social s tr uc tur e of large enti t ies as has ac tua l ly been done in an thro-pology an d sociology. He r a t t ack on t radi t iona l c i ty planning and p lanners i s morevociferous tha n p recise and shows l i t t le awareness of the 19th cen tury u rba n condit ionswhich ga ve r ise to t h a t school. And sheneve r ment ions the rebuilding egoortsof Nor th-ern Eu rop ean cit ies, the history of which mig ht shed considerable l igh t on A mericanurban problems.But anthropologis ts w ho a re asked to bring their discipline to bear on problems ofur ba n organiza tion will f ind in the book a p o i n t of view w hich is congenial, and enoughhypotheses about the func t iona l improvements to be gained from reform of urbanstru cture s (physical and otherwise) to inci te yea rs of research act ivi ty.

New Publications ReceivedAame, A ntti. The types 01he folktale: a cla.&&&m and bibliograjhy. Second revision transla ted

and enlarged by Stith Thompson. (FF Communications Vol. LXXV, No. 184.) Helsinki:Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. 588 pp., bibliography, index. 3000 mk (paper bound) ;3300 mk (cloth bound).Argyris, Chris. Znk@ersonal cornpehnce and wganiadiond eject ivencss. With a chapter by RogerHarrison. (One of the Irwin-Dorsey Series in Behavioral Science in Business.) Homewood,Illinois: Richard D. Irw in, Inc., 1962. xi, 292 pp., 2 figures, indices, 18 tables. $6.50.de Azevedo, Thales. Ankcdenla do h m . Publication Series3,No. 3.) Bahia, Brad: Universi-dade da Babia, 1961. 77 pp., 1 figure, 1 chart. n.p.Bascom, William K. nd Melville J. Herskovits (Eds.) Conlinuily and change in Aj rkan cullures.(A Phoen ix Book.) (Originally published in 1959.) Chicago: The University of Chicago Press ,1962. x, 309pp., figures, footnotes, index, tables. $1.95.Benedict, Burton. Indians i n a p h d ocie4y: a report an Mauritius. (ColonialOffice,Colonial Re-search Studies No. 34.) London: Her M ajestys Stationery Office, 1961.168 pp., index, 1 map,8 plates, references, 25 tables. 25s,

Berg, Giista and others (Eds.) S c b d i s c k e Vdkskundc: Qucucrr, Fwschung,Ergcbniss. (Festschriftfilr Sigfrid Svenssonmum sechzigsten G eburtstag am 1.Juni 1961.) Stockholm: Almqvist andWiksells, 1961. 511 pp., bibliographies, figures. n.p.Beshers, James M. r h oGid s t c f u r c . New York:The FreePress of Glencoe, Inc ., 1962. ix, 207pp., appendix, index, references. $5.50.Biegert, von Joseph. Volarhaul dcr H W e und Fdsse. (Primatologia, Vol. I, Part 1, Chapter 3,edited by H. Hofer, A. H. Schultz, and D. Starck.) Basel: S. Karger, 1961. vi, 326 pp.,bibliography, 101 figures, 58 tables. sFr 75.--.von Bonin, G erhardt and Percival Bailey. P&re of the c ~ & d o c o r k . (Prim atologia, Vol. 11,Part 2, Chapter 10, edited by H. Hofer, A. H. Schultz, and D. Starck.) Basel: S. Karger,1961. iv, 42 pp., 33 figures, references,4 colored pla tes. sFr 20.--.de Borhegyi, Stephan F. and others. M h W e America% research ~ccwds. Volume 11, Numbers

1-8.) (Publication 18, Middle American Research Institute.) New Orleans: Tulane Univer-sity, 1961. 175 pp,, charts , figures, references. n.p.Bourne, Edward Gaylord. Spain iva America 1450-1580. New introduction and supplementarybibliography by Benjamin Keen. (A University Paperback reprint, originally published in1904.) New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1962. xviii, 366 pp., bibliography, frontispiece,index, 1 map. $2.25 (paper); $5.00 cloth).Brewster, Paul G. and Georgia Tarsouli. II an ajd and Lioymneti and child 76 and 110: a

study i n sirniloritiw. (FF Communications No. 183.) Helnnk i: A cademia SEientiarum Fen-nica, 1961. 17 pp., footnotes, 1 map. 100mk.Burgess, M. laine. Negro ledemhip ire D soulkern city. Chapel H ill: The University of North