SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL

VOLUME 34 • NUMBER 3/4 • December 1980 605 THIRD AVENUE. NEW YORK, N.Y. 10016

Lawrence R. Klein Wins Nobel Prize: Council Board Member and Founder of

Project LINK THE ANNOUNCEMENT ON OCTOBER 15 that the 1980

Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science had been given to Lawrence R. Klein was deeply gratifying to members of the Council. Mr. Klein, who is Benjamin Franklin professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania, held two SSRC research training fellowships: the first, in 1945-46, "for re­search training in economic theory through study of the formulation of econometric business cycle theories" at the Cowles Commission (Chicago) and the second, in 1947-48, "for the study of economic planning" in Oslo, Norway. His subsequent involve­ment with the Council has included more than 20 years of continuous service on Council committees.

The prize was awarded to Mr. Klein in part for his work with Project LINK, which he initiated in 1968 and has guided since its inception. Sponsored by the Council through its Committee on Economic Stability and Growth (1959- ), Project LINK is an extraordi­nary venture in international scholarly collaboration, drawing on intellectual resources and local expertise from around the world. It involves the integration of the econometric models of more than 20 industri­alized countries (eight of which are socialist countries)

Dear Reader-The June 1980 issue of Items contained a question­

naire for use in the revision of our mailing list. If you did not return the questionnaire and wish to

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At a party held in his honor, Mr. Klein noted that the colored balloons are an example of "real inflation."

The Editor

49

and of four regional models-for Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. The LINK system is therefore global in scope and virtually complete in its geographical coverage. Reports on the progress of LINK activities have been published more or less an­nually in Items since 1969, authored either by Mr. Klein or by Bert G. Hickman, Stanford University, who has been chairman of the Committee on Economic Stability and Growth since 1962 and is also a principal investigator on Project LINK.

In announcing the award, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited the importance of Mr. Klein's work "for the creation of economic models and their application to the analysis of economic fluctuations and economic policies." It acknowledged in particular the worldwide importance both of the Brookings-SSRC Project, which aimed in the 1960s at forecasting the short-term development of the American economy, and more recently of Project LINK, which for more than a decade has coordinated the maintenance and improvement of econometric models around the world.

Mr. Klein received the B.A. from the University of California in 1942 and the Ph.D. from the Massachu­setts Institute of Technology in 1944. In addition to occupying a number of research posts, he taught at the University of Michigan and at Oxford before joining the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania in 1958. His service to the Council began in 1959, when he was appointed as a founding member of the Committee on Economic Stability (enlarged to Eco­nomic Stability and Growth in 1974). In addition to his continuing involvement in the work of this com­mittee, he has served for six years as a member of the

CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE

49 Lawrence R. Klein Wins Nobel Prize: Council Board Ylember and Founder of Project LINK

50 The Council's International Program-Kelllleth Prewitt

54 The Humanities and the Social Sciences: A Sympo­sium-David L. Szantoll

57 The Humanities and Social Sciences in China: Report of a Fact-finding Trip

58 Proposed Reorganization of the National Science Foundation

60 Current Activities at the Council -New directors and officers -New staff members -Cognitive Research -Biosocial Perspectives on Parenting -Development, Giftedness, and the Learning Process -Liaison with economists in China -Dissertation fellowships in employment and training -Life-Course Perspectives on Middle and Old Age

66 Newly-issued Council Publications 70 Other Recent Publications: A Selection 71 Readership Questionnaire

-To be cut, folded, and mailed

Council's board of directors, from 1971 to 1976. Re­cently, he has been appointed a member of the new Committee on United States-China Economics Liaison, which is sponsored jointly by the Council and the American Economic Association.

The Council has derived great benefit from its asso­ciation with Mr. Klein during the past 35 years and from his deep commitment to the improvement of empirical economic models and their applications in the forecasting of world economic conditions. On the occasion of his receiving the 1980 Nobel Prize, the Council 'is proud to acknowledge its debt to him. 0

The Council's International Program

PRIOR TO WORLD WAR II, foreign area studies, in the sense in which the term is now used, were virtually nonexistent in the social sciences in the United States. So, too, the Council's internationally-related activities were few and for the most part peripheral to the Council's main interests. Starting with the appoint­ment of a Committee on World Regions in 1943, however, the Council has increasingly given attention to encouraging research on societies and cultures out­side of the United States. 1

During the past year, as part of the Council's on-

50

by Kenneth Prewitt*

going evaluation of its international activities, the programs of the 10 geographically focused Council committees that are jointly sponsored with the American Council of Learned Societies underwent extensive review by an Ad Hoc Working Group on

* The author, a political scientist, has been president of the Council since March 1979.

I Robert E. Ward and Bryce Wood, "Foreign Area Studies and the Social Science Research Council," Items, 28(4), 53-58 (Decem­ber 1974).

VOLUME 34, NUMBER 3/4

Joint Area Committees of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council, 1980-81

Committee African Studies, 1960-

Chairman Staff

Contemporary China, 1959-

John M. Janzen, University of Kansas

Michel C. Oksenberg, University of Michigan

Martha A. Gephart

Sophie Sa

Eastern Europe, 1971- Dean S. Worth, . Jason H. Parker, American Council of Learned Societies

Ronald Aqua

U,niversity of California, Los Angeles

Japanese Studies, 1967- Robert E. Cole,

Korean Studies, 1967-University of Michigan

Chae-Jin Lee, Ronald Aqua

Latin American Studies, 1959-University of Kansas

Albert Fishlow, Geo!ge Reid Andrews ~ Yale University

Near and Middle East, 1959- Robert J. Lapham, Rowland L. Mitchell, Jr.

South Asia, 1970-National Research Council

Myron Weiner, Massachusetts Institute

David L. Szanton

of Technology Southeast Asia, 1976- James C. Scott, David L. Szanton

Yale University Western Europe, 1975- Charles S. Maier, Robert A. Gates

Duke University

the International Program,2 by the Council's Com­mittee on Problems and Policy, and by the joint com­mittees themselves. Colleagues in the foundations were also asked to share their experience and their wisdom.

The review produced two general conclusions. First, the joint committees remain a unique resource for advancing social science and humanistic research, although their frames of reference are shifting. Sec­ond, the Council's international program should be a good deal more than a mere summation of the joint committees activities.

The future of the joint area committees

While the Council's review this past year set some new directions for its international program, it did not do so at the expense of the joint committee structure. Indeed, given the growing complexity of international studies in the 1980s, the joint commit­tees now take on added importance. They must con­tinue to assess the state of their fields, identifying both opportunities for building upon scholarly com­petence and gaps and weaknesses which require spe­cial attention. Through their continued support of advanced research training and individual research, they will generate the historically and culturally

DECEMBER 1980

rooted knowledge essential for building a more com­parative social science. In addition, they will continue to serve as key resources for identifying scholars abroad who are undertaking important research. Collectively, these roles correspond to what has com­monly been termed "field development." The need for field development remains, but in the context of the achievements of past decades and current limits on available resources, the tasks of field development must be more carefully defined.

Unlike the situation during the 1950s and 1960s, when area studies programs were established in the United States and the size of the scholarly community with the training and research experience necessary to analyze social, political, and economic phenomena elsewhere in the world was very small, it is no longer true that any additional suppo.rt for such training and research seems worthwhile.

2 The members of the committee were Kenneth Prewitt, Social Science Research Council (chairman); Clifford Geertz, Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, New Jersey); H. Field Haviland, Jr., Tufts University; Michael Piore, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and John M. Thompson, American Universities Field Staff (Hanover, New Hampshire); David L. Sills and David L. Szanton, Social Science Research Council, and Jason H. Parker and Gordon B. Turner, American Council of Learned Societies, staff.

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In the context of the Council's objectives, important questions must now be addressed concerning the con­tent and quality of international research in the United States. Some areas of the world have been more intensively studied than others. Some regions and countries have been examined primarily from humanistic viewpoints. In others, social science re­search has predominated. At the same time, the vari­ous disciplines do not contribute equally to schol­arship on the different world regions and the cul­tural, social, political, and economic experience of various regions is not being equally incorporated into the theories of the disciplines. Moreover, we must also note that traditional disciplinary labels often do not adequately describe the content of what is being in­vestigated. Thus, while there are few economists working on sub-Saharan Africa, there are many studies under way with important economic content. Anthropologists investigate local markets, historians trace trade routes, political scientists study multina­tional corporations, and psychologists study achieve­ment motivation. The understanding of economic behavior and practices in Africa will benefit from these studies just as it will from research conducted by economists.

This last point underscores the complexity of the field development task. In addition, with the growth of university-based area study centers, large-scale government funding of overseas research, profes­sional associations devoted to international studies, and in some fields more internationally-experienced researchers than academic institutions can absorb, the comparatively limited resources available to the joint committees call into question the need to continue field development as historically understood. Focused intellectual rationales, on a committee-by-committee basis, have replaced the traditional theory of "more is better" as the justification for the joint committee structure.

The review of the Council's international program concluded that there are critical intellectual tasks that can be best, perhaps only, accomplished through the joint committees. These tasks include bringing to bear local knowledge on international and comparative questions , understanding the boundary conditions of social processes and behavior, moving ideas (and people) across regional and disciplinary lines, and the continuing task of integrating disciplinary scholarship with area studies.

Consensus about broad principles and shared tasks notwithstanding, no simple formula expresses in pro­grammatic terms the intellectual rationale for each \ joint committee. Given the diversity of the world

52

areas studied, the variable quality and quantity of scholarship directed at them, the erratic intrusion of political factors into the research environment, the existence of alternate funding sources, the interests of other academic groups, and the problems of research access, no single mandate can direct the work of all the joint committees.

The diversity can be turned to an advantage, not unlike the advantage of federalism in a political sys­tem that encourages experiments in one state before they are adopted elsewhere. The joint committees differ in how they approach research planning and the awards program, ranging from team research to an emphasis on dissertation awards, from major in­ternational conferences on disciplinary themes to re­search planning which builds self-consciously on in­digenous intellectual systems. Just as, in the past, certain innovations parented in one joint committee have diffused to committees concerned with other regions of the world, some of the many committee­specific innovations will no doubt appear in other committees' programs in the years to come.

Other Council international programs

As noted, the Council's foreign area committees have been responsible for most of its international activities. While these committees have fostered col­laboration between foreign area specialists in the United States and scholars from the area being inves­tigated, only rarely have they brought together re­searchers working on similar problems in several dif­ferent areas. As a result, the joint committees remain relatively isolated from each other, and the work of a particular committee is usually not informed and challenged by that of others. Thus, although the area committees generate the kind of research-rooted in history and culture and undertaken from multidis­ciplinary perspectives-that must be the basis of a truly comparative social science, the Council has not yet taken full advantage of the creative role the com­mittees can play in facilitating cross-national compari­sons.

This is not to say that the international programs of the Council are not already broader than what is reflected in the area committee projects. Several of the research-planning committees of the Council are international in composition and activities. The Committee on Life-Course Perspectives on Middle and Old Age (1977- ), for example, currently has three European members and is sponsoring two in­ternational conferences during the next two years. The Advisory and Planning Committee on Social In-

VOLUME 34, NUMBER 3/4

dicators (1972- ) has had foreign members from its inception, and nearly all of the conferences organized by the Center have included scholars from outside the United States. Indeed, most Council committees in­clude foreign scholars as members or major partici­pants in their activities.

Comparative perspectives and the study of transnational phenomena

Several Council activities encourage cross-national comparisons of phenomena occurring under dif­ferent cultural and historical conditions. Ad hoc meetings have examined comparative perspectives on a variety of topics: gender and society, the biosocial bases of parenting and offspring development, stratification in advanced industrial societies, and childhood socialization and family studies.

Earlier ad hoc meetings on the nature of ethnic identity and the mobilization of ethnic grou ps led to the appointment of the Council's Committee on Ethnicity (1977- ).

Very little attention has been given thus far in the Council's international program to the study of transnational phenomena. These public and private interrelationships that cross national boundaries (labor migration, food distribution, and international movements of capital are all examples) become in­creasingly important as the interdependence of the modern world system grows. We can no longer under­stand economic, social, and political phenomena within societies without appreciating the constraints and opportunities created by a society's position in transnational capital and labor markets, or by the impact of multinational organizations and transnational corporations.

