SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL

VOLUME 43 • NUMBER 1 • MARCH 1989 605 THIRD AVENUE. NEW YORK, N.Y. 10158

Sacred and Secular in Muslim Societies

THE HISTORICALLY COMPLEX and highly dynamic relationship of Islamic religious traditions to the role and authority of the state has been a central concern of the Joint Committee on the Comparative Study of Muslim Societies. In most of the Muslim world (some 900,000,000 people stretching from Indonesia and the Philippines, through China, the Soviet Union, South Asia, and the Middle East, to North, Central, and Western Africa, with growing populations in Europe and the United States as well), the nature of the individual, of individual rights, and the legiti­mate location and organization of political authority are deeply bound up in religious ideas and under­standings. The Islamic tradition includes numerous, historically specific, and often highly divergent formulations on these subjects.

Nevertheless, there is a broad but fundamental distinction between the Western (Christian) and Muslim worlds in this regard. In the West, 500 years of almost continuous struggles have largely suc­ceeded in separating church and state. Most Western­ers now take the separation of secular and sacred

* David L. Szanton, an anthropologist, is an executive associate at the Council. He serves as staff to the Joint Committee on the Comparative Study of Muslim Societies. Members of the committee include: William R. Roff, Columbia University (CHAIR); Lila Abu-Lughod, University of Pennsylvania; Richard Bulliet, Columbia University; Christian Decobert, Centre Na­tional de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris; Ali Hillal Dessouki, Cairo University; William Graham, Harvard Univer­sity; M. Khalid Masud, Islamic Research Institute (Islamabad); Barbara Daly Metcalf, University of California, Davis; James Piscatori, The Johns Hopkins University; and M. Nazif Shahrani, University of California, Los Angeles.

Some key issues before the Joint Committee on the Comparative Study of Muslim Societies

by David L. Szanton*

authority-indeed, the dominance of the secular over the sacred-as progressive and a universal goal. In most contemporary Muslim societies, however, the sacred and the secular remain in unresolved tension. In many countries the distinction is rejected outright, and the religious tradition continues to dominate or encompass vast areas of what in the West would be taken as "properly" secular life. The Ayatollah Khomeini's call for the assassination of Salman Rushdie for writing The Satanic Verses is but an extreme case in point.

CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE

Sacred and Secular in Muslim Societies-David L. Szanton

4 Project LINK at 20-Bert C. Hickman and ulwrence R. Klein

7 The Rise of a New Ethnic Group: The "Unhyphenated American" -Stanley Lieberson and Mary C. Waters

II Activities of the China Committee: Conference Reports -Marriage and Inequality in Chinese

Society (page 11) -Structure of Authority and Bureaucratic Behavior in

China (page 11) -Economic Methods for Chinese Historical Research

(page 12) 14 Other Council Activities

- US-USSR bibliographic and preservation agreement (page 14)

- Workshop on research methods for Latino studies (page 14)

- Technical training for social scientists in Africa (page 14)

-Eastern European Politics and Societies (page 17) 18 Recent Council Publications

There have been numerous efforts in the Muslim world to separate the sacred and secular, often-in the recent past-under the rubric of "modernism" or "reform." But on the whole, aside perhaps from Attaturk's Turkey, they have been substantially less effective than their counterparts in the Christian West. As a consequence, notions of the rights and relations between individuals and the states in which they reside, which are pressed and promulgated by Westerners as "universal," may be rejected, and are certainly recast or modified in much of the Muslim world. In those societies, large numbers of people­from ordinary folk to national leaders-take quite the opposite position; that is, that religious (and specifically Islamic) truths and values should com­pletely penetrate and provide the central framework for the social, economic, and political organization of all levels of community-from the family, through the state, to the larger umma, or universal "com­munity" of believers.

Commitments to the preeminence of the religious framework in much of the Muslim world were deeply shaken (or driven underground) during the 1950s and 1960s as European colonial controls collapsed, as political and economic development, independence, and power seemed attainable, and as a stereotypically "American" secular consumer culture or life style seemed within reach. But subsequent difficulties in actually achieving these visions of "modernization," "development," and "secularism" (or problems gen­erated by succeeding all too well), created in many countries a new impetus and fresh justifications for reestablishing the primacy of religious frameworks and value systems. Today, in almost every Muslim society, there are deep tensions-if not outright conflicts-between those with more secular, pluralis­tic views of individual rights comparable to those found in Western nation-states, and those arguing that religious law and tradition must become the basis for national constitutions and the legal systems governing societies.

At issue are fundamental conceptions about the nature of society and human life. Most Westerners viewing this as a relatively settled debate find it difficult to imagine the intensity of the conflict it engenders in the Muslim world. Furthermore, every country has its own history; the internal events, issues, and processes involved, the particular forms of conflict, the arenas in which they take place, the nature, strengths, and motives of the contenders, vary considerably from place to place and over time. But questions of the legitimate nature, location, and basis for authority, and the proper relation of

2\!TEMS

individuals to the state, are constantly being con­tested and reformulated in intense and sometimes violent debate in most Muslim societies. Some patterns do seem evident, but few trajectories are clear as political systems shift, and as various secular and religious leaders rise and fall in public estima­tion. The long-term shape of these societies, the nature and sources of their leadership, as well as the quality of life of their individual citizens, will be heavily determined by the outcome of these conflicts.

The Joint Committee on the Comparative Study of Muslim Societies has been concerned with these issues from its inception. Its initial volume, Islam and The Political Economy of Meaning: Comparative Studies in Muslim Discourse, edited by William R. Roff, examines the ways in which political leaders and movements in nine countries from across the Muslim world, ranging from Indonesia to Nigeria, have used ideas from the religious tradition to argue their positions and to mobilize support for themselves and their vision of society. Individual essays layout the contending forces and explain the context and effect of these debates in particular countries, while two synthesizing essays spell out more general patterns. A second volume, "Intellectuels et Militants de l'Islam Contemporain," is being edited by Gilles Kepel and Yann Richard (CNRS). The papers in this book focus directly on the heated debates currently under way among secularized intellectuals and Islamic militants in a variety of circum-Mediterra­nean countries, regarding the appropriate roles of nationalism, the state, and civic and religious authorities.

The committee project which began as "Muslims under non-Muslim Rule," and which is now under the leadership of Barbara Daly Metcalf, is focusing on how Muslims residing in the West maintain their identity and community in the context of highly secularized and substantially Christian societies. Opportunities for prayer five times a day, sexually segregated education with a strong Islamic compo­nent for their children, the need to fast in Ramadan, the relevance of shari'a (sacred or canonical) law in interpersonal disputes, and injunctions against tak­ing or giving interest on loans, all conflict with the bureaucratic, judicial, penal, military, and economic systems within which they must operate. What they find essential to maintain, how they carve out sacred spaces, what can be modified or hidden, temporarily or permanently, are all direct indicators of the nature of their Islamically-informed understandings and commitments regarding the relationship of the individual to the larger non-Muslim society and state.

VOLUME 43, NUMBER 1

A new project on "Muslim Transnationalism" being organized by James Piscatori, starting with a focus on transnational da'wa, or Muslim missionary organiza­tions, will provide the first systematic comparative ex­amination of the role of these often extremely well­financed movements in reinforcing and expanding the demands for the preeminence of sacred author­ity. The Saudi-sponsored Muslim World League and World Assembly of Muslim Youth, the Iranian Rev­olutionary Guards, the Libyan Islamic Call Society, the Jama'at-i Tabligh Society based in but moving out from India, the Muslim Brotherhood originating in Egypt, and the multinational Organization of the Is­lamic Conference are all actively spreading, interna­tionally, their particular understandings of how sec­ular society should be subordinated to the sacred. They do this by establishing national and international train­ing centers, through the dissemination of publica­tions, by exchanges of personnel, direct financial su p­port, and the construction of mosques and schools.

These movements have become an active force in almost every Muslim country and are often particu­larly visible among Muslims in non-Muslim countries. Because of the general secularization of Western societies, missionary movements are not widely regarded as particularly significant or influential by Western intellectuals. This is not, however, the case in the Muslim world. The committee project will be the first serious effort to examine comparatively their individual and collective impact on relations between individuals and the state in Muslim commu­nities and societies around the world.

The committee project with the disarming name, "The Making of a Fatwa," led by Khalid Masud, is also dealing with these issues, from yet another angle. Throughout the Muslim world, there is a widely utilized legal institution without precise equivalent in the West. It consists of a kind of non-binding but nevertheless authoritative juridical opinion (fatwa, pI. fatawa) which ordinary people, communities, or even governments may request from an authorized religious scholar/official (a mufti) to help decide for or against some proposed action. These "opinions" may concern the rights and wrongs of a minor contract dispute between two individuals, or matters of great state, such as when the Saudi government sought a fatwa to authorize the use of force in a Holy Place before expelling the dissidents who had captured the Kaaba in Mecca in 1979.

MARCH 1989

Likewise, the Ayatollah Khomeini's condemnation of Salman Rushdie was issued in the form of a fatwa.

