2
276 American Anthropologist 168, 19661 As an Appendix a complete Bibliography of Talcott Parsons has been added to the collection. Its 12 packed pages are an impressive testimony to Parsons’ extraordinary literary productivity that begins in 1928. Professor Parsons’ erudition in the behavioral sciences is undisputed, and so well known is his work a reviewer hesitates to comment upon it. Many sociologists regard him as the greatest theorist of the times, yet social and cultural anthropologists seem to be rarely stimulated by his endeavors to construct a macrotheory of human behavior. I t is certainly not the theoretical objectives that Parsons has clearly in view that leaves anthropologists something less than enthusiastic. What is it, then? One answer is to be found in the manner in which he has gone about constructing his general theory. The Theory of Action is in the first instance syncretist and additive. By the author’s own admission it would take volumes to present it completely. It is, in other words, a mas- sive compilation that brings together everything from the Achievement Motive to Znaniecki. By a little trimming here, tinkering there, and conceptual alteration all around he gets everything to fit, verbally at least, into something resembling a unified theoretical structure. Although they concern only a small aspect of the overall theory, the essays in the volume reviewed here amply illustrate this. There is no question that the results of Parsons’ labors do present a broad overview of much of the important re- search and insights gained by so-called behavioral scientists practically back to Aris- totle. But whether or not from this overview one gains new insights, understandings, or stimuli for further research is debatable. What Parsons achieves by his monumental work seems mainly to be a translation of many subdiscipline jargons into Parsons’ own idiom. This is not a reduction to a universal metalanguage, such as logic or mathema- tics, nor does it seem to substantially reduce the number of variables that have been discovered to a more salient and manageable number. Is this, then, really progress toward a productive unified theory? Women in the New Asia: The Changing Social Roles of Men and Women in South and South-East Asia. BARBARA E. WARD (ed.) Paris: UNESCO, 1963.529 pp., appendix, suggestions for further reading, plates, tables. $10.00; SO/-; 35.50F. Reviewed by ANNA P. MCCORMACK, Durham, North Carolina Women in the New Asia was produced under UNESCO auspices to describe “for the common reader in the West” (p. 11) the “impact of the new public status of women [political, legal, economic, educational] upon the private, domestic lives of both sexes in the various countries of South and South-East Asia” (p. 5). It is organized in three parts. Part I is a long introductory “essay in understanding social roles” by the editor, a British sociologist. She distinguishes among “role,” “status,” and “prestige,” points out that sex roles are reciprocal, and pleads against all kinds of facile overgeneralizations regarding social phenomena in the region at issue, specifically against explanations of social change there as attributable to “Westernization.” Then, she analyzes data from the succeeding chapters, together with data of her own, and suggests some guidelines for future research. One of her contentions with which some anthropologists will argue-and with which certain other contributors to this book are at variance-is that the significance of religion for the position of women in the Orient has in the past been overstressed. Dr. Ward asserts, rather, that, “It is always sociologically unsound to argue as if social facts were derived from religious beliefs and rituals and did not exist in their own right” (p. 66). Some social facts that she emphasizes are modern medical

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Page 1: Other: Women in the New Asia: The Changing Social Roles of Men and Women in South and South-East Asia. Barbara E. Ward

276 American Anthropologist 168, 19661

As an Appendix a complete Bibliography of Talcott Parsons has been added to the collection. I t s 12 packed pages are an impressive testimony to Parsons’ extraordinary literary productivity that begins in 1928.

Professor Parsons’ erudition in the behavioral sciences is undisputed, and so well known is his work a reviewer hesitates to comment upon it. Many sociologists regard him as the greatest theorist of the times, yet social and cultural anthropologists seem to be rarely stimulated by his endeavors to construct a macrotheory of human behavior. I t is certainly not the theoretical objectives that Parsons has clearly in view that leaves anthropologists something less than enthusiastic. What is it, then? One answer is to be found in the manner in which he has gone about constructing his general theory. The Theory of Action is in the first instance syncretist and additive. By the author’s own admission i t would take volumes to present it completely. It is, in other words, a mas- sive compilation that brings together everything from the Achievement Motive to Znaniecki. By a little trimming here, tinkering there, and conceptual alteration all around he gets everything to fit, verbally at least, into something resembling a unified theoretical structure. Although they concern only a small aspect of the overall theory, the essays in the volume reviewed here amply illustrate this. There is no question that the results of Parsons’ labors do present a broad overview of much of the important re- search and insights gained by so-called behavioral scientists practically back to Aris- totle. But whether or not from this overview one gains new insights, understandings, or stimuli for further research is debatable. What Parsons achieves by his monumental work seems mainly to be a translation of many subdiscipline jargons into Parsons’ own idiom. This is not a reduction to a universal metalanguage, such as logic or mathema- tics, nor does it seem to substantially reduce the number of variables that have been discovered to a more salient and manageable number. Is this, then, really progress toward a productive unified theory?