International collaboration

To help provide this understanding, the Council intends to playa more active role in facilitating the assimilation of knowledge generated abroad by pro­moting collaboration with and among the scholars who produce that knowledge. It will also direct greater attention to conceptual systems and theoreti­cal perspectives that challenge the orthodoxies of the dominant approaches. And it will seek to incorporate, as peers, not only European social scientists but schol­ars from areas in which the so.cial sciences are rela­tively new, thereby contributing to the development and maintenance of local scholarly competence.

In so doing, the Council recognizes the importance

DECEMBER 1980

of variations among nations in the role and function of the social sciences, and therefore in the organiza­tion of research. University-based social science is not everywhere autonomous as it is in the United States. And the balance between short-term research, fo­cused on social problems, and long-term autonomous research on disciplinary questions, varies greatly from one society to another. Colleagues abroad, especially those in less developed nations where the social sci­ences are also less developed, are often pressed into the service of governments struggling with a variety of social problems. Contract and consultancy research predominate.

These simple facts are often overlooked in efforts to stimulate international collaboration. Because dis­ciplinary and policy research draw from the same pool of research problems and work with similar labels, there appears to be less difference in ap­proach, methodology, and analysis than is in fact the case. Collaboration across national boundaries is dif­ficult under the best of circumstances. It certainly will falter if U.S. scholars misunderstand what their col­leagues elsewhere are about. The Council, therefore, will take greater advantage of its knowledge of schol­arly activities in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Mid­dle East, and Europe; it will find ways to interpret across national boundaries the kinds of research tak­ing place, and it will identify those areas in which collaboration is likely to be more effective.

International Research Opportunities Board

An additional consequence of the review this past year has been the Council's leadership in bringing into being the International Research Opportunities Board (IROB) in order to facilitate coordination among the various national groups which sponsor worldwide, multiarea, and single country or region research grant programs in the social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences. The need for such an organization has been expressed many times, most recently in a Ford Foundation-National Endowment for the Humanities review of research opportunities in international studies. The report concluded that "much of what is necessary to sustain and improve the system is presently available, but is diminished in ef­fectiveness by the absence of coordination and com­mon information of what others are doing. The cur­rent imbalance in supply and demand of research opportunities, the imminent extinction of a few sub­fields, the differential vigor of various regional studies, all would be better avoided, accommodated, or redressed if a national organization could counsel

53

and inform."3 Background papers prepared for the President's Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies came to similar conclusions, and advanced similar recommendations.

The initial purpose of IROB is to review, assess, and help rationalize present international research opportunities in the social sciences and humanities. It will examine the role and balance among the various disciplines, problems of access, and opportunities for drawing upon or collaborating with local research communities. It will also attempt to delineate the types of research (classical, historical, contemporary socioeconomic, political, etc.) currently being con­ducted, as well as the research gaps, on the particular countries and regions. Finally, IROB will review the present and potential roles of the several U.S.-funded overseas advanced research and training centers. While the immediate focus of its activities will be the availability and distribution of international research opportunities in the social sciences and humanities, IROB will also explore how best to include the natu-

3 Elinor G. Barber and Warren Bchman, with the assistance of Creighton Peet and Toby Ditz, International Studies Review: A Staff Study. A joint publication of the Ford Foundation and the Na­tional Endowment for the Humanities. September 1979, p. 113.

ral sciences, the pr~fessions, and academic ex­changes more generally. The Council has received support for IROB for' a two-year period from the Exxon Educational Foundation. When the member­ship of the-B"oa'rd has been completed, an announce­ment will appear in Items.

Studies of American society

The major purpose of area studies in the United States has been to increase our knowledge of other countries; this purpose also applies to the current international program of the Council. However, re­search on other parts of the world has often given American scholars new perspectives on the character and dynamics of our own society. In order to acceler­ate the application of questions, methods, and find­ings derived from research elsewhere in the world, the Council now hopes to appoint and find funding for a committee composed of foreign scholars (hence the informal designation, "the Tocqueveille Com­mittee"), which would encourage fresh analyses of American society by mature researchers from other countries. Such a committee could mark another im­portant step towards the genuine internationalization of the Council's program. 0

The Humanities and the Social Sciences: A Symposium

A GROWING DISENCHANTMENT among social scien­tists with the explanatory adequacy of models bor­rowed from the natural sciences accounts at least in part for the renewed interest in the intellectual con­cerns and interpretive methods traditionally associ­ated with the humanities. Drawing on the intellectual traditions embedded in the Council's close association with the American Council of Learned Societies, and especially on research activities parented by the joint committees of the two Councils-which have long included both social scientists and humanists-the Council is now exploring more general ways of ex­panding the role of the intellectual concerns and in­terpretive methods of humanistic scholarship.

* The author, an anthropologist, serves at the Council as staff of the joint committees on South Asia and Southeast Asia.

54

'by David L. Szanton*

The time is opportune, for there is within the social sciences a new interest in the analytical approaches utilized in literary criticism, linguistics, philosophy, religion, and hermeneutics. In the hope of discover­ing ways to encourage such interests, the Council convened an all-day symposium on the humanities and the social sciences at the October 2-5, 1980 meeting of its Committee on Problems and Policy.

The discussion at the symposium, and the larger concerns it was designed to explore, was based upon the view that the world of individual and social expe­rience is not a "natural" object, but is rather a human construction. It is best understood as a world of his­torically developed categories and evaluations drawn from a reservoir of variously conscious and uncon­scious images, metaphors, narratives, and texts. In this view, understandings of one's own life, of that of

VOLUME 34, NUMBER 3/4

another person, or of larger social groups-from families and communities to nation-states and world systems-derive from complex interpretations, rarely conscious and articulated, which edit and bring some order to incoming perceptions. A specific culture or society can be thought of as a group of persons which to a large degree shares a common set of these defi­nitions and interpretations.

The social sciences have long taken the systematic analysis of individual and social experience as their central concern, particularly the mutual interaction of the individual and social groups. However, it should be obvious that no single model or approach is likely to be adequate even to approximate a fully satisfac­tory understanding given the complexity of the ele­ments involved--conscious and unconscious, verbal and behavioral, conceptual and emotional, habitual and inte.ntional. Nonetheless, each of the social sci­ence disciplines has tended to focus on particular elements or domains of individual or social experience-often treating them as though they were the central sources of meaning-and in the process has slighted other elements and domains (and types of approaches to them) of potentially comparable im­portance.

In recent years, growing numbers of social scien­tists have sensed that important aspects of human and social experience remain beyond the reach of their traditional methods and models. At the same time, there are humanistic studies such as Paul Fussell's The Great War and ·Modern Memory (1975), which utilizes traditional techniques of historical and literary analysis of the letters of English soldiers and officers during World War I to illuminate the changing con­ceptions of individual, social, and political existence generated by the war. More generally, Clifford Geertz in his 1980 American Scholar article, "Blurred Genres," points to the current burgeoning of new types of social science analysis, focusing particularly on the rapid growth of "game," "drama," and "text" as metaphors for the interpretation of social and cul­tural phenomena.

The Council symposium was planned in order to take a closer look at some specific instances of such nontraditional approaches to social analysis, and to provide a sense of the possibilities for future research planning activities in this area.

The symposium, chaired by Mr. Geertz, began with a description by Bernard S. Cohn, an an­thropologist-historian at the University of Chicago, and Thomas R. Metcalf, a historian at the University of California, Berkeley, of their current efforts to develop an interpretive approach to the study of col-DECEMBER 1980

onialism. Drawing on their own research on British India and South Africa, as well as that of scholars working on other parts of the world, they are exam­ining the interrelationship of political power and cultural systems, particularly as revealed by the con­struction of symbols and categories by colonial re­gimes as means of legitimating their possessions to themselves, to the people dominated, and to their own countrymen at home. They argue that, more than military force, it was the ability of the colonial authorities to define social reality and social relation­ships through the imposition of, for example, legal codes, tax systems, census categories, political rituals, architectural forms, and city planning--changes that gave them power over the indigenous population. The process, however, was by no means one way: these new categories and concepts deeply shaped the attitudes of the colonial rulers themselves, their under­standing of the nature of the social world, and their special role within it. Indeed, the colonial period fixed the meaning-and the political "reality"-of many terms and concepts, such as tribe, race, caste, primitive, illiterate, and modern, which are utilized to­day both in common speech and in the social sciences.

Andrew M. Greeley, University of Arizona, and William G. McCready, National Opinion Research Center, both sociologists with long experience in sur­vey research, described their efforts to develop a new approach to the sociology of religion. They began their research with a commitment to quantitative analysis but were dissatisfied with the quality of the data generated by ordinary survey questionnaires for understanding the nature of religious experience. Noting that people often tell stories (narratives, para­bles) when they wish to communicate or explain their deepest sentiments, they are now turning to the sys­tematic analysis of these essentially literary forms to investigate the personal meaning of, and the emo­tional commitments to, such images as "God," "Jesus," "Mary," and "Heaven." These data are then related to various personal characteristics, to church at­tendance, to religious practices, and to family behav­ior and sexual attitudes to obtain a fuller under­standing of the religious imagination and the "expe­rience of grace."

Linguist-anthropologist Alton Becker, University of Michigan, focused attention on the often radically different ways that different languages create coher­ences, that is, both imbue terms with meaning and logically structure the relations of terms to each other. Thus, for example, not only does English contain concepts that are different from those in Burmese, but English creates cohesion largely by emphasizing

55

linear movement through time, utilizing a tense sys­tem in which utterances must be clearly marked and related: past, present, and future. In contrast, the Burmese language, and indeed many Southeast Asian systems of thought, structure discourse and knowledge in terms of a potent central figure (a temple, a per­son, an idea, a god) and its peripheries (north, south, east, west). In effect, every language has its own logic. Because of fundamental differences in the ways that languages structure meaning, translation from one to another is often extremely difficult and demands a very substantial knowledge of the connotations or "prior texts" which resonate below the surface and give texture and nuance to human expression. While certain English language terms and ideas are readily translatable, many, often the seemingly simplest ones, such as the verb "to be," carry an enormous and very particularistic cultural baggage without easy equiva­lences in other languages or systems of thought. Becker suggested the complexity of the problem by simply raising the issue of what a speaker of Old Javanese would need to know about 19th century New England life and thought in order to be able to understand this sentence by Ralph Waldo Emerson: "Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thought any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration." Becker's pres­entation made it painfully clear that the categories of thought and analysis which we casually take as natu­ral, universal, or representing the "real" world are in fact very often highly idiosyncratic and historically determined.

Wendy O'Flaherty, a historian of religion at the University of Chicago with a long standing interest in comparative and South Asian mythology, described her plans for a new project on the relationship be­tween science and myth as distinctive, but culturally constructed, ways of knowing. She is particularly con­cerned with how people who believe that a hard line divides the two realms deal with the apparent con­flicts between science and myths in their own lives. As working material, she is drawing on various types of narratives: stories from both Western and South Asian literature of people who perceive themselves as having crossed a barrier from the "real" world of science and common sense into a clearly mythic realm; personal accounts of physical scientists who develop strong religious convictions; and psychiatric patients for whom powerful images create realities in conflict with their own common sense knowledge. By analyzing the participants own reactions to and ex­planations of these events, she hopes to clarify the

56

priorities and value structures people utilize to deal with the multiple sources of meaning in their lives.

The four presentations generated a lively discus­sion of substantive and theoretical issues, as well as possible programmatic opportunities. In different ways, all four presentations focused on the meaning of personal and social phenomena for the individual. All argued for more self-conscious attention to the assumptions underlying the common language and categories of the social sciences, since by their fre­quently impatient search for generalizations, social scientists may construct ill-fitting models of human experience.

Several areas were suggested for future Council attention, two of which are now being actively ex­plored. One concerns the nature and status of per­sonal testimony. What people say or write about their own experience and feelings often becomes raw ma­terial, or "data," for both social scientists and humanists. Yet such data are almost always context sensitive, subject to the vagaries of historical moment, personal mood and motivation, and communicative competence. In consequence, there is always uncer­tainty as to what the testimony is evidence for.