Fatawa do not have the force of law, nor are they codified like state or common law. And if one does not like the fatwa received on a subject, another can be sought from another mufti. Yet this rarely seems to happen. Moreover, whereas the use of precedent in shari'a or in official legal systems is limited in most Muslim societies, collections of fatawa by individual (or schools of) mufti are regularly recorded, main­tained, well known, and widely cited.

For the committee's purposes, what is essential about this institution is that fatawa can be used as a lens to reveal the currently authoritative interpreta­tions (or reinterpretations) of the relation and relevance of the religious tradition to immediate questions and conflicts of daily life for individuals, communities, and even states. In recent years, for example, numerous fatawa have focused on ques­tions of women's and minorities' rights. In effect, fatawa can be seen as highly sensitive or subtle indicators of the contents and the directions of social change, and how the religious tradition is being brought to bear in these contexts.

Finally, at the urging of Christian Decobert, the committee is now beginning discussions of a new project to compare, still more broadly, the sources, models, dynamics, and relations of sacred and secular authority in contemporary Muslim and Christian societies. While efforts to draw on religious texts and traditions for models of new or renewed political systems are currently more intense within the Muslim world, they are hardly absent from Christian societies. Indeed, there are many signs of a resurgence of religious commitment and authority in large sectors of the Christi~n world. Exactly how these shifts will affect the individual's freedom of action and relation to the state remains to be seen. But they will certainly be central to future debates and understandings regarding human rights and governance, both here and abroad.

In effect, while the basic mandate of the Joint Committee on the Comparative Study of Muslim Societies is to focus attention on, and to help clarify the content, context, and evolving internal trajecto­ries and external linkages of Muslim nations and communities across the world, its projects should cast new light on the relation between sacred and secular in the late 20th century, generally. 0

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Project LINK at 20

PROJECT LINK, a pioneering effort at cooperative mul­tinational modeling of the world economy, was initi­ated in 1968 under the auspices of the Council's Cam­mittee on Economic Stability and Growth. The evolution of LINK during the 1970s and early 1980s was chronicled, together with bibliographical refer­ences, in "A Decade of Research by Project LINK" (Items, December 1979) and in "Recent Developments in Project LINK" (Items, June 1985). In the present report we bring the story up to date and provide references for 1986-1988 to complement those in the earlier articles.

What LINK does

The country models of Project LINK are integrated into a global system by the simultaneous determina­tion of trade flows and prices, including interest and exchange rates. Each LINK forecast or policy simula­tion provides consistent estimates of total world trade and the trade balances of the individual countries in both current and constant prices. The solution also yields the national outputs and price levels of the var­ious countries and a corresponding estimate of world GNP. The predicted activities in each country are de­termined both by the domestic factors specific to it, such as fiscal, monetary, trade, and exchange rate policies, and by its international interactions with other economies. The system is used not only for annual forecasts of world activity over a five-year horizon but also to investigate the international propagation of business fluctuations and inflation, the macroeco­nomic impacts of supply shocks, and the role of uni­lateral and multilateral policies for stability and growth.

Most of the country models in Project LINK are built, maintained, and operated at indigenous universities, research institutes, or government agencies, on the prin­ciple that each resident modeling group knows its own economy best. This also guarantees knowledgeable and timely inputs on the policy assumptions underlying the LINK forecasts. These assumptions are carefully ap­praised on a country-by-country basis and corrected, if necessary, at the forecast meetings at the United Na-

* The authors are, respectively, professor of economics at Stanford University and Benjamin Franklin professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania. They have served on the Council's Committee on Economic Stability and Growth since its inception in 1959.

4\ ITEMS

by Bert G. Hickman and Lawrence R. Klein*

tions in March, and re-examined at the research meet­ings in the summer or fall.

Thus, Project LINK is at once a global multinational model, a cooperative international research project, and a forum for research on econometric methods and ap­plications. Since its inception, it has expanded from a nucleus of seven country models in 1968 to 79 today. It has grown not only in geographical scope but in the scope of endogenous international linkages, which now include invisibles in the current account, capital flows, and interest and exchange rates in addition to trade flows and prices. A parallel evolution has occurred in the specifications of the constituent country models, stimulated by the need for new linkages and by the exchange of ideas among the participating modelers and between them and outside experts invited to LINK

meetings. Many of the country models presently in­cluded were directly inspired or assisted by the project in their formative stages, and others have been esti­mated at LINK Central (University of Pennsylvania) for incorporation in the system, pending the development of locally based models. Thus, the international char­acter and basic research orientation of Project LINK has fostered the diffusion of modeling activities through­out the world and has served as a powerful catalyst for research on many aspects of the functioning of the global economy.

Recent LINK research

Project LINK participated in the Brookings Institu­tion Conference on Empirical Macroeconomics for Interdependent Economies, held on March 10-11, 1986. At the conference, comparative simulations of the effects of fiscal and monetary shocks originating both in Europe and in the United States were under­taken for 12 multicountry models. Some comparisons and evaluations of these simulations, which high­lighted the importance of exchange rate variations and relative price movements, are presented in Hick­man (1988). Exchange rate responses in the LINK sys­tem were also the subject of an article by Peter Pauly and Christian E. Petersen (1986).

The consequences of protectionism, first studied with the LINK system in 1979, were further investi­gated in papers by Klein, Pauly, and Petersen (1985) and by Pauly and Klein (1986).

The linkage of disarmament and development is now much discussed in the United Nations and else-

VOLUME 43, NUMBER 1

where. A LINK scenario analysis of the potential re­source reallocation from disarmament produced fa­vorable results for the world economy, especially for the least favored areas in the third world (Africa and Middle East oil importers), and provided a quantita­tive input for discussions on the subject (Klein, 1986).

The LINK system is large and complicated, yet a computing milestone was reached with the accom­plishment of optimality calculations with the total system (Pauly and Petersen 1986). In later work, Petersen has been able to compute solutions to dynamic games on the LINK system of 20,000 equations in a matter of seconds or minutes. In his 1988 dissertation, he studied protectionism from the viewpoints of the United States, Japan, and the European Economic Community. He considers tariff policies among these three, with and without coalitions under conditions of retaliation. His results, using the techniques of optimal control, significantly advance our appreciation of the protectionist strate­gies that are used or considered by these countries.

20th annual meeting

Project LINK has one full-week meeting each year­at summer's end or early autumn-hosted by a par­ticipating center. The last three meetings have been in the Asia-Pacific Area (1986 Bangkok; 1987 Mel­bourne; 1988 Seoul). To some extent this reflects our continuing interest over the years in the unusual eco­nomic performance of this area and also the fact that many developing countries have in recent years been participating more fully in LINK activities. The 20th annual meeting of LINK was hosted by the Korea De­velopment Institute (KDI), in post-Olympic Seoul in Npvember 1988, not far from the scene of the first international meeting at Hakone, Japan in 1969.

An unusual feature of the Seoul meeting was the combination of the traditional LINK meeting with a meeting on cross-country econometric model compar­isons among developing economies. Previous meet­ings of the latter group took place in Taiwan and Thailand. Many model builders from developing countries of the Far East, Africa, and Latin America are also LINK participants, so the fit with a regular LINK meeting was excellent.

The substance of the meeting covered an assessment of the world economic outlook, comparisons of model characteristics among developing economies, new or unusual econometric methods, properties of different Korean models, a full report on the economy of the Republic of Korea by Bon Ho Koo, president of KDI,

MARCH 1989

an assessment of agricultural trade policies and market performance, studies of tariffs and other trade barri­ers, various substantive papers about individual coun­tries (Brazil, China, France, India, and Pakistan) and reviews of new developments at LINK Central.

At the end of the sessions, there was a press conference with representatives of the media in Seoul, at which the following summary statement on the world economy was distributed:

Project LINK, Summary of World Economic Outlook Conference at

Korea Development Institute Seoul, Korea

November 7-11, 1988

Economists from 37 countries and leading international organizations, covering every part of the world, met at the Korea Development Institute, Seoul, Republic of Korea, for one week beginning November 7th, to discuss the world economic situation and near term prospects. The meeting also studied many scientific and methodological econometric problems for the study of developing economies as well as general international economic relationships.

The 1988 LINK forecast featured the impressive develop­ment performance of the Asia-Pacific region. This area stands out in terms of both growth and inflation restraint among all other regions of the developing world.

Dr. Bon Ho Koo, President of KDI, highlighted the Asia-Pa­cific forecast by giving specific observations on the Korean econ­omy, which he noted had been growing at rates in excess of 12 percent annually, holding inflation at a very low rate in 1987-but picking up in 1988-and building up a current account surplus that was large enough to retire some external debt. Needless to say, this economic performance even bettered the strong performance of the whole Asia-Pacific area. He fore­saw, however, significant problems in the next few years for Korea, bringing down the growth rate to the historical average of about 7 to 8 percent, reducing the current surplus, and coping with a rising inflationary pressure. A strengthening won and the granting of higher wage increases are likely to restrain the international price competitiveness of Korean exports.