Women in the New Asia: The Changing Social Roles of Men and Women in South and South-East Asia. BARBARA E. WARD (ed.) Paris: UNESCO, 1963.529 pp., appendix, suggestions for further reading, plates, tables. $10.00; SO/-; 35.50F.

Reviewed by ANNA P. MCCORMACK, Durham, North Carolina Women in the New Asia was produced under UNESCO auspices to describe “for the

common reader in the West” (p. 11) the “impact of the new public status of women [political, legal, economic, educational] upon the private, domestic lives of both sexes in the various countries of South and South-East Asia” (p. 5 ) . It is organized in three parts.

Part I is a long introductory “essay in understanding social roles” by the editor, a British sociologist. She distinguishes among “role,” “status,” and “prestige,” points out that sex roles are reciprocal, and pleads against all kinds of facile overgeneralizations regarding social phenomena in the region at issue, specifically against explanations of social change there as attributable to “Westernization.” Then, she analyzes data from the succeeding chapters, together with data of her own, and suggests some guidelines for future research. One of her contentions with which some anthropologists will argue-and with which certain other contributors to this book are at variance-is that the significance of religion for the position of women in the Orient has in the past been overstressed. Dr. Ward asserts, rather, that, “It is always sociologically unsound to argue as if social facts were derived from religious beliefs and rituals and did not exist in their own right” (p. 66). Some social facts that she emphasizes are modern medical

Page 2: Other: Women in the New Asia: The Changing Social Roles of Men and Women in South and South-East Asia. Barbara E. Ward

Book Reviews 277

measures, improved communications, emigration from villages to towns, diversified employment opportunities, modern education, and political emancipation-all exani- ined vis-$-vis changes in traditional institutions, especially kinship systems.

Part I1 is a collection of 19 papers, each of which focuses on the types of family roles and domestic behavior obtaining among the majority ethnic group in a country of South or South-East Asia. Expectably for any such collection, this part is uneven. Some of the unevenness is built into the presentation, in that papers on certain countries- Burma, India, Malaya, the Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand-are grouped into a first that is general and interpretative, and a following one, or more, that is a personal life-history. This plan is effective, and it is unfortunate that only single papers appear for Ceylon, Indonesia (Java), Laos, East Pakistan, West Pakistan, and Vietnam. A cross-cutting unevenness stems from the different backgrounds and formal training of authors. The authors are all urbanites, but range from full-time social scientists (S.C. Dube, Robert E. Fox, Lucien and Jane Hanks, and the sociologists A. K. Nazmul Karim, Jyotirmoyee Sarma, Michael Swift, and Ann E. Wee) to housewives. Only one of the latter, who holds high political office, strikes this reviewer as unnecessarily propa- gandistic. Finally, some papers are more ambitious than others. However, while most are purely descriptive and many are journalistic, few are without a certain insight. One paper that is analytically significant and provocative is the Hanks’ “Thailand: Equal- ity between the Sexes.”

Part 111 consists of three papers on the region as a whole. One is a “history of female emancipation,” another discusses “population characteristics,” and a third reports on family planning.

At first glance, this book does not commend itself to the professional anthropologist. But, surprisingly, it turns out to be something of a sleeper. I t makes thoughtful bedtime reading for the South-East Asia area specialist, and may not prove unenlightening for others as well.

The Ballad-Drama OJ Medieval Japan. JAMES T. ARAKI. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1964. xvi, 289 pp., appendix, bibliography, 28 figures, frontispiece, glossary, index, notes, 2 plates. $7.50.

Reviewed by WILLIAM P. MALM, University o/ Miclzigan

The folk theatre of Japan provides an extremely rich array of forms from which the cultural anthropologist can find many examples of the flow of ideas between Redficldian great and small societies as well as specific details concerning the internal developments of folk theatre in general. Unfortunately, for the generalist, the extensive materials that exist on Japanese theatricals (geino) are still primarily hidden behind the vcil of the Japanese language. Therefore, it is a pleasure to introduce Dr. Araki, a teacher of Japanese language and literature at the University of California Los Angeles, and his first book to the anthropological world. The book is a study of one regional survival from Japan’s ancient theatrical world, a set of kowaka narratives pcrfornied in the vil- lage of Oe in Fukuoka prefecture on Kyushu Island. I n the process of tracing the history of this ballad-drama Dr. Araki discusses many earlier Japanese forms from ancient Buddhist music and court music to the shirabyoshi and kusemai dances as well as lute narratives and early noh plays. I n this section one will find many useful translations of contemporary accounts of these ancient forms. Please note that the term kaguri a t the bottom of page 34 is not a variant but a misprint of kagura.

While some of this background discussion is a digression from thr main topic it does