Critical assumptions concerning the meaning and utility of personal testimony underlie techniques used to elicit, record, analyze, and interpret verbal state­ments in, for example, conducting national opinion surveys, preparing ethnographies, or composing biographies. How do these assumptions contribute to the shape of the testimony itself and influence the interpretive process? To what extent are different methods able to penetrate the intentions or the affec­tive and cognitive commitments of the informant? What are the particular strengths and limitations of evidence derived from different testimonial sources and from varying methods for the analysis and in­terpretation of that testimony?

These are hardly new questions, but technological advances for recording and storing data in the humanities and social sciences since the 1940s (in­cluding compact audio and video recording devices, computer programs for use in content analysis, and the compilation of oral histories and archives of sur­vey data), suggest that a fresh exploration of them is needed.)

Second, efforts to understand human behavior can be obstructed by both language structures and the

I A starting point for this project might be three Council publi­cations of an earlier period: John Dollard, Criteria for the Life History (1935); Gordon W. Allport, The Use of Personal Documents in Psychological Science (1942); and Louis Gottschalk et aI., The Use of Personal Documents in History, Anthropology, and Sociology (1945).

VOLUME 34, NUMBER 3/4

particular substantive categories that constitute popularly perceived social realities and formally con­structed social analyses. Our language, as all lan­guages, lends a sense of concrete and natural reality to the cultural constructions (institutions, value sys­tems, rituals) by which we order and evaluate our lives. Nevertheless, comparative, historical, and philo­sophical inquiry all suggest that these constructions are just that-they are neither obvious nor "natural." Furthermore, the social sciences have a long-standing tradition of inventing, formally defining, or reifying abstract notions (peasant, feudalism, ethnicity, scripts, matrifocal family, world system) which often then contributes to their becoming operational social and political realities in the everyday world. Only rarely, however, have social scientists self-consciously exam­ined either the internal logic of their language or the specific historical and political origins of the concepts and categories they use to define and to analyze social realities.

In order to clarify the complex interaction between

social experience and systematic efforts to describe and interpret social experience, a new confluence of epistemology, linguistics, intellectual history, and the political sociology of knowledge needs to be en­couraged. I n effect, we need a new metalanguage with which to examine critically the concepts, genres, and poetics of social analysis.

The issues surrounding personal testimony, lan­guage, and categorization are fundamental to both the hu manities and the social sciences. Yet most of the work on these essentially introspective, self-critical is­sues, especially in the social sciences, tends to be at the margins of the disciplines. Over the coming years, the Council will attempt to organize a series of activities to help synthesize current efforts and encourage new research and writing in these areas. By drawing upon the traditional concerns of the humanities for the close description and the integrity and interpretation of the particular, it may be possible to construct more powerful and sensitive generalizations of individual and social experience. D

"If any li ne can be drawn between the era of uncritical and the era of the critical use of personal documents, the publication of the research of Thomas and Znaniecki in 1920 marks the date. T here are, to be sure, plenty of instances of uncritical use down to the present day; but it was unquestionably the availability of The Polish Peasant that began to turn the attention of sociologists-and somewhat later of psychologists-to the methodological problems involved."

-Gordon W. Allport, 1942*

* The Use of Personal DOCllmellts in Psychological Science. SSRC Bulletin 49. pages 18-19.

The Humanities and Social Sciences in China: Report of a Fact-finding Trip

AT THE END OF DECEMBER 1979, 13 American scholars representing both the humanities and social sciences embarked on a three-week visit to China. The delegation consisted of members of the Joint Committee on Contemporary China aCCC) and the Committee on Studies of Chinese Civilization (CSCC) of the American Council of Learned Societies, and the trip was sponsored by the two Councils.

The trip was the culmination of an initiative begun in December 1978, when at a meeting of the Joint Committee's Subcommittee on Field Research it was decided to recommend that a fact-finding delegation be sent to China in order to gather information about research and scholarship in Chinese social sciences

DECEMBlR 1980

and humanities. In addition to learning about the present state of and future plans for scholarly re­search in these areas, the purposes of the visit were to explore possibilities for collaboration and exchange between Chinese and American scholars, acquaint Chinese scholars with the nature of United States research on China, and establish contacts with Chinese scholars with an eye toward facilitating fu ­ture American research in China.

Members of the delegation traveled to seven cities: Beijing, Chengdu, Nanjing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Suzhou, and Tianjin. In each city, they met with rep­resentatives of local institutes of philosophy and social science; visited universities, libraries, and archives;

57

and spoke with prominent scholars and researchers in the various disciplines represented by the delega­tion members.

The delegation found that although there has been a lively revival in all aspects of Chinese intellectual life since 1976, the extent of the revival varies greatly by discipline and by institution. For example, while numerous new projects are being started and a vari­ety of books and articles has been published in the humanities, the social sciences have been much slower to develop because of historically inadequate material resources, a scarcity of trained personnel (except in economics), and perhaps greater caution on the part of scholars engaged in areas of study that are still viewed by many as "bourgeois" and therefore "tainted." So, too, while a number of universities have vigorous programs and departments in history, there are few departments of sociology in China, and those that exist are still in the early stages of development.

Besides talking to their Chinese counterparts, members of the· delegation also sought out American scholars studying and doing research in China to elicit from them information about their experiences in China in gaining access to libraries and research ma­terials and the kinds of cooperation they had received from Chinese at various levels and institutions.

Each delegation member left China with some de­gree of optimism about recent developments in his or her field; however, each was also cautious about pre­dicting the course for the future both in terms of what

can be achieved by the Chinese and what Western scholars can hope to accomplish in China. A more complete overview of the current state of intellectual activity in China and detailed descriptions of the prospects for individual disciplines are available in the published report of the delegation (see pages 66-67, below).

The delegation was cochaired by Donald J. Munro (U niversity of Michigan), chairman of the CSCC, and by Burton Pasternak (Hunter College), then chair­man of JCCC. Other members were Hok-Iam Chan (University of Washington), Patrick D. Hanan (Har­vard University) and Jason H. Parker (staff, ACLS), representing the CSCC; Cyril Birch (University of California, Berkeley), Paul A. Cohen (Wellesley Col­lege), Robert F. Dernberger (University of Michigan), Merle Goldman (Boston University), Victor H. Li (Stanford University), Martin K. Whyte (University of Michigan), and Anne F. Thurston (then staff, SSRC), representing the JCCC; and Thomas P. Bernstein (Columbia University). .

The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, whose representatives had toured the United States in April and May 1979, and who had been hosted by the Council during their week's stay in New York, served as sponsor for the delegation in China. The Commit­tee on Scholarly Communication with the People's Republic of China provided its good offices in plan­ning and organizing the visit. 0

Proposed Reorganization of the National Science Foundation

IN RESPONSE TO A REQUEST from the National Sci­ence Foundation, the Council served as host on Sep­tember 12, 1980 to a meeting between representatives of the social science community and the senior staff of the National Science Foundation. Also in attendance was a member of the National Science Board, Ernes­tine Friedl, an anthropologist at Duke University.

The purpose of the ad hoc meeting was for the Foundation representatives present to learn the views of social scientists about the establishment of a new behavioral and social science directorate. The pro­posed directorate would include (1) the present Divi­sion 0f Social and Economic Science and possibly a portion of the present Division of Behavioral and Neural Sciences; (2) a number of applied research

58

programs from the Division of Applied Research; and (3) the newly-funded decision and management sciences. Presumably, it would mean that a social sci­entist would become its director, and thus an assistant director of the Foundation.

The morning session of the all-day meeting was largely devoted to a presentation by the staff of the Foundation-a presentation that outlined some problems in the present organizational structure and the advantages and disadvantages of various pro­posed structural changes. In the afternoon, the social scientists present directed questions to the Founda­tion staff and expressed views of their own as well as those of their disciplines and organizations.

The recurrent theme of the meeting was en-

VOLUME 34, NUMBER 3/4

thusiasm over the prospects for a new directorate of the behavioral and social sciences. It was felt, first of all, that a directorate would provide needed visibility for the social sciences, a visibility that would lead to enhanced status and increased funding. (It was also suggested that visibility might make the social sciences more vulnerable to budget cutting.)

Second, it was felt that the unification of the social sciences within a directorate would contribute to the organization and structuring of the field itself. ("A directorate would help unify the social sciences!," one enthusiastic participant noted.)

Third, the present organization is confusing to so­cial scientists, who sometimes don't know the appro­priate unit to submit a grant application to, or with which to discuss a research interest. The structuring that would accompany the establishment of a direc­torate would go far toward improving this situation.

There was also recognition that what to include or exclude in a new directorate is a difficult issue, espe­cially as it affects the present Division of Behavioral and Neural Sciences, which includes both biology and psychology. It was felt that the boundary drawing exercise was best left to scholars most familiar with the interaction among psychology, anthropology, and linguistics, on the one hand, and between biology and neurology, on the other. It was certainly not a task to be attempted at a single-day meeting of social scien­tists representing diverse disciplines, methodologies, and institutions.

The complexity of boundary drawing became ap­parent to the participants, and the consensus voiced was that a noninclusive directorate might place the social science program of the Foundation in a diffi­cult, perhaps vulnerable position. In the opinion of those present, a directorate that did not include an­thropology and psychology woul.d not be an adequate social science directorate, for two reasons. First, it would lack intellectual coherence, since these disci­plines are central to the social sciences. Second, it would be politically weak and might be forced to defend itself, both within the Foundation and with­out, in terms of the utility of the social sciences as "applied" sciences. While no one can forecast the fu­ture of a noninclusive directorate, among those as­sembled at the September 12 meeting there was little in­clination to recommend a directorate which lacked such critical disciplines as psychology and anthropology.

The meeting was chaired by Kenneth Prewitt, president of the Council. The social science commu­nity was represented by Robert McC. Adams, Univer­sity of Chicago; Conrad M. Arensberg, Columbia University, president, American Anthropological As-

DECB1BER 1980

soclatton; William J. Baumol, Princeton University and New York University, president-elect, American Economic Association; Norman M. Bradburn, di­rector, National Opinion Research Center, University of Chicago; Russell R. Dynes, executive officer, American Sociological Association; David A. Goslin, executive officer, Assembly of Behavioral and Social Sciences, National Academy of Sciences; John H. Ham mer, associate secretary, Li nguistic Society of America; Edward f Lehman, executive director, American Anthropological Association; Fred C. Leone, executive officer, American Statistical Associ­ation, Gardner Lindzey, director, Center for Ad­vanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; Thomas E. Mann, executive director-designate, American Politi­cal Science Association; Patricia McWethy, executive director, Association of American Geographers; Warren E. Miller, National Election Studies/Center for Political Studies, I nstitute for Social Research, University of Michigan; Michael S. Pallak, executive officer, American Psychological Association; Roy Radner, Bell Telephone Laboratories; Priscilla C. Reining, project director, Office of International Sci­ence and secretary, Section H (Anthropology), American Association for the Advancement of Sci­ence; Eugene F. Rice, Jr., staff, American Historical Association; William H. Sewell, University of Wiscon­sin; J. Merrill Shanks, National Election Studies/ Center for Political Studies, Institute for Social Re­search, University of Michigan; David L. Sills, Social Science Research Council and retiring chairperson, Section K (Social and Economic Sciences), American Association for the Advancement of Science; Mack Thompson, executive director, American Historical Association; Sidney Verba, Harvard University, and chairman, Committee on Problems and Policy, Social Science Research Council; Julian Wolpert, Princeton University, chairman, Assembly of Behavioral and Social Sciences, National Academy of Sciences; and Harriet Zuckerman, Columbia University.