The LINK economists put all the different country and re­gional forecasts together into a world econometric model which looked for a slowing down of world expansion from a surpris­ingly strong rate of 3.6 percent in 1988 to about 2.7 percent in 1989. The major industrial countries should grow at little more than 2.0 percent during the next two years. World inflation should not increase appreciably in the industrial world, but should ap­pear at a disturbing rate in some developing countries that have lost monetary control and in some centrally planned economies that are now engaged in liberalization of markets.

Little progress has been made in dealing effectively with serious disequilibria throughout the world. The debt burdens for many developing countries have been increasing, unlike the Korean case, and holding growth in check. Unless there are new international initiatives, the debt problem will not improve on a global scale. The American trade deficit has improved slightly, but progress is very slow and not good enough to keep the dollar from falling in value against many strong currencies, especially the Korean won. There will be some continuing reduction in the American external deficit,

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but it remains disturbingly large according to the LINK forecast, as does the American fiscal deficit. Rises in current account deficits for the UK and France are expected to cut growth rates for both countries in 1989 and 1990. Japan and Germany continue to realize large current account surpluses when measured in U.S. dollars, but these surpluses ought to decline a bit as the U.S. deficit also improves by small amounts.

A distinct improvement in the world economic outlook has taken place in Europe, where stubbornly high unemployment rates are now beginning to decline in the UK, Germany, and France. These countries all experienced strong growth in 1988, above LINK forecasts for this year.

While the overall world outlook is expected to remain steady on a growth path that fluctuates slightly above and slightly below 3.0 percent, there are grave disparities. In contrast to the extraordinary performance in the Asia-Pacific region, the LINK forecasters find a dismal outlook for Africa and parts of the Middle East. On a per capita basis, Africa shows no real growth at all. It is the least favored of all the economic areas in the LINK forecast.

In view of these disparities in global development as well as the persistence of major disequilibria among industrial countries, it is the consensus of the LINK group that continued efforts to achieve better international coordination of eco­nomic policies are necessary to ensure smooth adjustments over the coming year.

During the course of the Seoul week, the LINK

participants (some 70 persons) had opportunities to view the very progressive Korean economy in action and to exchange views at evening dinners and receptions with Governor Kun Kim and associates of the Central Bank, with former Prime Minister Duck Woo Nam, now chairman of the Korea Trade Association, and many academic economists from universities or research centers in Korea.

As ever, it was a stimulating and fruitful meeting, which brought together, in traditional LINK fashion, economists from major DECD countries, centrally planned economies, and third world economies. We members of Project LINK feel particularly gratified that modern and sophisticated econometric model­ing activities are being stimulated and fostered worldwide through our meetings and applications.

The LINK system is now being transferred to the United Nations and World Bank research programs for operational maintenance and use. A core unit at the University of Pennsylvania will continue to be associated with system enhancement, applied re­search, and investigation of new international eco­nomic issues. Plans were discussed for the usual forecast meeting at the United Nations in early March 1989. The agenda includes a day of special

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attention to the problems of hyperinflation and the continuing debt burdens for developing countries. 0

References

HICKMAN, BERT G. "Project LINK and Multicountry Modeling." In Ronald G. Bodkin, Lawrence R. Klein, and Kanta Marwah, editors, A History of Macro-Econometric Model-Building. In press.

__ . "The U.S. Economy and the International Transmission Mechanism." In Ralph C. Bryant, Dale W. Henderson, Gerald Holtham, Peter Hooper, and Steven A. Symansky, editors, Empirical Macroeconomics for Interdependent Economies. The Brookings Institution, 1988, pages 92-130.

KLEIN, LAWRENCE R. "Perspectives on Future World Trade­Some Results of Project LINK." In Probleme und Perspectiven der Weltwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung. Berlin: Dunker & Humboldt, 1985, pages 469-486.

__ . "Disarmament and Socio-Economic Development." Disar­mament, IX(l) :9-63, Spring 1986.

KLEIN, LAWRENCE R., and H. Kosaka. "The Arms Race and the Economy." Vorlriige des Festkolloqiums aus Anlass des 70. Geburt­stages von Wilhelm Krelle. Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grund­mann, 1987, pages 9-51.

KLEIN, LAWRENCE R., PETER PAULY, and CHRISTIAN E. PETERSEN. "Import Surcharge, U.S. Deficits, and the World Economy." Testimony before the Finance Committee, U.S. Senate, April 24, 1985.

PAULY, PETER, AND LAWRENCE R. KLEIN "Empirical Aspects of Protectionism: LINK Results." In D. Salvatore, editor, The New Protectionist Threat to World Welfare. Amsterdam: North­Holland, 1986.

PAULY, PETER, AND CHRISTIAN E. PETERSEN. "Exchange Rate Responses in the LINK System." European Economic Review, 30: 149-170, 1986.

PAULY, PETER, AND CHRISTIAN E. PETERSEN. "Optimal Control in Large Multi-Country Models." In P. Artus, editor, Macroeco­nomic Modeling. Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1986.

PETERSEN, CHRISTIAN E. Dynamic Bilateral Tariff Games: An Econo­metric Analysis. Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1988.

American Economic Association Features Project LINK

Project LINK at 20 was the subject of a session at the December 28-30, 1988 meeting of the American Economic Association in New York City. Jacques J. Polak of the International Monetary Fund presided over the session, at which papers were presented by Bert G. Hickman, Lawrence R. Klein, and Christian E. Petersen. Discussants included Guy Stevens, Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System; Ralph C. Bryant, The Brookings Institution; and John Helliwell, University of British Columbia.

VOLUME 43, NUMBER 1

The Rise of a New Ethnic Group: The "Unhyphenated American"

AMONG THE WHITE GROUPS we have studied, there is evidence of tremendous flux, uncertainty, and ethnic intermixing. It is likely that this will be of increasing importance in the decades ahead, at least for the population of European origin. Ethnicity among whites is changing in the United States. The perspectives used in the past are not necessarily erroneous, but they apply only to a more limited part of the population. First, since European immigration is small, relative to the numbers already living in the nation, whites are increasingly removed-in genera­tional terms-from their immigrant ancestors. Sec­ond, a substantial and growing segment of the white population is of mixed ethnic ancestry; in 1980, 37 percent of those giving at least one specific ancestry gave a multiple one. Finally, ethnicity among whites is not an official label and appears to be of decreasing direct influence on life chances.

In addition, this flux in ethnic categories and identification is leading to the growth of a population which is quite different from other ethnic groups in the United States. Namely, there are a substantial number of people who recognize that they are white, but lack any clear-cut identification with, and/or knowledge of, a specific European origin. Such people recognize that they are not the same as some of the existing ethnic groups in the country, such as Greeks, Jews, Italians, Poles, or Irish. Their actual origins are assumed to be predominantly from the older northwestern European groups, but there are some persons from newer European sources of immigration who are shifting into this group. This population has been labeled "unhyphenated whites," differentiating them from the more pejorative term

* Stanley Lieberson is a professor of sociology at Harvard University currently on leave from the University of California, Berkeley. Mary C. Waters is an assistant professor of sociology at Harvard. This article is adapted from the concluding chapter of their book, From Many Strands: Ethnic and Racial Groups in Contemporary America (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1988). © Russell Sage Foundation 1988. This book is one of a series of census monographs sponsored by the Council's Committee for Research on the 1980 Census, chaired by Charles F. Westoff, Princeton University. For a brief review of the book, see Items, 42(112), June 1988, page 38.

MARCH 1989

A selection from the new Census monograph on ethnicify

by Stanley Lieberson and Mary C. Waters*

WASP (which is not used because of its negative connotations and because a sizable proportion of the population is not Protestant).l

The evidence for the existence of this population comes from census and survey data about Americans in the 1970s and 1980s. The National Opinion Re­search Center (NORC) General Social Survey, the 1979 Current Population Survey, and the 1980 Census all include data that show that a sizable proportion of the population either cannot or will not give an answer to the ancestry or ethnic identification question. A quite sizable proportion (16 percent) in the 1980 Census either gave no response or answered "American" to the ancestry question. This is true even though the "American" response was specifically discouraged by the Census Bureau.

A seeming contradiction

That this population appears in the 1970s and 1980s is in itself a surprising development because it seems to go against the prevailing wisdom about the state of ethnicity in the United States. Much commentary has held that the 1970s were character­ized by the rise of the "new ethnicity" which trumpeted the role of diversity of ethnic cultures in the overall culture and identity of Americans. This growth of ethnic consciousness and advocacy of ethnic identification stressed the pluralism and diversity of ethnic groups in the United States. However, against just such a backdrop of this heightened ethnic -consciousness and identification, there is evidence that a quite sizable proportion of Americans are unaware of their ethnic origin, choose to identify with none of the known ethnic groups and to identify themselves as Americans, or refuse to state an ancestry.

Of a total U.S. population of 226.5 million in 1980, 13.3 million gave "American" or "United States" as their ancestry. To appreciate the importance of this number, let us consider some additional facts.

I Lieberson, Stanley. "Unhyphenated Whites in the United States." Ethnic and Racial Studies 8( 1985): 159-80.