The National Science Foundation staff represented at the meeting were Donald N. Langenberg, acting director; Eloise E. Clark, assistant director for biological, behavioral, and social sciences; Harvey A v­erch, assistant director for scientific, technological, and international affairs; L. Vaughn Blankenship, division director, Division of Applied Research; Otto :'\1. Larsen, division director, Social and Economic Sci­ence; Richard T. Louttit, division director, Behavioral and Neural Sciences; Allen M. Shinn, Jr., senior sci­ence associate, Office of the Director; and M. Kent Wilson, Office of Planning and Resource Manage­ment. D

59

Current Activities at the Council

New directors and officers

The Council's board of directors, at its meeting on :vIay 31, 1980, elected five directors to serve three-year terms. "iewly-elected directors-at-Iarge are Stephen E. Fienberg, statistics, Carnegie- \1ellon University; Gardner Lindzey, psychology, Center for Ad­vanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; and Sidney Verba, political science, Har­vanl Unhersity. :vir. Verba served last year as chairman of the Commitee on Problems and Policy and he was reelected to that position. Also elected to board membership were two new directors from professional associations: Michael Kam­men, Cornell University (American His­torical Association), and Charles O.Jones, University of Pittsburgh (American Political Science Association).

Otto N. Larsen, University of Wash­ington, serving as a director from the American Sociological Association, was appointed during the summer as director of the Division of Social and Economic Science of the National Science Founda­tion. Accordingly, he resigned from the Council's board. I mmanuel Wallerstein, State University of New York at Bing­hamton, will serve in Mr. Larsen's stead for the remainder of the term.

The board also elected the Council's officers for 1980-81: Robert A. LeVine, anthropology, Harvard University, chairman; Eleanor E. :vIaccoby, psychol­ogy, Stanford University, vice-chairman; Stephen E. Fienberg, statistics, Carnegie- Mellon University, secretary; and Rosedith Sitgreaves Bowker, statis­tics, National Institute of Education, trea­surer.

New staff members

Sophie Sa joined the Council in Octo­ber as staff associate for both the Joint Committee on Contemporary China and the International Research Opportunities Board. A graduate of Wellesley College, she received a B.A. in history in 1965, an :vI.A. in East Asian Regional Studies in 1967 from Harvard University, and a joint Ph.D. in sociology and East Asian languages in 1975, also from Harvard University. She comes to the Council from the Center for Policy Research (New York and Washington, D.C.), where she

60

was administrator and a~sistant director. Her major research interest is the Chinese family and her paper on mar­riage and adoption among urban Taiwanese households, presented at a conference sponsored by the Council and the American Council of Learned Societies, will appear in a volume edited by Arthur P. Wolf and Susan B. Hanley.

Richard ~1. Scheffler joined the Coun­cil in "iovember as a part-time staff asso­ciate for the new program on employ­ment and training, which will be located in the Washington office. :vir. Scheffler received the B.A. from Hofstra Univer­sity in 1965; the :vI.A. from Brooklyn College in 1967; and the Ph.D. in eco­nomics from New York University in 1971. He then joined the economics fac­ulty at the University of North Carolina as an associate professor of economics. He spent two years at the Institute of :vIedicine-National Academy of Sciences as a scholar-in-residence. He has worked and published extensively in the fields of health and labor economics and he teaches these topics as an associate professor of economics at George Washington Uni­versity, a position he will retain while he is associated with the Council.

Cognitive Research The Committee on Cognitive Research,

appointed in 1972, has recently spon­sored the following activities.

Decision making and inference in natural settings. The committee sponsored a meeting on this topic on May 28-30, 1980, in San Francisco, in order to bring together cognitive scientists who share an interest in understanding how people make decisions and inferences in natu­rally occurring cognitive activities. The rich anthropological descriptions of such cognitive activities in natural settings (for example, the decision process used by village elders to set pacification fees in litigation settlements) are not compatible with any singular theory or model of deci­sion making from cognitive psychology; thus, one aspect of the meeting involved consideration of possible general theories of human decision making which could incorporate the alternate strategies people use for simplifying decisions.

Another major theme of the meeting was the cognitive processes by which indi-

viduals cope with the very extensive and complex information from which they lIIust make inferences under natural con­ditions. For example, studies of.people's inferences about the behavior of others have shown that people are able to provide stable interpretations of others' behavior in spite of the fact that any given behavior may signal many different in­tentions, and any single intention may be actualized through many acts.

fhe participants represented a variety of disciplines in the social sciences, al­though cognitive anthropologists and psychologists, because of their mutual interests but different methodologies and approaches, predominated. Each partici­pant presented a 45-minute paper on an area of research. The participants were :vIichael Agar, University of California, Berkeley; Roy D'Andrade, University of California, San Diego; Allan Collins, Bolt, Beranek, and Newman (Cambridge, Mas­sachusetts); Hillel J. Einhorn, University of Chicago; Baruch Fischhoff, Decision Research (Eugene, Oregon); Jerry Hobbs, SRI International (Menlo Park, California); Edwin Hutchins, Naval Per­sonnel Research and Development Cen­ter (San Diego); Richard E. Nisbett, Uni­versity of \1ichigan; and Ann Whyte, University of Toronto. Committee mem­bers Naomi Quinn and Amos Tversky also attended.

A conference Oil spatial orientation was sponsored by the committee on July 14-16, 1980 at the Spring Hill Confer­ence Center, Wayzata, Minnesota. Co­sponsored by the Graduate School of the University of Minnesota and the univer­sity's Center for Research in Human Learning, the conference was organi7ed by Herbert L. Pick, Jr., committee chair­man (1976-1980), University of Min­nesota, and Linda Acredolo, University of California, Davis.

The aim of the conference was to bring together people working on problems of spatial orientation in natural settings on the one hand, and those working on re­lated problems in the laboratory on the other hand. Although a few investig-ators work on both kinds of problems, it is gen­erally the case that different groups of people work on the two kinds of prob­lems, and there is relatively little com­munication between them. In addition, researchers in a variety of disciplines are

VOLUME 34, NUMBER 3/4

interested in spatial orientation; thus, a supplementary aim was to bring together representatives of several disciplines.

A variety of disciplines was represented at the conference, including anthropol­ogy, computer science (mathematics), ge­ography, linguistics, and psychology. The participants were from both academic in­stitutions and applied research insti~u­

tio ns, and they discussed both practical and theoretical aspects of spatial orienta­tion. They included Fred Attneave, Uni­versity of Oregon; Jack Baird, Dartmouth College; Kenneth Cross, ANACAPA Sci­ence I ne. (Santa Barbara, California); Charles .I. Fillmore, University of California, Berkeley; Emerson Foulke, University of Louisville; Reginald Gol­ledge, University of California, Santa Barbara; Nancy Hazen, University of Texas; Edwin Hutchins, Naval Personnel Research and Development Center (San Diego); Wolfgang Klein, Max-Planck In­stitute (Nijmegen, The Netherlands); Benjamin Kuipers, Tufts University; Emil Menzel, State University of New York, Stony Brook; Russell Ohta, West Virginia University; Zita Simutis, Army Research Institute (Alexandria, Virginia); Len Talmy, University of California, San Diego; and Perry Thorndyke, Rand Cor­poration (Santa Monica, California).

The first session focused on compara­tive analyses of navigational systems. A number of classical philosophical ques­tions about reference systems and the analysis of such questions were related to a variety of aspects of the data on the spatial behavior of chimpanzees. Also, an analysis of the traditional noninstrumen­tal navigational system still used in the Caroline Islands to travel by boat from one island to another was presented. In these discussions, the advantages of an integration of modern evolutionary theory and a comparative-ethological approach were stressed and the need for examining multiple strategies of spatial orientation was proposed.

The second session was concerned with spatial orientation in special populations. Particular attention was devoted to the spatial problems confronted by the aging, resulting from changes in sensory functions and other changes that might limit mobility. A large study of the spatial knowledge of retarded persons in their urban communities was discussed, as well as the problems faced by blind pedes­trians in getting about. Discussions fo­cused particularly on the type of infor­mation needed for mobility and the in-

DECEMBER 1980

adequacy of most technological aids to

provide that information in a useful form. These discussions stressed the im­portance of motivational factors in the spatial behaviOl' of these special groups; for example, in one way or another active exploration was a factor in their spatial orientation.

rhe third session focused on the nature and use of maps in maintaining orienta­tion. \1ap research using a computer­based system for training terrain vis­ualization in reading contour maps was presented. The interpretation of maps was considered by calling attention to various cartographic conventions which affect what features are included in maps and how these are represented. It was argued in response to these two presen­tations that we need theories of task per­formance, spatial cognition, and individ­ual differences.

The fourth session was concerned with language and spatial orientation. One presenter analyzed locational references in language exemplified by expressions such as "here, there, left, right," whose referent depends on the position of the speaker at the time of reference. How language represents space and spatial in­formation in the sense of what kinds of and how geometric distinctions are made was also considered. For example, various characteristics of a language are reflected in spatial expressions. It was suggested that language may be a system whereby quite fine spatial d istinctions can be made by referring to the intersection of a number of fairly crude categories. These presentations were concerned with what kind of system language is and how lan­guage as a system is in fact used. The spatial distinctions encompassed by de­monstratives such as this or that can be dif­ferentially complex in different lan­guages while still behaving consistently and systematically.

rhe fifth session focused on spatial in­formation processing. One theme con­cerned the representational nature of the maps people construct of a space. For example, how can a scaling analysis of cognitive map data be used to infer the strategies by which subjects generate their cognitive maps? The nature of mental representations of space was also consid­ered. Recent analyses reject a "map in the head" theory of cognitive maps, but in­stead advocate conceptualizing cognitive maps as a complex data structure and set of associated procedures that exhibit a certain input-output behavior. The use

of such a structure can be simulated on a computer. It was agreed that large-scale maps are based on smaller-scale maps, whatever the form of this spatial (map) knowledge might he. There was dis­agreement on whether map-like entities exist in the heact. The value of consider­ing spatial imagery as a mechanism fo r spatial orientation tasks was suggested .

rhree general themes pervaded much of the conference. One was the type of information used in spatial orientation; the other was the nature of the mental representation of space; and the th ird, based on the first two, was the interaction of the type of information with the nature of representation. It is hoped that the proceedings will be published in 1981 .

In addition to the 17 participants, 27 geography and psychology graduate stu­dents and faculty members of the Univer­sity of Minnesota attended one or more sessIons.

A workshop 011 the testing of readillg com­prehension was convened by the committee on :Vlay 17, 1980 in Berkeley, California. The agenda was organized around issues such as the representation of the "suc­cessful" comprehension of a text, the identification of the skills and capabilities a reader must bring to a text in order to comprehend it, and the nature of ·'t.aking a reading test" as a cognitive activity. The focus throughout the day was on the comprehension of textual material as a naturally-occurring cognitive activity. The committee is planning a series of larger follow-up conferences as part of its future program on the broader topic of "learning to learn."

The participants included Messrs. Bransford, Cicourel, Cole, and Fillmore, from the cOlllmittee; Wallace Chafe, Lily Wong Fillmore, John Gumperz, Paul Kay,John Ogbu, and Herbert Simons, all from the University of California, Berke­ley; Allan Collins, Bolt, Beranek, and :-.)ewman (Cambridge, Massachusetts); Patricia Carrell, Southern Illinois Univer­sity; Otto Stern, University of Zurich; Svenka Savic, Institute of South Slavic Languages (Novi Sad, Yugoslavia); and Ovid Tzeng, University of California, Riverside, all visiting scholars at the Uni­versity of California, Berkeley; and Richard C. Anderson, lJ niversity of Il­linois; Bjorn Karlson, Sonoma State Uni­versity; Jana Mason, University of Il­linois; John Seely-Brown, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center; and Jenny Cook­Gumperz, University of California, Berke­ley.

61

The current members of the committee are :'>Iaomi Quinn, Duke University, cochairman; Eleanor Rosch, University of California, Berkeley, cochairman; John Bransford, Vanderbilt University; Aaron V. Cicourel, University of California, San Diego; Michael Cole, University of California, San Diego; Charles J. FiI1more, University of California, Berke­ley; James G. March, Stanford Univer­sity; Herbert L. Pick, Jr., University of Minnesota; Amos Tversky, Stanford Uni­versity; staff, Lonnie R. Sherrod.