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American is a major ethnic response-ranking fifth in the nation. To be sure, it trails by a large amount those reporting English (50 million), German (49 million), Irish (40 million), and black (21 million); the actual number indicating black on the direct Census "race" question is nearly eight million greater than the number obtained on this ethnic item. But American narrowly edges out such groups as French and Italian, ~nd, by much greater margins, exceeds other leading ancestry responses such as Scottish, Polish, Mexican, American Indian, and Dutch.2

Whites are only about 45 percent of the respon­dents indicating "American" on the General Social Survey and they are about 74 percent of the much larger number who cannot name any ancestral country. Between these two categories, it means that nine percent of the entire population are whites who are either unable to report an ancestral nation or indicate simply that they are American. Confining ourselves to NORC survey data only for whites, we find that the American component amounts to 10 percent of all whites in the period between 1972 and 1980. Thus, the number of whites who respond as Americans or who report that they are unable to name any ancestry is still an important component of the entire white population of the United States. In terms of the nonblack population of the United States in 1979, then, approximately 15.4 percent either did not report an ancestry or indicated "American. "3

Generational and regional distinctions

The NORC survey permits a distinction in terms of four generations, applying the procedure described by Alba and Chamlin.4 Some 57 percent of the entire U.S. population is at least fourth generation; that is, the United States is the country of birth for themselves, both of their parents, and all four of their grandparents. Among "unhyphenated whites" (those unable to name any ancestral country or choosing "American"), 97 percent were of at least

2 U.S. Bureau of the Census. 1980 Census of Population, Supplementary Report, "Ancestry of the Population by State: 1980," PC80-S1-10. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983, page 2.

S Admittedly, this last set of census figures includes people who are neither white nor black, but the form of the census procedure in 1979 makes it desirable to calculate in this way and the numerical impact is certainly minor.

4 Richard D. Alba and Mitchell B. Chamlin. "A Preliminary Examination of Ethnic Identification Among Whites." American Sociological Review 48(1983):240-47.

8\ITEMS

fourth generation ancestry. Thus, lJnhyphenated whites make up 16 percent of all Americans with at least four generations' residence in the United States. By contrast, unhyphenated whites are one percent or less of the third, second, and first generations. (This sharp difference by generation - with such small percentages for earlier generations-suggests that the data are quite meaningful. One would be suspicious if many of the immigrants or their offspring were unable to state the countries or part of the world from which their ancestors came and/or if the American response was given after such a short generational stay in the United States.)

Compared with all whites, unhyphenated whites are especially likely to be found in the South, particularly in the South Atlantic states (38 percent of all unhyphenated whites are found in the South Atlantic states and 67 percent are in the entire South). By contrast, only about 30 percent of the entire white population surveyed by NORC lives in the South. (Given the southern concentration, it is not surprising that 87 percent of unhyphenated whites were raised as Protestant compared with 64 percent for all whites in the country.) Not only is the new white ethnic population disproportionately located in the South, but it is concentrated in rural areas. In the United States as a whole, 33 percent of all unhyphenated whites are located in what NORC refers to as "open country," compared with 17 percent of all whites. This is more than a reflection of regional differences and the concentration of unhy­phenated whites in the South. Some 27 percent of all whites living in the South are found in open country compared with 42 percent of unhyphenated whites. We could speculate that there is such a concentration of these individuals in the rural areas of the South because these places have experienced relatively little immigration for more than a century. Thus, because there is a great deal of homogeneity in terms of ethnic ancestry, attention to ethnicity is minimal and shift is thereby encouraged.

Education as a factor

Education not only affects the complexity of the ethnic response but it also appears to affect the ability or willingness of whites to give any specific European origins at all. Restricting the analysis to whites living in the rural South, with at least four generations' residence in the nation, we applied data gathered by NORC through 1980 to determine the more subtle linkages between education and the

VOLUME 43, NUMBER 1

absence of any claim to a specific European heritage. Even in the rural South education has a distinct effect on the response. Whereas 29 percent of those with at least a high school education could not name any ethnic ancestry or selected American, 46 percent of those with less education gave a similar response. As a general rule, the unhyphenated white popula­tion tends to be of lower socioeconomic status than the entire white population in the United States. However, this is by no means exclusively a class phenomenon. Even among rural fourth-generation southern whites who do not give one or more specific European ancestries, it is still the case that 38 percent have at least a high school diploma.

A new melting pot

Almost all discussions of ethnic and racial groups in the United States ultimately address the issue of the melting pot versus cultural pluralism. To what degree are the groups alike, and to what degree do they maintain their separate identities? More pre­cisely, are the initial differences between the groups disappearing such that the groups are becoming indistinguishable for all purposes? The answer is too complicated for a simple yes or no. It may well be the case that the melting pot is working in a different way than has been discussed in the literature. In addition to different groups acting increasingly alike, it may be that a new population is in the process of forming. Whether this is the case or not requires considerably more evidence than can be presented here. The strongest test will occur in the 1990 Census, when it will be possible to make longitudinal comparisons over time. Such comparisons can ad­dress the question of whether there is an increase in the "unhyphenated white" type of response for the same age- and generation-specific cohort as they age (cross-sectionally, at the present time, the propor­tions giving such responses seem to be concentrated in the older age groups, but with data for one period it is impossible to separate the age, cohort, and period effects).

A second issue pertains to the meaning of the responses. Given the relatively low socioeconomic status of the unhyphenated white population, as measured with NORC data, there is always the possibility that people giving these responses are selective on various characteristics and do not represent a "new" ethnic thrust. Is it merely a convenient label for those people who do not know or are not interested in their ethnic background? Or

MARCH 1989

is it a specific "ethnic character," something which other ethnic groups are trying to assimilate into? In this regard, the two subsets of the population defined as unhyphenated white with NORC data-those reporting themselves as American as opposed to those unable to name a group-do differ on some dimensions. For example, the specifically American subset do appear to be relatively higher in socioeco­nomic status, less likely to reside in the South, and more likely to be Catholic compared with the other subset. But they are still different from all whites.

Shifting categories

In our estimation, three central types of ethnic flux are occurring within the white population. The first is well known among whites; this is the development of new ethnic categories that evolve soon after immigration to the United States. For example, people who viewed themselves as members of a town or province prior to immigration gradually gain a broader identification-say, as Italians or Poles-that is both imposed on them by the dominant society and chosen by them as their contacts increase and as earlier cleavages become secondary. This process is largely over for white European groups, although it will continue for newer groups migrating to the United States as well as for other non-European groups. In particular, there may well be further changes in the delineations among Hispanic groups or among Southeast Asian groups, possibly empha­sizing commonalities among groups that initially saw themselves as quite distinct from one another. Certainly, that is the case for the "American Indian" concept, which is essentially the pooling together of tribes (basically ethnic groups) with distinctive cul­tures, languages, and historical traditions under a single rubric.

The second shift, we believe, will be of growing relevance in the years ahead for the white popula­tion. As the distance from the immigrant generation widens for the vast majority of the white population, we expect increasing distortion in the true origins of the population. This assumes that intermarriage will continue at a high level, that ethnic enclaves will diminish, and that there will be a relatively modest degree of discrimination and prejudice against various white ethnic groups. In other words, central to the projection is the assumption that ethnic origin among whites will decline as a sociopolitical issue. If these conditions occur, we believe that ethnic responses will be of declining reliability in terms of a

lTEMs/9

means of tracing true ancestral roots. This, however, need not preclude reported ethnic origins from being significantly related to all sorts of other social phenomena-only that the correlations may also reflect a reverse causal order such that people with different social characteristics vary in the probability of reporting certain social origins. To be sure, at this point there is still reason to take the ethnic data at face value more often than not. Hence we can still have confidence that the social characteristics ob­served for different ethnic groups do indeed largely reflect the influence of the latter on the former.

The third shift that we expect to find is that ail of this flux and uncertainty in ethnic origins should lead to an expansion in the segment of the population whose members are unable to provide any picture of their ethnic origins, but simply know that they are unhyphenated whites. In other words, we expect to find a complete circle. Just as the immigrant groups who migrated here were the product of earlier mergers of different peoples in Europe, so, too, their descendants in the United States generations later will form the strands of a New American ethnic group in this country. 0

Workshop on Managing the Global Commons The Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of Tennessee are sponsoring a workshop on

"Managing the Global Commons: Decision Making and Conflict Resolution in Response to Climate Change." The workshop will be held August 1-4, 1989 in Knoxville, Tennessee. It will cover some of the topics now being developed within the proposed Council program for research on global environmental change and will involve some of the people who have been consulting with the Council in the design of its own program. The workshop will seek to develop a better understanding of the emergence of institutions and the shaping of scientific and policy information for international management of common resources. Small meetings will alternate with seminars and will hopefully lay the foundation for a network of active researchers. Persons interested in participating should contact Wolfgang Naegeli, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, P.O. Box 2008, Oak Ridge, TN 37831-6206.

lO\ITEMS VOLUME 43, NUMBER 1

Activities of the China Committee

Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society

The relationship between marriage and wealth, sta­tus, and power over the last 1,000 years was the subject ofa conference held on January 2-7,1988 at the Asi­lomar Conference Center, Pacific Grove, California, under the sponsorship of the Joint Committee on Chi­nese Studies. Rubie S. Watson, University of Pitts­burgh and Patricia B. Ebrey, University of Illinois served as directors. Discussions from a multidiscipli­nary perspective focused on three problem areas: (1) transmission of property at marriage; (2) how property transfer creates or enhances class and gender inequal­ity; and (3) the maintenance of political inequality through marriage strategies among ruling elites. A sub­sidiary theme, the ideology and rituals of marriage, raised the question of links between cultural state­ments (including ritual ones) and inequality.

The following papers were presented:

John Chaffee, State University of New York, Binghamton, "The Marriage of Clanswomen in the Sung Imperial Clan"

Jerry Dennerline, Amherst College, "Marriage Strategies in Rural Wu-hsi"

Patricia Ebrey, University of Illinois, "Shifts in Marriage Finance, Sixth to Thirteenth Century"

Dennis Grafflin, Bates College, "Elite Marriage in the Southern Dynasties"

Gail Hershatter, Williams College, "Prostitution and the Twentieth­Century Market in Women"

William Lavely, University of Washington, "Marriage and Mobility in Rural China"

Susan Mann, University of California, Santa Cruz, "Grooming a Daughter for Marriage: Brides and Wives in the High Ch'ing Period"

Susan Naquin, University of Pennsylvania, "Marriage in North China: the Role of Ritual"

Jonathan Ocko, North Carolina State University, "Women's Property Rights and the Law in Imperial China"

Evelyn Rawski, University of Pittsburgh, "Ch'ing Imperial Marriage: The Emperor as Wife-giver and Wife-taker"

Janice Stockard, Oakland, California, "Marriage with and without Delayed Transfer of the Bride: Primary and Secon­dary Wives in the Canton Delta"

Melvin Thatcher, The Genealogical Society of Utah, "Pre-Ch'in Marriage in Theory and Practice"

Rubie Watson, University of Pittsburgh, "Wives, Concubines, and Maidservants: Kinship and Servitude in the Hong Kong Region, 1900-1940"

Martin Whyte, University of Michigan, "Mate Choice and Stratification in the People's Republic of China"

Arthur Wolf, Stanford University, "Social and Sexual Stratifica­tion as Determinants of Marriage Choices in Late Traditional China"

MARCH 1989

Conference reports

Discussants included: Myron Cohen, Columbia University; Jack Goody, St. John'S College (Cam­bridge); Hsu Cho-yun, University of Pittsburgh; and Diane Hughes, University of Michigan. Jason Parker, American Council of Learned Societies, served as observer. Beverly Bossler, University of California, was the conference reporter.

A conference volume, edited by Ms. Watson and Ms. Ebrey, containing revised papers and an addi­tional essay, "Imperial Marriage in the Native Chinese and Non-Han State, Han to Ming" by Jennifer Holmgren, Australian National University, is in preparation. The editors will not only introduce the topic of marriage and inequality, but also highlight what they see as the volume's contributions to knowledge of Chinese society and to general theories of marriage exchange.

Structure of Authority and Bureaucratic Behavior in China

The Joint Committee on Chinese Studies spon­sored another conference on June 19-23, 1988 in Tucson, Arizona, under the direction of David M. Lampton, National Committee on United States­China Relations (New York) and Kenneth Lieberthal, University of Michigan. The conference sought to examine the evolving structure and organization of political power in China, the various ways they affect the decision-making process and how these affect political behavior and policy outcomes.

One of the conference's major contributions was the realization that the kinds of authority relations that exist in the Chinese polity are a function of an individual's location in the hierarchy. Moreover, authority relations vary according to whether one is talking about horizontal or vertical linkages; the analyst must specify whether one is dealing with political relationships among bureaucratic entities, relationships among non-official and market entities, or mixed public-private sector relationships. The discussion elaborated how behavior varies depending on these factors.

Papers included:

Christopher Clarke, u.s. Department of State, "Short-term Cyclical Factors"

Nina Halpern, Stanford University, "Policy Coordination at the Center"

ITEMs/ll

Carol Lee Hamrin, Clifton, Virginia, "Linkages between Leaders and Bureaucracies"

David M. Lampton, National Committee on United States-China Relations (New York), "Bargaining in Economic Decision Making"

Melanie Manion, University of Michigan, "Organization and Personnel"

Lynn Paine, Michigan State University, "Educational Sector" Jonathan Pollack, Rand Corporation (Santa Monica), "Policy

Process in the Military" Paul Schroeder, National Committee on United States-China

Relations (New York), "Territorial Actors: Hubei and Wuhan" Susan Shirk, University of California, San Diego, "The Chinese

Political System and the Political Strategy of Economic Reform"

Ezra Vogel, Harvard University, "Guangdong, China" Andrew Walder, Harvard University, "Municipalities and Enter­

prises" David Zweig, Tufts University, "Politics of Township Develop­

ment"

Also participating were: Ken Jowitt, University of California, Berkeley; Barry Naughton, University of Michigan; Michel C. Oksenberg, University of Mich­igan; Jason H. Parker, American Council of Learned Societies; and Ivan Szeienyi, University of California, Los Angeles. Bruce Dickson, University of Michigan, served as rapporteur.

The vastly improved research access which Amer­ican scholars have recently enjoyed in China has greatly augmented information about the Chinese policy process. However, the conceptualization of the Chinese polity has not kept pace with this new information. This conference was an attempt to examine and clarify new approaches to the study of Chinese politics and to develop new paradigms and theories. A conference volume is in preparation.

Economic Methods for Chinese Historical Research

A two-part project on Chinese economic history was sponsored by the committee, with additional funding from the Henry Luce Foundation and the National Science Foundation. The project was organized by Thomas G. Rawski, University of Pittsburgh.

(1) The first session, a workshop held in Honolulu on January 3-7, 1987 brought together economists and historians. A number of economists who work in economic history were asked to prepare seminars on broad subjects such as choice, long-term trends, macroeconomics, international and interregional is­sues, and economic institutions, for which the historian-participants had prepared by doing as­signed readings.

12\ITEMS

Given the same set of circumstances .. historians and economists will often interpret them in ways that are diametrically opposed. For example, one paper emphasized the "irrelevance of structure," referring to the specifics of who deals with whom in the marketplace, claiming that the attention lavished by many historians on questions of structure (e.g., location of production and consumption, pairings of buyers and sellers, and whether grain is stored by the state or by profit-seeking merchants) obscures under­lying economic forces. And while historians empha­size the "foreignness" of the western impact, an economic approach might emphasize the availability of foreign markets, the reductions in domestic and international transaction costs, and the resulting widening of economic opportunities that offered large benefits to the economy as a whole (but not necessarily to all participants). An important compar­ative dimension was imparted to the proceedings by the fact that none of the economists, except Mr. Rawski, were China specialists.

A handbook based on the workshop papers, entitled "Economics and the Historian," is currently in preparation.

(2) The second meeting, a research conference, took place on January 6-10, 1988 in Oracle, Arizona. Nearly all those attending this conference had previously participated in the January 1987 work­shop in Honolulu. This time, however, the historians presented their papers, which they had written on the basis of guidelines and · suggestions from the previous year, and the economists served as the discussants.

The following papers were presented:

Session 1

Lillian M. Li, "Grain Prices in Zhili Province, 1736-1911: A Preliminary Study"

Peter C. Perdue, "The Qing State and the Gansu Grain Market. 1739-1864"

R. Bin Wong and Peter C. Perdue, "The Hunan Rice Trade During the Qing Dynasty: Preliminary Remarks on Market Integration" Discussants: Donald N. McCloskey and Richard Sutch

Session 2

James Lee, Cameron Campbell, and Guofu Tan, "Price and Population History in Rural Fengtian, 1772-1873"

Yeh-chien Wang. "Secular Trends of Rice Prices in the Yangtze Delta, 1632-1935" Discussants: Jon S. Cohen and Peter H. Lindert

Session lJ

Kenneth Pomeranz. "Local Interest Story: Political Conflict and

VOLUME 43. NUMBER 1

Regional Differences in the Shandong Capital Market, 1900-1937"

Loren Brandt and Barbara Sands, "Markets and Income Distribution in North China During the Early Twentieth Century" Discussants: Peter H. Lindert and Donald N. McCloskey

I-chun Fan, "Regional Development of Foreign and Domestic Trade in Modern China, 1879-1929"

Bozhong Li, "The Development of Agriculture and Industry in Jiangnan, 1644-1850: Trends and Prospects" Discussants: Peter H. Lindert and Thomas G. Rawski

Session 4

Lynda S. Bell, "Redefining Rational Peasants: Sericulture and the Wuxi County Small-Peasant-Family Farm"

Emily Honig, "Native Place Hierarchy and Labor Market Segmentation: The Case of Subei People in Shanghai"

Susan Mann, "Women's Work in the Ningbo Area, 1900-1936" Discussants: Jon S. Cohen and Richard Sutch

A conference volume, entitled "Chinese History in Economic Perspective: Price Behavior and Market Response" and edited by Thomas G. Rawski and Lillian M. Li, is being considered for publication. It is expected that the essays resulting from this confer­ence will be of interest to economists generally, and not only to those focusing on China.