Biosocial perspectives on parenting

In 1977, the Committee on Biosocial Science organized a working group to ex­plore the biosocial foundations of par­enting and offspring development. Or­ganizers Melvin J. Konner, Harvard Uni­versity (anthropology); Jane B. Lancaster, University of Oklahoma (primatology); and Alice S. Rossi, University of Massa­chusetts (sociology) sought to bring to­gether what have been very different traditions of research and practice in the biological, social, and medical sciences, bearing on parenting and offspring de­velopment. The critical objective was to bring an evolutionary perspective, as well as a cross-species and cross-cultural ap­proach, into direct association with (I) behavioral science theory and research on contemporary human reproduction and child rearing and (2) the medical and clinical fields concerned with the physical and emotional health of children and their parents.

As a result of this program (which con­sisted of three workshops funded by the :'>Iational Institute of Child Health and Human Development), the working group has been expanded to become a Committee on Biosocial Perspectives on Parenting, appointed by the Committee on Problems and Policy at its October meeting. The committee is currently seeking support for a three-year pro­gram, including a series of five confer­ences designed to bring a biosocial science perspective to research on parenting be­havior.

The biosocial science perspective con­stitutes a framework for the study of contemporary human social behavior; it is characterized by cross-cultural, cross­species, and cross-time comparative ap­proaches. Its utility is that it may serve through its focus on the biological aspects of social phenomena and its use of com-

62

parative approaches to iI1uminate areas that social science has not by itself been adequate to conceptualize. Conferences will be designed to bring together re­searchers from a variety of disciplines (in­cluding anthropology, child develop­ment, ethology, family sociology, pediat­rics, primatology, psychiatry, and zool­ogy). Conferences are planned to exam­ine the contribution of a biosocial science perspective to each of the following areas: brain and behavioral development in re­lation to parenting; the life-span devel­opment of parenting; child abuse and ne­glect; teenage pregnancy and parenting; and the context or environment in which parenting occurs. Publications are planned summarizing the proceedings of each conference. Additionally, workshops are planned to facilitate the development of coIlaborative, interdisciplinary re­search projects on the biosocial approach to parenting research. The committee also intends to serve a clearinghouse function

~. by maintaining a bibliography of research studies and papers in the area and a mailing list of interested scholars.

The members of the committee are Jane B. Lancaster, University of Okla­homa, chairman; Richard J. Gelles, Uni­versity of Rhode Island; Kathleen R. Gib­son, University of Texas, Houston; Beatrix A. Hamburg, Children's Hospital \1edical Center (Boston); David A. Ham­burg, Harvard University; Melvin J . Kanner, Harvard University; Alice S. Rossi, University of Massachusetts; and Charles M. Super, Harvard University. Lonnie R. Sherrod serves as staff to the committee.

Development, Giftedness, and the Learning Process

A new com mittee now succeeds the Committee on Gifted children (1975-80), which was appointed to take a fresh look at issues in the definition of giftedness. the identification of the gifted individual, and the related question of educational provisions for the gifted. That commit­tee's initial activities were supported by the American Psychological Foundation with funds from the estate of Esther Katz Rosen. Although it held a number of meetings in the intervening years and de­veloped a proposal for workshops and conferences, the committee was not able to secure additional funding.

In April 1980, under the leadership of David H. Feldman, Tufts University, a two-day meeting was held in Cambridge,

\1assachusetts to review the activities of the committee and consider a new focus. Participants were David Ackerman, :'>Iewton Public Schools; Jeanne S. Bam­berger, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Howard E. Gardner, Veter­ans Ad ministration Hospital (Boston); Howard Gruber, Rutgers University; Richard Lewis, Touchstone Center for Children (:'>lew York); Halbert E. Robin­son, University of Washington; and Brian Sutton-Smith, University of Pennsylvania.

Following the meeting, a proposal was drawn up for a new committee to be charged with examining the devel­opmental aspects of giftedness. This focus will free the committee from giving attention only to giftedness in children and permit it to look at giftedness wher­ever it appears in the life cycle. The Committee on Problems and Policy re­viewed the proposal and appointed the new committee as its meeting in May.

The Committee on Development, Gif­tedness, and the Learning Process is chaired by Mr. Feldman. Other members of the committee are Mrs. Bamberger and Messrs. Gardner, Gruber, and Robinson. Rowland L. Mitchell, Jr. serves as staff.

Liaison with economists in China

A new committee has been appointed jointly by the Council and the American Economic Association to develop and im­plement proposals to expand and deepen communication between economists in the United States and those in China. The committee intends to sponsor confer­ences; facilitate long-term research proj­ects, including joint American-Chinese projects; and take other steps to bring professional economists in the two coun­tries closer together.

The cochairmen of the committee are Gregory Chi-Chong Chow, Princeton University, and Dwight H. Perkins, Har­vard University. Other members of the committee are Irma Adelman, University of California, Berkeley; Kenneth J. Arrow, Stanford University; William J. Baumol, ;\lew York University and Princeton University; Lawrence R. Klein, University of Pennsylvania; Nicholas R. Lardy, Yale University; Lawrence J. Lau, Stanford University; and T. W. Schultz, University of Chicago. Amy Auerbacher Wilson, Committee on Scholarly Com­munication with the People's Republic of China, serves as staff.

VOLUME 34, NUMBER 3/4

Dissertation fellows hi ps in employment and training

The Council now sponsors a disserta­tion fellowship program in employment and training, a program that was pre­viously administered by the National Council on Employment Policy and prior to that by the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) of the U.S. De­partment of Labor.

The purposes of the program are to improve the capability of the social and behavioral sciences for studying the em­ployment and training field; to increase the availability of trained researchers, ad ministrators, specialists, and consul­tants; to direct the attention of doctoral candidates to the nation's major employ­ment and training programs; and to en­courage social and behavioral research on employment and training problems.

Funds are available to support the dis­sertation research of graduate students who have completed all requirements for the doctoral degree except for the dis­sertation, or who will have met these re­quirements before the award becomes ef­fective. Recipients in recent years have earned degrees in such fields as econom­ics, education, political science, psychol­ogy, and sociology.

Candidates dissertation topics must re-

Applications are reviewed and ap­proved by a screening committee con­sisting of Rashi Fein, Harvard University; Paul S. Goodman, Carnegie-Mellon Uni­versity; Hylan Lewis, Brooklyn College, City University of New York; Frank P. Stafford, Uniyersity of Michigan; and Paula E. Stephan, Georgia State Univer­sity. The screening committee is staffed by Robert Pearson of the Council's Washington office and Joseph B. Epstein, a consultant to the Council.

Additional information and application forms may be obtained from :

Program in Employment and Training Social Science Research Council 1755 \1assachusetts Avenue, N.W., Suite 410 Washington, D.C. 20036

Funding for the program is provided by a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor, which also includes support for a research planning committee on em­ployment and the labor market. This committee is in the process of being or­ganized.

Life-Course Perspectives on Middle and Old Age

late to problems of employment and This committee, appointed in 1977, has training in the United States. Study areas had an active program of conferences, may include, but are not limited to: workshops, and institutes. Here are some

• Measurement of labor demand and!~ o~h.!gb.!ights of its recent acti~~s._ supply )1 ~ €ollference on stress, disease, alld behavior#> ~

• Occupational and geographical mo~ }'Ield on May 5-6, 1980 at the Center for bility 1, ~ \ Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sci-

• Flexible work hours,job sharing, and ences (Stanford, California)~ this confer-work sharing ence employed the life-course perspective

• Discrimination in employment; artifi- to examine findings on cardiovascular cial barriers to employment; disease and associated psychosocial fac-groups with special needs, such as tors. Females This was the fourth in a series of con-Minority group members ferences that have the goal of clarifying Youth and specifying a life-course perspective Older workers on aging. Like the preceding one, which

• Transition from school to work focused on the life course of family mem-• Urban and rural labor market pro- bers, the conference was designed to

cesses apply the life-course or life-span ap-• Unemployment and underemploy- proach to a specific topical theme. Fol-

ment lowing the strategy employed in previous • Work and welfare topical meetings, the two-day conference • Productivity was organized around a major national • Energy and employment longitudinal study which reflected the • Research reporting on the function- meeting's focus-in this case, the Framing-

ing of the Comprehensive Em- ham, Massachusetts Study of Coronary ployment and Training Act Heart Disease, directed by William P. (CETA), the United States Em- Castelli, M.D. ployment Service, or the Bureau of The focus on heart disease was em-Apprenticeship and Training. ployed because in recent years a consid-

DECEMBER 1980

erable body of research in the field of aging has focused on the cardiovascular diseases (e.g., arteriosclerosis, coronary heart disease, and hypertension), perhaps because of their prevalence and high mortality rates. Additionally, a number of clinical and epidemiological studies sug­gest that certain social and behavioral factors place persons at a higher than av­erage risk for developing hypertension and heart disease, especially during the middle years. Thus, the purpose of the meeting was to address these bodies of research within the context of the life­course perspective, which emphasizes the continuity and multidetermined nature of human development and the interac­tions among social, psychological, and biological aging processes.

The Framingham Study was selected because it is a major investigation of coronary heart disease; it is ongoing and therefore potentially receptive to social scientific contributions. The investigators in this longitudinal study (Drs. Castelli and Suzanne G. Haynes, National Heart, Lung, and Blood I nstitute) discussed findings on heart disease and on associ­ated psychosocial factors. With the un­derlying theme being the relationship between behavior and health, other par­ticipants from the social and biomedical sciences offered perspectives and find­ings in areas that carried implications for the Framingham work. Examples are the interaction of aging and disease; the high-risk approach to research (as em­ployed in behavioral genetics and psychopathology studies); and the find­ings of stress and coping, coronary-prone behavior, and medical-behavioral pre­ventive programs regarding the devel­opment of cardiovascular disease.

The agenda was composed of both pres­entations and open discussions. I n both cases, an informal workshop (as opposed to conference) approach was adopted; the setting and intellectual climate of the Center for Advanced Study in the Be­havioral Sciences greatly facilitated this scholarly exchange. With the Framing­ham Study as a focal point, the aim was to bring together researchers from dif­ferent disciplines who investigate similar problems-with the expectation of em­ploying a common perspective on life­course development to construct some bridges between findings in these dif­ferent disciplines. A report on die meeting is availa~ble.

The participants, in addition to com­mittee members and investigators from

63

the Framingham Study, included David L. Featherman, University of Wisconsin; James Fries, Stanford University; David S. Krantz, Uniformed Services University of the Healt h Sciences; Richard S. Lazarus, University of California, Berke­ley; ;\jathan Maccoby, Stanford Univer­sity; Gerald E. McClearn, University of Colorado: Sarnoff A. 'vIed nick, Univer­sity of California, Los Angeles; and Erhard Olbrich, University of Giessen. Additionally, Center fellows who were members of the 1979-80 grou p which explored the behavior of children under stress participated as observers in order to share their perspective on early child­hood developmcnt.

The .self alld perceived persullal wlltrul through the life spall was the theme of the fifth conference organized by the LOm­miuee, held on October 5 and 6, 1980 in ;\jew York.

The conference theme was intcndcd LO

convey a distinction between a sense of self (or self-concept) and a sense of mas­tery or personal control. The mceting was organized to examine life-span changes (and stabilities) in the sense of self as it relates to perceived personal control. In order to have a sense of self, one must have a sensc of the world; in order to have a sense of personal control, one must have a sense of what or who controls world events. Thus, the individual must develop a theory of social and physical causality, including his or hcr own role in it.

Sessions of the meeting were organized to examine the development of this "be­lief system" over the life span-in its in­teraction with the trajectory of individual development (including possible biologi­cal bases as well as life events) and with the course of social change. The first ses­sion dealt with theoretical and empirical attcmpts to disaggregate the belief in per­sonal control into more precisely dcfined components relating to the individual's areas of activity, such as work roles, and to cultural definitions of self and personal control.