MARCH 1989

Economic Methods for Chinese Historical Research

Participants

Lynda S. Bell, University of Illinois, Chicago; Loren Brandt, University of Toronto; Cameron Campbell, California Institute of Technology; Jon S. Cohen, Univer­sity of Toronto; Stanley Engerman, University of Roches­ter; I-chun Fan, Stanford University; Claudia Goldin, University of Pennsylvania; Emily Honig, Yale University; James Z. Lee, California Institute of Technology; Boz­hong Li, University of California, Los Angeles; Lillian M. Li, Swarthmore College; Peter H. Lindert, University of California, Davis; Susan Mann, University of California, Santa Cruz; Sucheta Mazumdar, State University of New York, Albany; Donald N. McCloskey, University of Iowa; Jason Parker, American Council of Learned Societies; Peter C. Perdue, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Kenneth Pomeranz, Jersey City; Thomas G. Rawski, University of Pittsburgh; Hugh Rockoff, Rutgers Univer­sity; Barbara Sands, University of Arizona; Richard Sutch, University of California, Berkeley; Guofu Tan, California Institute of Technology, Yeh-chien Wang, Kent State University; R. Bin Wong, University of California, Irvine; and Guangyuan Zhou, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Margaret Maurer, University of Pittsburgh, served as rapporteur for the 1987 workshop.

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Other Council Activities US-USSR bibliographic and preservation agreement

Efforts aimed at preserving published and unpub­lished Slavic materials, both in the United States and the Soviet Union, culminated in a Protocol of Intention signed on November 16, 1988 at the offices of the Council. The subcommittee on Bibliography, Information Retrieval, and Documentation (BIRD) of the joint committees on Eastern Europe and Soviet Studies, together with representatives of the Modern Language Association (MLA), the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX) and members of the USSR Academy of Sciences affirmed their commitment to pursue a cooperative bibliographic and preservation project.

The Protocol contains the following provisions: (1) The Soviet partner organization will be the

Scientific Council on Russian Classical and Multina­tional Soviet Literature of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The American partner organizations will be the Bibliography, Information Retrieval, and Docu­mentation Subcommittee and the Modern Language Association. The activities will be carried out under the auspices of the US-USSR Commission on Humanities and Social Sciences of the American Council of Learned Societies and the USSR Academy of Sciences, administered in the United States by IREX.

(2) Cooperation will focus primarily upon materi­als relating to literary research. It is anticipated that the. American side will provide appropriate techno­logical assistance, and that the Soviet side will provide personnel and facilities as appropriate. Both sides will provide scholarly consultation.

(3) A delegation of three to five representatives of the participating U.S. institutions will meet in Moscow in early 1989 with representatives of the participating Soviet institutions to discuss an initial experimental joint project and to develop a schedule for it including the supply of necessary technology.

(4) Selection of all materials covered in the experimental and subsequent projects will be made on the basis of scholarly criteria.

(5) It is recognized that parallel commercial activities may follow.

The Protocol is a concrete step toward halting the disintegration that presently threatens much invalu­able material.

14\!TEMS

Workshop on research methods for Latino studies

The Joint Committee for Public Policy Research on Contemporary Hispanic Issues* will sponsor a summer workshop on research methods for Latino studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, from June 26 to July 1, 1989. The workshop is designed to provide Latino social scientists with the opportunity to develop a familiarity with national data sets relevant to the study of Latino populations in the United States, and to improve their knowledge of statistical research methods through participation in courses offered by the Inter-university Consor­tium for Political and Social Research.

The workshop targets individuals with particular interest in the systematic investigation of Latino issues. Participants will explore a variety of research areas and data resources for the purpose of refining analytical skills and setting research agendas. Specific areas of focus include educational equity and access, labor market outcomes, immigration, ethnic identity and culture, economic status, and health issues. Participants will examine research design, analytical techniques, and implementation issues. "Hands-on" analysis of computerized data will be an integral part of the workshop. Methodological problems to be discussed include the availability of relevant data, techniques used in the survey and sampling of Latino populations, and bilingual instrumentation. Travel and living expenses will be provided for approxi­mately 20 participants.

Technical training for social scientists in Africa

In recent years there has been increasing interest among social scientists who study Africa in acquiring natural and technical scientific knowledge relevant for particular research problems. For example, insights into epidemiology can help to illuminate investigations which link the changing social impact of diseases to colonial and post-colonial patterns of economic and political development. Similarly, the sociological analysis of African rural development is often, to its detriment, conducted independently of the technical findings of agricultural science or ecology. In the present context of widespread crises

* Joint with the Inter-University Program for Latino Research.

VOLUME 43, NUMBER 1

in both agricultural production and the provision of health care, crises which are as much political as environmental, there is an urgent necessity for effective dialogue between Africanists in the social and natural sciences.

A new program. Last year the Joint Committee on African Studies launched a new fellowship program, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, which will enable doctoral students about to embark on field work in Africa to undergo up to a year's training at institutions offering programs in technical or scien­tific subjects. The fellowships also support the field work itself, as well as the subsequent write-up of field notes. The committee organized two competitions and a workshop attended by anthropologists, epide­miologists, a historian, and environmental and agricultural economists. These helped to clarify the criteria which should inform the administration of the fellowship. To justify the awards it needs to be evident that proposed research would be substan­tially enhanced by the deployment of scientific skills. Ideally, both the training and the field work should involve communication with natural scientists. The aim of the program is to stimulate research findings which have an intellectual impact on people working in technical or scientific domains while remaining rooted in the methodology of the social sciences.

Each fellow's training will be individually designed, depending on his or her background, the research topic, the nature of training needed, and the resources which exist to carry it out. Training can include regular course work at a university, partici­pation in special short courses or workshops, directed reading and tutorials, and internships. Field work must be carried out in Africa. A committee initially comprising two medical anthropologists, a social anthropologist and an environmental econo­mist was established in late 1988 to advise the first award winners chosen at the workshop and to monitor their progress. This committee will select the award winners from the next competition.

Initial awards. Four fellowships have been awarded so far. They have been made to Magdalene David of the University of Wisconsin's department of sociol­ogy for a comparative analysis of intra-household relations in peasant and plantation-based households in Liberia; to Anna Simons, a social anthropologist at Harvard for her study of socioeconomic change and Somali camel pastoralists; to Karen Weber of the law, policy, and society program at Northwestern Univer­sity for her analysis of fisheries development in Cote d'lvoire; and to Julie Fischer from the University of Michigan's department of geography for her exami-

MARCH 1989

nation of changes in Senegalese land tenure and land degradation.

Potential benefits. Two examples will indicate the contribution which scientific training will make to these students' research. Karen Weber's work focuses on the formation and execution of I voirian govern­ment policy concerning the conservation and exploi­tation of fisheries. Training at the Centre de Recherches Oceanographiques in Abidjan will enable Ms. Weber to become familiar with the techniques and methods used by marine biologists to establish the maximum and optimal levels to which certain types of fish can be harvested. This knowledge is being integrated into an overall fisheries policy which has the goal of making Cote d'lvoire self-sufficient in fish consumption. The training will enable this researcher to ask and answer a number of questions: (1) the extent to which scientific data on the biological reproduction and geographical movement of coastal fish adequately informs the design of policy; (2) whether the policy and the knowledge upon which it is premised is understood by those responsible for its implementation both nationally and locally; (3) the degree to which intentions of policy are successfully communicated to fishing communities; (4) communal responses to policy; and (5) the applicability of the knowledge generated by experts to the conditions and needs of particular local communities. Her training program will bring her into contact and collaboration with I voirian scientists and will therefore substantially contribute to the interdisciplinary dialogue which the program aims to promote.

More briefly, training in irrigation systems, soil and water conservation, and livestock production will enable Julie Fischer to systematically examine the degree to which environmental deterioration can be related to the impact of land legislation, state irrigation, and international boundary regulation on a Senegalese agro-pastoral system.

It is too early to evaluate the program with the four award winners still at the initial stages in their program. Responses to the competitions have raised a number of issues. First, if the program is going to be successful in stimulating research across the social-natural science division, the intellectual bene­fits of such work will have to be made powerfully evident to students. The fellowship requires intellec­tual support from teachers and advisors of post­graduate students in African Studies. Second, to judge from the ineligible proposals in this and other competitions administered by the Joint Committee on African Studies (notably its Agricultural Fellow-

ITEMs/15

ship), there is an increasing need among researchers in scientific or technical fields for training in the methods, concepts, and analyses employed in the social sciences. The quality and range, though, of the better competition proposals, suggest the potential gains which may accumulate from this program.

For further information, contact the Africa Pro­gram, FTDR Application Request, Social Science Research Council, 605 Third Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10158.

Eastern European Politics and Societies

This journal was started in 1985 by the Joint Committee on Eastern Europe with a grant provided by the U.S. Department of State through Congres­sionally-designated Title VIII funds. About $165,000 was awarded for the journal to cover its founding costs and publication through the end of 1988. An additional $37,000 was obtained from the Henry Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, for an additional year of publication. Funds are being sought for support beyond 1989, although subscription revenues are steadily increas­ing.

The journal's focus is interdisciplinary, including modern history and literature, as well as the regular social science disciplines. Since the appearance of the first issue early in 1987, the journal has regularly appeared three times a year-in Winter, Spring, and Fall issues.