. fhe second scssion of the meeting was devotcd to a direct examination of life­span variations in expressions of this be­lief system. Changes in the sense of per­sonal control seem to correspond in a common sense way to the realities of life from about age six to midlife; that is, feelings of control increase from early childhood up through adolescence (the feeling of "I cannot fail"), and increase through the next several decades during

64

mastery of the key tasks of life. This progression is, however, followed by a gradual erosion of the sense of control during thc later years. The meeting ex­amined thc empirical support for this de­scriptioll ami the illlerrelationships of self-coIlCt:p l. and a belief in personal con­troL

·['he third session cxplored the sense of self and personal control as personalit y conccpts that necessarily intersect with the life-coul·se tr,uectory of events and criscs. rhe situational determinants (or the ecolog)) of thc life-span developme nt of self and personal control and the inter­relationships between personal efficacy and stress a nd coping. helplessness, and physical and mental health were also con­sidcrerl.

f he fina l session was an anempt to set a research agenda, given that there is very little longitudinal research on personal control. Although participants attempted to address life-span variations, the lack of empirical evidence prevented concrete conclusions. Hcnce, one major result of the mecting will be an attempt to facilitate life-span investigations of the phenom­cna.

Participants, besides committee mem­bers, included Lyn Y. Abramson, State University of :'\Jew York, Stony Brook; Albert Bandura, Stanford University; Carol S. Dweck, University of Illinois; David C. Glass, City University of New York; Patricia Gurin, University of Michigan; Hein7 Heckhauscn, University of Bochum; Richard S. Lazarus, Univer­sity of California, Berkeley: Herhert M. Lefcourt, University of Waterloo; Wilbert J. McKeachie, University of \Iichigan; Leonard I. Pearlin, :'I1ational I nstitute of Mental Health; Judith Rodin, Yale Uni­versity; and Irwin Sarason, University of Washington. Observers included Ronald P. Abeles, :"oIatiollal I IIstitute on Aging; Kathleen Brim (New York); Susan Mig­dal, Fordham Univcrsity; Christopher Peterson, University of Pennsylvania; John W. Riley, Jr. (Washington, D.C.); Carol A. Ryff, Fordham University; Heidi Sigal, Foundation for Child Development (;\jew York): Ellen Skinner, Educational Testing Service (Princeton, New Jersey); and Margaret Spencer, Emory Univer­sity. A report on the conference will be available early in _198!.

Workrhup oll"thp ItsI' of jJallel data for life­course resl'lIrch . At the first conference of the committee, held in October 1978, the University of Michigan Panel Study of I n­come Dynamics (PSI D) was identified as

; tIl espe( ially rich, but largely unexplorcd, d ata ban k for life-coulv' ~tudics. As a rt'­~ult , thc committee has Lonceptually and financ ially init ia ted and supported a sc ries of secondary analyses of tlte PSI D: these a nalyse~ have used the PSI L> data to descrihe the frcquencie~ acros~

chmnological age of critical life events (such as marriage,job lo~s, retircment), to

describe the i Iltercorrel.ttions of events, to

explorc the detcrminants of eve illS, and to search for their p()~siblc effects. A re­port of these analyses was presented at the con ,, "iLlee·~ mceting on Deccmber 2, 1979, in 'Jcw York: a rcvised version is puhlished in Grcg J. Duncan and James :"01. \10rg,1II (editors), Five Thul/salld Amer­icall Falllilil's-Patltn"lls of Ecollomic Prug­ress, Volume VIII, Ann Arhor: Institute for Social RescarLh. 1980. A brief--nc'tte appearcd in /11'11/.1. in \'Iarch 1980.

rhe analyses described in the ylorgan and Duncan report represent a prelimi­nary effort at a life-course utilization of the PSI D. The committee (and the di­rectors of the PSI D) a~e interested in facilitating a wider and fuller usc of the data set for life-course rest'arch. Toward this end, a workshop was held on June 19- 20, 1980, in Ann Arbor, Ylichigan, designed to inform potential users of the mcchanics of working with the data set and to develop proposals for life-course research ill which the data set could be used. The workshop was codirected by committee cochairman Glen H. Elder,Jr., Corncll University, and Mr. Morgan, a principal investigator of t.he PSI D.

An announcemcnt of the workshop in­viting applicat ions was (.ir(.ulated widely-to the cOlllmittee's correspon­dents and to Illqjor un i \"er~ities and ap­peared in the APA .\1ollitor, the ASA Fuot­/lotes, and Itelll~. There was considerable intcrest in t he workshop, and only a small pcrLentage of the appli<.:ants could be admitted. Twenty participants were selected on thc basis of academic qualifi­cations and rationale for participatioll in lhe workshop. The participants included Ronald P. Abcle~, :'\Jational Institute on Aging; Paula Smith Avioli, Rutgers Uni­versity: Rosemary Blieszner, Pennsyl­vania State University; Paula England, U nivcrsit y of Texas at Dallas; Richard J. Harris, University of Southern Califor­nia; Dennis P. Hogan, University of Chicago; ;\jan Lin, State University of ;\jew York, Albany; Sara S. McLanahan, University of Wisconsin; Steven D. 'vlcLaughlin, Battelle Human Affairs Re­sear<.:h Centers (Seattle, Washington);

VOLUME 34, NUMBER 3/4

1 !

Joseph F. Melichar, University of California, San Francisco; Elizabeth Menaghan, Ohio State University; Phyllis Moen, Cornell University; Valerie K. Oppenheimer, University of California, Los Angeles; Suzanne T. Ortega, Van­derbilt University; Pamela J. Perun, Wellesley College; Christopher Peterson, University of Pennsylvania; A. Wade Smith, Boys Town Center for the Study of Youth Development (Boys Town, :'Ile­braska); Byron G. Spencer, McMaster University; Mark J. Stern, University of Pennsylvania; and Richard Suzman, Stan­ford University. A report on the work­shop is available.

Announcement A conference is planned for

fall 1981 on life-course re­search that utilizes the data of the University of Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). The confer­ence will be open to individuals who are involved in research on life-course issues with the PSID; applications in the form of a detailed analysis plan should be submitted by June 1, 1981. 1 n­terested scholars should contact Lonnie R. Sherrod at the Council.

Summer postdoctoral institute on life-span human development. As a means of stimulating research on life-course devel­opment and recruiting scholars to such research, the committee cosponsored, with the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, a postdoctoral summer institute, held at the Center in Stanford, California, from July 8 through August 15, 1980. The institute was codirected by Paul B. Baltes, Max­Planck Institute for Human Develop­ment and Education (Berlin), committee cochairman, and David L. Featherman, University of Wisconsin.

The institute and its seminars explored both continuities and changes in behavior from conception to death in order to broaden scientific perspectives on human development. A basic proposition of these seminars was that hu man development

DECEMBER 1980

continues over the full course of life, is molded by biological, psychological, sociocultural, demographic, and histori­cal influences, and is an individual-level attribute which conditions social organ­ization. Specific emphases were on re­search methodology in the study of human development, theories oflife-span development, and in-depth treatment of a selected set of substantive research top­ics such as memory, intelligence, person­ality, intergenerational relations, careers, and the family life cycle. Whereas the primary focus of the institute was on issues in psychology and sociology, implications of a life-span perspective on behavior for the content and scope of other disciplines such as anthropology, biology, economics, education, history, and psychiatry were also considered.

On a general level, the main goals of the institute were threefold: (1) to broaden and intensify participants' understanding of life-span human devel­opment as approached by different disci­plines; (2) to develop, extend, and solidify a network of colleagues interested in various facets of a life-span approach; and (3) to work collectively and individu­ally on selected topics amenable to life­span analysis and research.

The format included several types of activities: (1) overview lectures by the codirectors; (2) presentations by visiting distinguished scholars on specific topics; and (3) research seminars and lectures organized by institute participants.

The concrete products of institute par­ticipation encompassed a variety of items. For example, participants designed a course or a research proposal dealing with a selected topic in life-span devel­opment. Throughout the institute, in­formal contact and discussions among participants and instructors were empha­sized. Participants also were asked to contribute to a final report by summariz­ing the presentation and discussion of one session. A detailed and comprehen­sive report of the institute is available.

The participants included Liesa Stamm Auerbach, University of Wisconsin, Mil­waukee; Josefina Jayme Card, American Institutes for Research (Palo Alto, California); Vivian Clayton, Teachers College, Columbia University; Bruce R. Hare, State University of New York, Stony Brook; Dennis P. Hogan, Univer­sity of Chicago; Bertha Garrett Holliday, George Peabody · College of Vanderbilt University; David I. Kertzer, Bowdoin College; Gisela Labouvie-Vief, Wayne

State University; Michael Lougee, Uni­versity of Connecticut; Nancy A. Marlin, University of Missouri, Rolla; Victoria Molfese, Southern Illinois University; Angel M. Pacheco, University of Puerto Rico; H. Wesley Perkins, Hobart and William Smith Colleges; PamelaJ. Perun, Wellesley College; Albert Roberts, How­ard University; William McKinley Run­yan, University of California, Berkeley; Carol D. Ryff, Fordham University; Timothy A. Salthouse, Vniversity of Missouri; Margaret Beale Spencer, Emory University; Bernard Treiber, University of Heidelberg; Amy Ong Tsui, University of Chicago; M. Belinda Tucker, University of California, Los Angeles; and Maris A. Vinovskis, Univer­sity of Michigan. The faculty, in addition to the directors, include Margaret M. Baltes, Free University of Berlin; Vern L. Bengtson, University of Southern California; W. T. Bielby, University of California, Santa Barbara; James Fries, Stanford University School of Medicine; Frank Furstenberg, University of Penn­sylvania; Leslie H. Hicks, Howard Uni­versity; Nathan Keyfitz, Harvard Univer­sity; Lawrence Kohlberg, Harvard Uni­versity; Richard M. Lerner, Pennsylvania State University; George Vaillant, Cam­bridge Hospital (Cambridge, Massachu­setts); and Sherwood L. Washburn, Uni­versity of California, Berkeley; and the following committee members: Orville G. Brim,Jr., Glen H. Elder,Jr., Caleb Finch, Matilda W. Riley, Martin E. P. Seligman, and Aage B. S~rensen. The full commit­tee met at the Center during one week of the institute in order to meet with the participants and contribute substantively to the proceedings. The institute was funded by a grant to the Center from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

--·rne current members of the com mittee are Paul B. Baltes, Max-Planck Institute for Human Development and Education (Berlin), cochairman; Glen H. Elder, Jr., Cornell University, cochairman; Orville G. Brim, Jr., Foundation for Child Devel­opment C'l"ew York); Caleb E. Finch, Uni­versity of Southern California; George M. Martin, University of Washington; John W. Meyer, Stanford University; Walter Muller, University of Mannheim; Martin E. P. Seligman, University of Pennsyl­vania; M. Brewster Smith, University of California, Santa Cruz; Aage B. S~ren­sen, University of Wisconsin; Franz E. Weinert, University of Heidelberg; ad­viser, Matilda White Riley, National In­stitute on Aging; staff, Lonnie R. Sherrod.

65

Newly-issued Council Publications China's Development Experience in Comparative Perspective, edited by Robert F. Dernberger. Papers from a conference sponsored by the Subcom­mittee on Research on the Chinese Econ­omy of the Joint Committee on Contem­porary China, January 31-February 2, 1976. Cambridge, \1assachusetts: Har­vard University Press, 1980. vi + 347 pages. $30.00.

China's economic development since 1949 is recognized by many as a success story and a model to be followed by other developing countries. What, then, are some of the features of China's develop­ment experience? How does China's ex­perience contribute to our understanding about the objectives of and obstacles to economic development? What is the rele­vance of China's experience to other de­veloping countries and how transferable is it to those countries? These are some of the issues addressed in this volume edited by Robert F. Dernberger, University of \1ichigan, who had organized the 1976 conference of which the volume IS a product.

Although there is a chapter on eco­Ilomic development in general (Amartya Sen, Oxford University) and another on development patterns in India, Pakistan, and Indonesia, three countries which are in many ways comparable to China (Thomas E. Weisskopf, University of \1ichigan), most of the contributions to this book deah yith China and were writ­ten by China specialists: \1r. Dernberger; Albert Feuerwerker, University of \1ichi­gan; Hu Teh-wei, Pennsylvania State University; :-.Jicholas R. Lardy, Yale Uni­versity; Franc;oise Le Gall, International \1olletary Fund; Dwight H . Perkins, Har­vanl University; Thomas G. Rawski, Uni­versity of roronto; and Benjamin Ward, University of California, Berkeley.