The committee has felt that there was considerable untapped talent in East European studies, but that some of the best scholarly work in the field was not being published because of a lack of suitable outlets. Much of what was published was appearing in such a wide array of journals in the United States and abroad that it was not easily accessible and did not contribute to the cumulative growth of knowledge about Eastern Europe. Absence of an appropriate journal had caused many of those in the field, but primarily social scientists, to think that they might

16\ITEMS

somehow be part of a specialty that had little to contribute to the general development of the disciplines in which most university academics oper­ate. The journal has begun to solve some of these problems; it has become an important focus for the enhancement of the vitality of this area specialty, and it has begun to appeal to specialists in the various disciplines without particular interest in the area.

In its first seven issues, the division of articles by field and by country was as follows:

EEPS Articles by Field, 1987-1989 Economics 13 Political Science 10 History 9 Sociology 4 Literature & Music 3 Anthropology 2

TOTAL 41

EEPS Articles by Country, 1987-1989

32% 24% 22% 10% 7% 5%

100%

General/Comparative 12 30% Austria 1 2% Austro-Hungarian Empire 1 2% Bulgaria 2 5% Czechoslovakia 2 5% Hungary 7 18% Poland 7 18% Romania 4 10% Western Ukraine &

Western Belorussia Yugoslavia

TOTAL

1 3

40

2% 8%

100%

At the end of the 1988-1989 academic year, the founding editor of the journal, Daniel Chirot, a sociologist at the University of Washington, will be succeeded by a new editor, I vo Banac, a historian at Yale University.

Eastern European Politics and Societies is published by the University of California Press, Berkeley, CA 94720. Personal subscriptions, $25.00; institutional subscriptions, $40.00; student subscriptions, $20.00.

VOLUME 43, NUMBER 1

Eastern European Politics and Societies Index

Volume 1, Numbers 1-3

Zygmunt Bauman, "Intellectuals in East-Central Europe: Continuity and Change," 1:2 (Spring 1987), pp. 162-186.

Michael Bernhard, "The Strikes of June 1976 in Poland," 1:3 (Fall 1987), pp. 363-392.

Daniel Chirot and Ken J owitt, "Beginning EEPS," 1: 1 (Winter 1987), pp. 1-3.

Zvi Gitelman, "Is Hungary the Future of Poland?" 1: 1 (Winter 1987), pp. 135-159.

Jan T. Gross, "The First Soviet Sponsored Election in Eastern Europe," 1: 1 (Winter 1987), pp. 4-29.

Marvin R. Jackson, "Economic Development in the Balkans Since 1945 Compared to Southern and East-Central Europe," 1:3 (Fall 1987), pp. 393-455.

Gabor Hunya, "New Developments in Romanian Agricul­ture," 1:2 (Spring 1987), pp. 255-276.

Ken Jowitt, "Moscow 'Centre'," 1:3 (Fall 1987), pp. 296--348. Bennett Kovrig, "Hungarian Socialism: The Deceptive Hybrid,"

1:1 (Winter 1987), pp. 113-134. John J. Kulczycki, "Norman Davies' Playground: Nineteenth­

Century Polish History," 1:3 (Fall 1987), pp. 456--473. Madeline Levine, "Two Warsaws: The Literary Representa­

tion of Catastrophe," 1:3 (Fall 1987), pp. 349-362. Jim Seroka and Vukasin Pavlovic, "Yugoslav Trade Unions

and the Paralysis of Political Decision-Making," 1:2 (Spring 1987) pp. 277-294.

E. M. Simmonds-Duke, "Was the Peasant Uprising a Revolution: The Meaning of a Struggle over the Past," 1:2 (Spring 1987), pp. 187-224.

Gale Stokes, "The Social Origins of East European Politics," 1:1 (Winter 1987), pp. 30-74.

Jean-Charles Szurek. "Family Farms in Polish Agricultural Policy: 1945-1985," 1:2 (Spring 1987), pp. 225-254.

Jozef M. van Brabant, "Economic Adjustment and the Future of Socialist Economic Integration," 1: 1 (Winter 1987), pp. 75-112.

Volume 2, Numbers 1-3

John A. Armstrong. "Toward a Framework for Considering Nationalism in East Europe," 2:2 (Spring 1988), pp. 280-305.

Tamas Bauer, "Hungarian Economic Reform in Eastern European Perspective," 2:3 (Fall 1988), pp. 418-432.

Josef C. Brada, "Is Hungary the Future of Poland, or Is Poland the Future of Hungary?" 2:3 (Fall 1988), pp. 466--483.

Charles Bukowski, "Politics and the Prospects for Economic Reform in Yugoslavia," 2:1 (Winter 1988), pp. 94-114.

Ellen Comisso, "Market Failures and Market Socialism: Economic Problems of the Transition," 2:3 (Fall 1988). pp. 433-465.

Richard J. Crampton, "'Stumbling and Dusting Off,' or an Attempt to Pick a Path Through the Thicket of Bulgaria'S

MARCH 1989

New Economic Mechanism," 2:2 (Spring 1988), pp. 333-395.

Jane L. Curry, "The Psychological Barriers to Reform in Poland," 2:3 (Fall 1988), pp. 484-509.

Ferenc Feher, "Eastern Europe's Long Revolution Against Yalta," 2:1 (Winter 1988), pp. 1-34.

Przemyslaw T. Gajdeczka, "International Market Perceptions and Economic Performance: Lending to Eastern Europe," 2:3 (Fall 1988), pp. 558-576.

Vlad Georgescu, "Romania in the 1980s: The Legacy of Dynastic Socialism," 2:1 (Winter 1988), pp. 70-93.

Paul G. Hare, "Industrial Development of Hungary Since World War II," 2:1 (Winter 1988), pp. 115-151.

Tony R. Judt, "The Dilemmas of Dissidence: The Politics of Opposition in East-Central Europe," 2:2 (Spring 1988), pp. 185-240.

George Kolankiewicz, "Poland and the Politics of Permissible Pluralism," 2:1 (Winter 1988), pp. 152-183.

John R. Lampe, "Introduction: Economic Dilemmas of Eastern Europe," 2:3 (Fall 1988), pp. 413-417.

J. Michael Montias, "Industrial Policy and Foreign Trade in Bulgaria," 2:3 (Fall 1988), pp. 522-557.

David Pike, "Georg Lukacs on Revolution, Stalinism, and Democracy: Before and After Prague, 1968," 2:2 (Spring 1988), pp. 241-279.

Kazimierz Z. Poznanski, "Economic Determinants of Techno­logical Performance in East European Industry," 2:3 (Fall 1988), pp. 577-600.

Pedro Ramet, "The Rock Scene in Yugoslavia," 2:2 (Spring 1988), pp. 396--410.

Tamas Reti, "Hungarian Metallurgical Enterprises: Two Case Studies," 2:3 (Fall 1988), pp. 510-521.

Vlad Sobell, "Czechoslovakia: The Legacy of Normalization," 2:1 (Winter 1988), pp. 36-69.

Otto UIc, "Gypsies in Czechoslovakia: A Case of Unfinished Integration," 2:2 (Spring 1988), pp. 306--332.

Volume 3, Number 1

Stanislaw Baranczak, "Before the Thaw: The Beginnings of Dissent in Postwar Polish Literature (The Case of Adam Wazyk's 'A Poem for Adults')," 3:1 (Winter 1989), pp. 3-21.

Daniel Chirot, "Beginning the Third Year of EEPs," 3: 1 (Winter 1989), pp. 1-2.

Istvan Deak, "Pacesetters of Integration: Jewish Officers in the Hapsburg Monarchy," 3:1 (Winter 1989), pp. 22-50.

Elemer Hankiss, "Demobilization, Self-Mobilization, and Quasi-Mobilization in Hungary 1948-1987," 3:1 (Winter 1989), pp. 105-151.

Raelynn J. Hillhouse, "A Reevaluation of Soviet Policy in Central Europe: The Soviet Union and the Occupation of Austria," 3: 1 (Winter 1989), pp. 83-104.

David J. Ost, "Towards a Corporate Solution in Eastern Europe: The Case of Poland," 3:1 (Winter 1989), pp. 152-174.

Katherine Verdery, "Homage to a Transylvanian Peasant," 3:1 (Winter 1989), pp. 51-82.

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Recent Council Publications Power, Culture, and Place: Essays on New York City, edited by John Hull Mollenkopf. Sponsored by the Committee on New York City. New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1988. xxi + 319 pages. Cloth, $40.00.

If cities have given birth to the social sciences, exemplifying and propagating the dramatic social changes of the 19th and 20th centuries, then New York City has proven to be an ideal laboratory for the study of social patterns and their evolution.

With a population and budget exceeding that of many nations, a central position in the world's cultural and corporate networks, and enormous concentrations of wealth and poverty, New York intensifies interactions among social forces that elsewhere may be hidden or safely separated.