The analyses presented by the authors lend strong support to the hypothesis that direct transfer of China's development experience is not possible. This is because so much of its success depends on social, geographical, historical, and political features peculiar to China, and on the complex interdependence among these features. On the other hand, if China's experience is regarded as a model that includes a variety of technological ex­periments in a wide range of fields that can be looked at independently of cul­tural, political, and economic systems,

66

then clearly it is not irrelevant to the other developing countries.

The Chinese and the Japanese: Essays in Political and Cultural Interactions, edited by Akira Iriye. Papers from a con­ference sponsored by the Joint Commit­tee on Contemporary China held at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, June 24-27, 1976. Princeton University Press, 1980. 368 pages. Hardbound, $25.00; paper, $9.95.

Although interactions between the Chinese and the Japanese have existed for over two thousand years and have been an enduring aspect of East Asian history, little exists in the literature on the nature of those interactions. The 16 es­says in this volume, which grew out of papers presented at a conference held in June 1976, seek to redress that situation and to contribute to the understanding of the modern history of China and Japan by analyzing their points of contact.

Rather than follow an institutional ap­proach, the essays take as their point of departure personal interactions and per­ceptions of individual Chinese and Japanese: how did each view themselves, and how did they view their mutual rela­tions. Organized chronologically, the book traces the story-from the 18th century through the period of World War II-of two highly self-conscious peoples as they have made use of one another in terms of specific intellectual strategies, economic opportunities, political choices, and personal needs.

Besides the editor, Akira Iriye, Univer­sity of Chicago, who served as the confer­ence organizer, other contributors to the volume are \1adeleine Chi, Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State; Samuel C. Chu, Ohio State University; Lloyd E. Eastman, University of Illinois; Harry D. Harootunian, University of Chicago; BunsO Hashikawa, Meiji Uni­versity; \1asaru I kei, Keio University; \1arius B. Jansen, Princeton University; :-.Joriko Kamachi, University of Michigan, Dearborn; Susan H. \1arsh, Providence College; Takafusa :-.Jakamura, University of Tokyo; Bonnie B. Oh, Loyola Univer­sity; Shumpei Okamoto, Temple Univer­sity; John E. Schrecker, Brandeis Univer­sity; Yue-him Tam, ;\Jew Asia College, Chinese University of Hong Kong; and Ernest P. Young, University of Michigan.

Humanistic and Social Science Research in China: Recent History and Future Prospects, edited by Anne F. Thurston and Jason H . Parker. A collaborative publication of the Joint Committee on Contemporary China and the Committee on Studies of Chinese Civilization of the American Council of Learned Societies. New York: Social Science Research Council, 1980. 175 pages. No charge.

This volume is the product of a three­week fact-finding trip made by members of the Joint Committee on Contemporary China (of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies) and the Committee on Studies of Chinese Civilization (of the ACLS) in the winter of 1979-80. As a result of visits to universities, libraries, and archives and conversations with leading members of the various institutes of philosophy and social sciences in seven Chinese cities, the delegation was able to

assemble, by discipline, detailed reports about the state of each field, reviews of the strengths and weaknesses of research facilities, and lists of Chinese scholars and their institutional affiliations. The reports also provide the authors' own assessment of the prospects for future development in the various disciplines of the humanities and the social sciences. While the book is addressed mainly to China specialists, others with a more general interest in China's intellectual community and opportunities for scholarly exchange in the social sciences and humanities may find it informative and instructive.

The introduction, by Anne F. Thurston (then staff associate at the Council) and Jason H. Parker (executive associate at the ACLS), gives a brief history of schol­arship in China after 1949, assesses the current role and future development prospects of the social sciences and hu manities, describes some of the prob­lems foreign researchers may face in China, and offers cautionary advice to those interested in conducting research in China. Subsequent chapters, arranged by discipline, were written by Hok-Iam Chan, University of Washington (premodern history); Paul A. Cohen, Wellesley Col­lege, and \1erle Goldman, Boston Uni­versity (modern history); Donald J. \1unro, University of Michigan (philosophy); Cyril Birch, University of California, Berkeley, and Patrick D. Hanan, Harvard University (literature);

VOLUME 34, NUMBER 3/4

Robert F. Dernberger, University of Michigan (economics); Thomas P. Bernstein, Columbia University (political science); Martin K. Whyte, University of \!Iichigan, and Burton Pasternak, Hunter College (sociology and anthropology); and Victor H . Li, Stanford University (law).

Indicators of Crime and Criminal Jus­tice: Quantitative Studies, edited by Stephen E. Fienberg and Albert J. Reiss, Jr. A publication of the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice Statistics of the Council's Acl\;sory and Planning Committee on So­cial Indicators. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1980. Approximately 180 pages. (Distributed by the National Criminal Justice Reference Service: Doc­ument NCJ-62349.)

The quantitative study of both crime and <.riminal justice is a rapidly expand­ing field, involving the application of rel­atively complex statistical methods and probabilistic models. This volume brings together some of the research on this topic that was initiated at a workshop held in the summer of 1975. The workshop was sponsored by the Council's Center for Coordination of Research on Social Indi­cators, with funds from the Law En­forcement Assistance Administration of the U.S. Department of Justice.

An introductory essay by David Seid­man, who at the time of the workshop was a staff associate at the Council, describes the highlights of a follow-up conference held in October 1977, at which workshop participants presented progress reports on some of their research. The essay provides an overview both of the volume and of the frontiers of quantitative re­search in this area.

The remainder of the volume consists of 13 papers on such topics as macro­models for criminal justice planning, the deterrent effects of punishment on crime, the effects of plea bargaining upon the ultimate disposition of cases, criminal victimization and models for its analysis, victim proneness, parole decision making, and police patrol experiments.

The volume is edited by Stephen E. Fienberg, Carnegie-Mellon University, and Albert J . Reiss, Jr., Yale University. In addition to the editors and Mr. Seid­man, who is currently with the Rand Cor­poration (Washington, D.C.), the con­tributors to the volume include Albert D. Biderman, Bureau of Social Science Re­search (Washington, D.C.); Alfred

DECEMBER 1980

Blumstein, Carnegie-Mellon University; Stephen Brier, University of Iowa; David Britt, :\Iova University; Gary Koch, Uni­versity of North Carolina; Kinley Larntz, University of Michigan; Colin Loftin, University of Michigan; Richard Perline, University of Chicago; Richard Sparks, Rutgers University; and Howard Wainer, Bureau of Social Science Research.

Karma and Rebirth in Classical Indian Traditions, edited by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty. Papers from two conferences sponsored by the Joint Committee on South Asia. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1980. xxv + 342 pages.

Karma is perhaps the most famous concept in Indian philosophy, but there is no comprehensive study of its various meanings or philosophical implications. Under the sponsorship of the Joint Committee on South Asia, leading In­dologists met on several occasions to dis­cuss the classical statements regarding the relationship of past action to present cir­cumstances.

Exchanges of draft essays created an underlying set of methodological as­sumptions; a corpus of definitions of karma; a dialectic between abstract theory and historical explanation; and an aware­ness of logical oppositions in theories of karma. No "solution" to the paradox of karma is offered, but this volume pre­sents a consistent and encompassing ap­proach to the many different, often con­flicting, Indian statements of the prob­lem .

Following an introductory essay, Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, University of Chicago, presents the Vedic and Puranic background to the theory of karma. There follow studies of karma in the Mahiibhiirata (J. Bruce Long, Blaisdell In­stitute, Claremont, California), the Dhar­masastras (Ludo Rocher, University of Pennsylvania), the medical textbooks (\!Iitchell G. Weiss, University of Pennsyl­vania School of \!Iedicine), and the Tamil tradition (George L. Hart, III, University of California, Berkeley). Buddhist con­cepts, perhaps the most pervasive formu­lations of karma, are treated for (1) early Buddhism with a hypothesis of the deri­vation of karma from tribal ideas ethicized by Buddhism (Gananath Obeysekere, University of California, San Diego), (2) Pali Buddhism (James McDer­mott, Canisius College), and (3) Tantric Buddhism (William Stablein, University of California, Santa Cruz). Padmanabh S.

Jaini (University of California, Berkeley) contributes a new hypothesis of the in­teraction of linear and cyclical ideas of transmigration in Jainism, to which he attributes the origin of the karma theory. Karl H. Potter (University of Washing­ton) sets forth the philosophical implica­tions of karma; Gerald Larson (University of California, Santa Barbara) attempts to resolve the two approaches, while Wilhelm Halbfass (University of Pennsyl­vania) demonstrates the way~ in which later Indian philosophy produced reso­lutions of its own.

This book should have a considerable impact upon the teaching of Indian philosophy. At the very least, it demon­strates the impossibility of speaking of "the theory of karma," as is so often done. It also supplies the basis for a full study of this important theory. Finally, it raises basic methodological problems about the study of non-Western conceptualizations of death and rebirth, the interaction of medical and philosophical models of the human body, the incorporation of philo­sophical theories into practical religions with which they are logically incompati­ble, and the historical reconstruction of a complex theory of human life.

The Mass Media Election: How Ameri­cans Choose Their President, by Thomas E. Patterson. A publication sponsored by the Committee on Mass Communications and Political Behavior (1974-80). New York: Praeger Publishers, 1980. xvi + 204 pages. Cloth, $21.95; paper, $8.95.

Despite the news media's prominence in presidential election campaigns, there has been little comprehensive research on the media's impact. Most studies have been based on skimpy evidence. Recog­nizing this, the Council sponsored Thomas Patterson's study through its Committee on \!lass Communications and Political Behavior, which was appointed in 1974 to stimulate and coordinate re­search on mass communications and political behavior during the 1976 presi­dential election.

Patterson's study addresses two specific questions. What is the nature of the elec­tion messages that are transmitted through the media during the presiden­tial campaign? And how do these messages affect the public's response to today's campaign? In order to answer these questions, the study used two sources of evidence.

First, a panel survey of voters was car­ried out in two communities; Erie, Penn-

67

sylvania, and Los Angeles, California. Beginning in February 1976, before the primaries began, and ending in ~ovember after election day, the 1,200 respondents in the panel were inter­viewed as many as seven times each about their media use, their impressions of the candidates and the campaign, their awareness of the election's issues, their interest in the campaign, and similar top­ics. The interviews were timed to bracket the majo~ stages of the campaign-the early primaries, the late primaries, the conventions, the debates, and the general election . Five of the waves involved hour-long personal interviews; two of the waves were conducted by telephone.

Second, a content analysis of the news media's coverage .of the 1976 presidential election was conducted. Examined was the entire election year's reporting of the three major commercial television networks-ABC, CBS, and NBC; four daily newspapers-the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, the Erie News, and the Erie Times; and Time and Newsweek magazines.

Patterson found that journalistic values, not political ones, dominate elec­tion news. The result is that election news: • focuses on the strategic games played by

the candidates in their pursuit of the presidency, thereby de-emphasizing questions 'of national policy and lead­ership

• concentrates on issues that are different from the ones emphasized by the can­didates

• distorts the structure of the presidential election system by exaggerating the im­portance of certain events and concen­trating upon certain candidates

This pattern of coverage provides a change from elections of the not-too­distant past. An earlier study by Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet (The People's Choice, first pub­lished in 1944) found that election news was concerned mainly with policy and leadership questions, was dominated by the issues preferred by the candidates, and balanced the coverage given the can­didates. The reasons for the change in election news, Patterson suggests, are the lengthening of the campaign, which re­duces the candidates' control of the agenda; an increase in the number of primaries, which directs attention to the candidates' successes and strategies; and developments in journalism, such as the

68

increased use of opinion polls, which are designed primarily to report the relative standing of the candidates.

Patterson discovered that voters are af­fected substantially by election news. There is a close parallel between the media's version of the campaign and the voters' version. The reason is that for the large majority of voters, the campaign has little reality apart from its presentation in the media. Thus, the voters are: • attuned primarily to the election's race

aspects rather than its political implica­tions

• more likely to develop images of the candidates as performers than as leaders and representatives.

• more likely to gain information about the candidates' success than about their policy proposals or leadership capacities

And this, too, is a change from the past. The electorate that Lazarsfeld, Berel­son, and Gaudet documented in the 1940s understood and emphasized ques­tions of policy and governance more than matters of strategy and image.

Based on his findings, Patterson con­tends that today's campaign places an in­tolerably heavy burden on the news media. The media are inadequate as a link between leaders and the led because they are not a political institution and have no stake in organizing public opin­ion. The media's version of the campaign is an inadequate guide to the choices fac­ing the voters. Although many people look to the news media as a corrective for defects in the present electoral system, the media, Patterson concludes, exagger­ate the system's weaknesses.

Quantitative Measures of China's Eco­nomic Output, edited by Alexander Eck­stein, with an introduction by Robert F. Dernberger. Papers from a conference sponsored by the Subcommittee on Re- ' search on the Chinese Economy of the Joint Committee on Contemporary China held at the Brookings Institution, Wash­ington, D.C., January 17-18, 1975. Uni­versity of Michigan Press, 1980. 443 pages. Hardbound, $26.50.

In 1974, Alexander Eckstein, the widely recognized dean of American scholars of the economy of China, was asked by the Subcommittee on Research on the Chinese Economy to organize a conference on reconciling and develop­ing quantitative measures of China's eco­nomic output. Four papers were pre­pared for the 1975 conference, at which

more than 30 academics and profession­als participated in the discussions. The four chapters in this volume are the re­vised conference papers. ~r. Eckstein died in December 1976,

before the papers were ready for publi­calion, and Robert F. Dernberger, Uni­versity of ~ichigan, assumed the burden of completing the editorial process. In the introduction, he states that the purpose of the volume is not merely to show that a reasonable set of estimates for the mac­roindicators of China's economic devel­opment exists and to present the esti­mates in a format convenient for those engaged in economic research on China's economy. The major purpose is rather to offer both the specialist and the nonspecialist interested in China's eco­nomic development a basis for evaluating the alternative estimates for mac­roeconomic indicators which are already included in the available secondary lit­erature on the subject. This is particularly crucial because of the data problems which exist and because of the dis­agreements over the quantitative mea­sures for China.

The four essays by Thomas B. Wiens, !\olathtech, Inc . (Bethesda, Maryland); Thomas G. Rawski, University of To­ronto; Robert Michael Field, U.S. Central Intelligence Agency; and Dwight H . Per­kins, Harvard University, deal with four major indicators: agricultural production, industrial production, capital formation, and national product. Each evaluates the empirical evidence available and derives what is in the view of each author the most meaningful set of estimates that could be determined.

The essays illustrate not only the diffi­culties involved in making even tentative appraisals of the quantitative dimensions of China's economic evolution over the past 25 years, but also the very real ac­complishments that can be achieved through persistence and carefully applied skill.

Science Indicators: Implications for Re­search and Policy, edited by Harriet Zuckerman and Roberta Balstad Miller. Special issue of Scientometrics 2 (5-6): 327-448. A publication of the Subcom­mittee on Science Indicators of the Advi­sory and Planning Committee on Social I ndicators. Elsevier Scientific Publishing Co., Amsterdam, and AkacIemiai Kiad6, Budapest, 1980.

This volume is part of the continuing review by the Subcommittee on Science

VOLUME 34, NUMBER 3/4

Indicators of the National Science Board's biennial science and technology indicators reports. The essays printed here were first presented at a review symposium on Science Indicators 1976 held in Washington, D.C. in May 1978. Papers and commentaries deal with the policy and research contexts of science indica­tors; with indicators relating science, technology, and the economy; with indi­cators of basic research activities; and with public opinion on science and technology.

fhe contributors to the volume are Harriet Zuckerman, Columbia Univer­sity, chairman of the subcommittee at the time of the review symposium; Roberta Balstad Miller, Social Science Research Council; Harvey Brooks, Harvard Uni­versity; Harvey Averch, National Science Foundation; Rachael McCulloch, Univer­sity of Wisconsin ; Edwin Mansfield, Uni­versity of Pennsylvania; Richard B. Freeman, Harvard University; Nathan Rosenberg, Stanford University; Char­lotte V. Kuh, Harvard University ; Stephen Cole, State University of New York, Stony Brook; Joseph Ben-David, University of Chicago and the Hebrew University; Derek J. de Solla Price, Yale University; Raymond Bowers, Harvard University; Henry W. Riecken, University of Pennsylvania; and Todd La Porte, University of California, Berkeley.

Systeme urbaine et developpement au Maghreb, edited by Amal Rassam and Abdelkader Zghal. Papers from a confer­ence sponsored by the Joint Committee on the :'Ilear and Middle East. Tunis: Ceres Productions, 1980.

Most studies of modern urban society in the Maghreb-Algeria, Morocco, and I'unisia-have taken individual cities as their focus rather than the urbanization process itself. fhere have been no com­prehensive or comparative analyses of urban development. To help fill this gap, the Joint Committee on the Near and Middle East convened a conference on urbanization in the Maghreb held at the

DECEMBER 1980

Centre Culturel I lIternational de Ham­mamet, Tunisia, in June 1976.

The conference brought together \1aghrebi and non-Maghrebi specialists in the several disciplines concerned with urban life and affairs, each of whom pre­pared a paper. The discussion was gen­eral and the overall theoretical issues and points of contention came quickly to the surface. Among the topics which were aired were rural-urban migration; ways in which the city dominates and exploits the countryside; the social structure of individual towns and cities; patterns of housing and housing policy; the structure of urban systems; the city as a system of signs both in architecture and in the verbal discourse of political and other leaders; the experiences of women in an urban environment; and the differential useful­ness of various methodologies ranging from the analysis of census data to the collection of urban ethnographies for grasping the essence of urban life.

fhe contributors, with the titles of their papers in English translation, are: Part I: Urban and Social Systems: Historical

Perspectives "The City in Pre-Colonial Magh­reb," by Andre :'Ilouschi, Uni­versity of :'Ilice; "Urban Systems and Development," by Frej Stam­bouli, Centre d'Etudes et Re­cherches Economiqes et Sociales (CERES), University of Tunis; "City-Country Relations in 19th Century Tunisia: The Case of the Sahel and the Lower Steppes," by Khelifa Chateur, CERES, Uni­versity of Tunis.

Part II: Urban Growth alld Development "The Case of Morocco," by Abderrafik Lahbabi, University of Grenoble; "The Case of Algeria," by Jilali Sari, Institut :'Ilational de Geographie, Algiers; "The Case of Tunisia," by Mo­hamed Fakhfakh CERES, Uni­versity of Tunis.

Part III: Urbanization and Urban Life "The Medina in the Contempo-

rary Cit)' in Morocco," by Andre Adam, Universite Rene Des­cartes, Paris; "Urbanization and Rural Perceptions: The New So­cialist Village of Aln Nahala, Algeria," by Cherif Bengargour, Centre de Recherches An- ' thropologiques, Prehistoriques, et Ethnographiques (CRAPE), Algiers; "Urbanization in Tes­tour, Tunisia," by :'Ilicholas Hop­kins, American University in Cairo; "The Urbanization Process in Haml1lamet, Tunisia," by Ridha Boukraa, CERES, Univer­sity of Tunis.

Part IV: Symbols, Aspirations and the Orgall­izatioll of UTban Social Space "Symbolic Forms and Urban So­cial Space: The Case of Morocco," by Dale F. Eickelman, New York University ; "Aspira­tions and the Structure of Resi­dential Space," by ~1orched

Chebbi, Tunis; "Aspirations and :'Ileeds of the Newly Urbanized," by Tqjeddine Baddou, lnstitut :'\lational de Statistiquc et d'Economie Appliquee, Rabat ; "Housing and Economic Behav­ior," by Salah Hamzaoui, CERES, University of Tunis.

Part V : Ideology, Power, and Urban Plan­ning "Political Systems and Urban 'vlode1s in the 'vlaghreb," by Ellen C. Micaud, University of Denver; "Cities and Political Systems: The Official Algerian Image of the City," by Jean Leca, University of Grenoble; "Peasants and fheir Environments in Respect to the Transfer of Knowledge and Patterns of Domination Between Cities and the Countryside in Algeria," by Fanny Colonna, CRAPE, Algiers; "Political As­pects of the Study of Urbaniza­tion in Algeria," by I. William Zartman, New York Universir}.

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Other Recent Publications: A Selection The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes, edited by Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan. Published in connection with a confer­ence partially sponsored by the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies, held in 1973 at Yale University. Balti­more: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979. (Published in 1978 in four paper­back volumes.)

Capitalism and the State in U.S.-Latin American Relations, edited by Richard R. Fagen. Papers presenter! at a confer­ence sponsored by the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies held at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C., March 27-31, 1978. Stanford University Press, 1979. 446 pages. Hardbound, $22.50; paper, $6.95.

Cognition and Categorization, edited by Eleanor Rosch and Barbara B. Lloyd. Pa­pers based upon conferences held in 1974 and 1976, sponsored by the Committee on Cognitive Research. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1978. Distributed by the Halsted Press Division of John Wiley and Sons. viii + 328 pages.

Crises of Political Development in Europe and the United States, edited by Raymond Grew, Volume 9 in Studies in Political Development sponsored by the Committee on Comparative Politics of the Social Science Research Council. Princeton University Press, 1978. 433 pages. Hardbound, $27.50; paper, $6.95.

Elites in the Middle East, edited by I. William Zartman. A publication of the Joint Committee on the Near and Middle

East. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1980. x + 252 pages. Cloth, $21.95.

The Entertainment Functions of Televi. sion, edited by Percy H. Tannenbaum. Papers based on a conference organized by the Committee on Television and So­cial Behavior, held in New York on Octo­ber 24-25, 1975. Hillsdale, Hew Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1980. ix + 262 pages. Cloth, $19.95.

The Family in Latin America, edited by Francesca M. Cancian, Louis Wolf Goodman, and Peter H. Smith. Papers produced as the result of two conferences on the Social History of the Family spon­sored by the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies and held April 29-May 1, 1977, in San Francisco, and October 23-24, 1977, in Cuernavaca, Mexico. A special issue of the Journal of Family His­tory, 111,4 (Winter 1978), 159 pages.

Health and Society in Africa: A Working Bibliography, compiled by Steven Feier­man. Published as a preparatory guide for a series of conferences sponsored by the Joint Committee on African Studies. Waltham, Massachusetts: Crossroads Press of the African Studies Association, 1979.

Japan: A Comparative View, edited by Albert M. Craig. Papers from a confer­ence sponsored by the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies. Princeton University Press, 1979. 437 pages.

Mass Political Behavior Research in Japan: A Report on the State of the Field and Bibliography, by Scott C. Flanagan

and Bradley M. Richardson. Prepared for the Joint Committee on Japanese Studies. :'IIew York: Social Science Research Council, 1979. iv + 40 pages. :'110 charge.

The New Authoritarianism in Latin America, edited by David Collier. Papers prepared as part of a project on the State and Public Policy sponsored by the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies and presented at a conference held Feb­ruary 6-8, 1977. Princeton University Press, 1979. 456 pages. Hardbound, $25.00; paper, $5.95.

The Social History of Disease and Medicine in Africa, edited by John M. Janzen and Steven Feierman. Special issue of Social Science & Medicine, 13B(4): 239-356 (December 1979). A publication of the Joint Committee on African Studies. Exeter, Devon, England and Elmsford, New York: Pergamon Press. (Available from Pergamon Press, Maxwell House, Fairview Park, Elmsford, New York 10523.)

Strangers in African Societies, edited by William A. Shack and Elliott P. Skinner. Papers from a conference sponsored by the Joint Committee on African Studies, held October 16-19, 1974 at the Smith­sonian Conference Center, Belmont, Maryland. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979. x + 325 pages.

Studies in Chinese Society, edited by Arthur P. Wolf. Selected papers from conferences sponsored by the Joint Committee on Contemporary China. Stanford University Press, 1978. xii + 372 pages; paperback.

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