Focusing on three historical transformations­mercantile, industrial, and postindustrial-several contributions to this volume explore economic growth and change and the social conflicts that have consistently accompanied them. Another set of papers suggests how popular culture and the forging of street life served as sources of order amidst conflict and disorder, while essays on political interests and pluralism offer reflections on how social tensions are harnessed in the framework of political participation.

By examining the intersection of economics, culture, and politics in a shared spatial context, these multidisciplinary essays illuminate New York City's complex development and highlight the significance of a sense of "place" for social research. (See "New York City as a Research Site" in the September 1988 issue of Items, pages 65-69.)

The contributors and their essays include:

Introduction

John Hull Mollenkopf, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

Part One: The Mercantile Era

Diane Lindstrom, University of Wisconsin, "Economic Structure, Demographic Change, and Income Inequality in Antebellum New York"

Peter G. Buckley, Cooper Union, "Culture, Class, and Place in Antebellum New York"

Amy Bridges, University of California, San Diego, "Rethinking the Origins of Machine Politics"

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Part Two: The Industrial Era

Emanual Tobier, New York University, "Manhattan's Business District in the Industrial Age"

William R. Taylor, State University of New York, Stony Brook, "The Launching of a Commercial Culture: New York City, 1860-1930"

Martin Shefter, Cornell University, "Political Incorporation and Containment: Regime Transformation in New York City"

Part Three: The Postindustrial Era

Norman I. Fainstein, Baruch College, City University of New York; and Susan S. Fainstein, Rutgers University, "Governing Regimes and the Political Economy of Development in New York City, 1946-1984"

William Kornblum, The Graduate Center, City University of New York; and James Beshers, Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York, "White Ethnicity: Ecological Dimensions"

John Hull Mollenkopf, "The Postindustrial Transformation of the Political Order in New York City"

Part Four: Conclusions

Thomas Bender, New York University, "Metropolitan Life and the Making of Public Culture"

John Hull Mollenkopf, "The Place of Politics and the Politics of Place"

Ira Katznelson, New School for Social Research, "Reflections on Space and the City"

Riot, Rebellion, and Revolution: Rural Social Conflict in Mexico, edited by Friedrich Katz. Publication resulting from two conferences, one held in Ixtapa, Mexico, in February 1981, and the other in New York City in April 1982, sponsored by the Joint Committee on Latin American Studies. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988. 594 pages. Cloth, $65.00. Paper, $16.50.

Since the 1910 Revolution, the rebellious peasantry in Mexico has been the subject of fllms, paintings, and novels, where it is portrayed as one of the most important forces in Mexican history. A number of studies of agrarian revolts have also been produced, but they have tended to be limited to certain periods or regions. This volume analyzes rural uprisings in Mexico from the pre-Columbian era to the 1910 Revolution, often drawing on new primary sources and disclosing new facts. The wide coverage of periods and regions distinguishes it from previous studies.

The contributors to the volume concentrate on

VOLUME 43, NUMBER 1

some basic questions: Who were the rebels? Why did they revolt and which social groups or institutions were their targets? Which groups did the rebels tend to ally themselves with and what was the nature of these alliances? What were the short- and long-term effects of the revolts on the peasantry and other segments of society? The question of whether the Mexican case is unique among Latin American countries, with respect to the number and scope of rural uprisings, is also posed.

In answering these questions, the essays highlight the factors that influenced revolts across regions and periods, such as agricultural crises, poor communica­tions among regions, repeated attempts by peoples of the central valley of Mexico to dominate the rest of the country, and the resistance to this centralization of power by those in peripheral regions. But the essays also disclose sharp discontinuities in time and place, including a wide variation in the motives for rebellion, the social composition of alliances formed, the program and strategy of the rebel groups, and the results of the uprisings.

The essays present other significant findings. These challenge the widespread notion that the peasantry was carrying out a hopeless struggle by demonstrating that, despite military defeats, rebels tended to gain far more than has been assumed. The findings also lead to the conclusion that the uniqueness of the Mexican case does not lie in the large number of revolts, but in the peasantry's high level of participation in national revolutions. Perhaps the most important contribution of this volume is the identification of a number of aspects crucial to the understanding of rural revolts in Mexico and other parts of Latin America as well. These include the complex relationships of the peasantry to other social groups, the importance of ethnic and demographic factors, and the role played by village communities.

Contents of the volume include:

Introduction

Friedrich Katz, University of Chicago, "Rural Revolts in Mexico"

Part One: Mexico-Unique Center of Rural Rebellion?

John H. Coatsworth, University of Chicago, "Patterns of Rural Rebellion in Latin America: Mexico in Comparative Perspective"

MARCH 1989

Part Two: Pax Hispanica?

Friedrich Katz, "Rural Uprisings in Preconquest and Colonial Mexico"

John Tutino, St. Olaf College and Carleton College, "Agrarian Social Change and Peasant Rebellion in Nineteenth-Century Mexico: The Example of Chalco"

Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Herbert Lehman College, City University of New York, "Peasant Rebellion in the Northwest: The Yaqui Indians of Sonora, 1740-1976"

Eric Van Young, University of California, San Diego, "Moving Toward Revolt: Agrarian Origins of the Hildalgo Rebellion in the Guadalajara Region"

William B. Taylor, University of Virginia, "Banditry and Insurrection: Rural Unrest in Central Jalisco, 1790-1816"

Part Three: From Indian Rebellions to Peasant Revolts

John M. Hart, University of Houston, "The 1840s Southwestern Mexico Peasants' War: Conflict in a Transitional Society"

Leticia Reina, Instituto Nacional de Antropologia y Historia, "The Sierra Gorda Peasant Rebellion, 1847-50"

Enrique Montalvo Ortega, Instituto Nacional de Antropologia y Historia, "Revolts and Peasant Mobilizations in Yucatan: Indians, Peons, and Peasants from the Caste War to the Revolution"

Part Four: Peasants and Peons in the Mexican Revolution

Arturo Warman, Universidad Autonoma de Mexico, "The Political Project of Zapatismo"

Raymond Th. J. Buve, University of Leiden " 'Neither Carranza nor Zapata!': The Rise and Fall of a Peasant Movement that Tried to Challenge Both, Tlaxcala, 1910-19"

Herbert J. Nickel, University of Bayreuth, "Agricultural Labor­ers in the Mexican Revolution (1910-40): Some Hypotheses and Facts about Participation and Restraint in the Highlands of Puebla-Tlaxcala"

Romana Falc6n, Colegio de Mexico, "Charisma, Tradition, and Caciquismo: Revolution in San Luis Potosi"

William K. Meyers, University of Oklahoma, "Second Division of the North: Formation and Fragmentation of the Laguna's Popular Movement, 1910-11"

Hans Werner Tobler, Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule (Zurich), "Peasants and the Shaping of the Revolutionary State, 1910-40"

Part Five: Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Revolts in Perspective

Friedrich Katz, "Rural Rebellions after 1810" Ulises Beltran, Secretaria de Hacienda, Mexico City, "Economic

Fluctuations and Social Unrest in Oaxaca, 1701-94"

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SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL 605 THIRD AVENUE, NEW YORK, N.Y. 10158

The Council was incorporated in the State of Illinois, December 27, 1924, for the purpose of advancing research in the social sciences. Nongovernmental and interdisciplinary in nature, the Council appoints committees of scholars which seek to achieve the Council's purpose through the generation of new ideas and the training of scholars. The activities of the Council are supported primarily by grants from private foundations and government agencies.

Directors, 1988-89: CLAUDE AKE, University of Port Harcourt; SUZANNE D. BERGER, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; RICHARD A. BERK, University of California, Los Angeles; ALAN S. BLINDER, Princeton University; ROBERT M. COEN, Northwestern University; RALF DAHRENDORF, St. Antony's College (Oxford); ROBERT DARNTON, Princeton University; KAI T. ERIKSON, Yale University; GARDNER LINDZEY, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; BEVIS LONGSTRETH, Debevoise & Plimpton; EMILY MARTIN, The Johns Hopkins University; WILLIAM H. SEWELL, JR., University of Michigan; BURTON H. SINGER, Yale University; FRANCIS X. SUTTON, Dobbs Ferry, New York; FREDERIC E. WAKEMAN, JR., Social Science Research Council; ROBERT B. ZAjONC, University of Michigan.

OffICers and Staff: FREDERIC E. WAKEMAN, JR., President; RICHARD C. ROCKWELL, DAVID L. SZANTON, Executive Associates; RONALD J . PELECK, Controller; GLORIA KIRCHHEIMER, Editor; DORIE SINOCCHI, Assistant to the President; YASMINE ERGAS, MARTHA A. GEPHART, TOM LODGE, RICHARD H. Moss, RACHEL OVRYN RIVERA, ROBERT W. PEARSON, SILVIA RAw, BLAIR A. RUBLE, STEFAN TANAKA, TOBY ALICE VOLKMAN.

The Social Science Research Council supports the program of the Commission on Preservation and Access and is represented on the National Advisory Council on Preservation. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1984. The infinity symbol placed in a circle indicates compliance with this standard.

All issues of Items are available in Microform. University Microfilms International

300 North Zeeb Road, Dept. PR, Ann Arbor, MI 48106

20\ITEMS ISSN 0049-0903 VOLUME 43, NUMBER 1