The Kiangsi Soviet marked the first systematic attempt by the Chinese Communist party to use existing peasant models of collective action for purposes of building an independent military apparatus. The history of that attempt is here examined against the background of the moral economy school's claim that revolutionary movements in twentieth-century Asia have successfully wedded themselves to such traditional patterns of action in order to achieve larger political purposes. This analysis of the politics of mobilization inside the soviet area finds that peasant society was traditionally too stratified and too divided against itself to offer unified resistance to threatening external forces, and emphasizes that mobilization tended to engage collective competitive instincts, setting groups of peasants against each other, rather than against hated representatives of post-traditional authority in the countryside. This finding is in turn used as a point of departure for raising some larger questions about the model of revolutionary legitimacy postulated by James C. Scott and the moral economists.

Some records of social protest written during the Tokugawa period contain more fiction than fact. Their form owes much to the structure of folktales, and their content relies heavily on the military tales of the twelfth to thirteenth centuries. Although they do not describe what peasants actually did, narratives of uprisings say a great deal about how their listeners and readers viewed themselves and their society. In them peasants became heroes—the subjects of action in a system that had defined them as the passive objects of authority. As a paradigm for behavior at times of crisis, however, the narratives came into increasing conflict with the dictates of individual self-interest by the middle of the nineteenth century. The author draws on the theories of Victor Turner to explain the function of fictionalized history for its audience and then develops a historical model to correct the lacuna of the anthropological perspective.

In this article the author studies the main trends in the evolution of modern Soviet Indology in the context of developments in Soviet Oriental studies and examines the extent to which both these were conditioned in turn by shifts in Soviet ideology. The development of Soviet Indology is further examined within the context of the organizational growth of the Institute of Oriental Studies (IVAN) and the evolving expertise of Soviet Indologists on contemporary India (along with a study of patterns in the academic training of these scholars). The author thus investigates both the intellectual and organizational bases contributing to the growth of Soviet Indology in an integrated and interconnected manner.

The Harvard University–Korea Development Institute eight-volume study of Korean economic development from 1945 to 1975 represents what is probably the single most comprehensive attempt to document economic change in a developing society. Although the volumes concentrate on economics, important omissions are evident, most of them because of the dearth of contributions from noneconomic social scientists and the orientations of the sponsoring institutions. Donors may be strongly tempted to view Korea as a development model, but a variety of internal and external factors make this approach inappropriate.

The author questions the assumptions of an “Asian school of scarcity and risk,” of which James C. Scott is the principal exponent, using Bengali peasant history as a case in point. He argues that it is more likely that the subsistence traditions of Bengal derive from locally generated values of abundance and indulgence than from a universal “moral economy” and suggests that detailed accounts of subsistence traditions in other parts of Asia will confound attempts to prove that European experience is a reliable guide to Asian practices.

The author reviews a number of books dealing with economic development in South Asia. He discusses the fact that, although there have been three decades of sophisticated approaches to economic growth in South Asia, mass poverty remains entrenched. He attempts to account for the striking difference between the economic growth of East Asia and that of South Asia.

For nearly two decades, study of the Chinese economy involved constructing pictures of broad macro trends from extremely limited data painstakingly obtained. Given the quantity and quality of data available, a majority of analysts came surprisingly close to the mark in explaining what happened. A few economists attempted to deny that any economic progress had occurred, while there were others who painted a picture approaching Utopia, but these were always in the minority. When China began to open up in the late 1970s and data were once again systematically published, there were some surprises, but much of that written before the opening remained valid. If economists did a reasonably good job of explaining what happened, however, they did much less well explaining why.

Both Beijing and London have vowed to maintain Hong Kong's stability and prosperity in the uncertainty surrounding the expiration of the New Territories Lease in 1997. The six books under review are timely but not entirely successful attempts to trace local socioeconomic developments since the riots of 1967. Three major themes emerge. The still-prevalent Chinese family system and social values have provided the foundation for political stability during this period of drastic changes. The general “prosperity” also entails human sacrifices and widening inequitable distribution of this increased wealth. The policies of the colonial administration have been a far cry from the ideals of laissez-faire government, and yet much remains to be done to make Hong Kong a just society.

Although the Thai-Lao peasants living in rain-fed agricultural communities in northeastern Thailand have experienced some improvements in their socioeconomic situation as a consequence of the growth of the Thai economy since the mid-1950s, these peasants still constitute the poorest sector of the population of Thailand. Moreover, the socioeconomic position of the rural northeastern Thai populace has actually declined relative to that of the urban populace and that of the rural populace living in central Thailand. The economic disadvantageous position of Thai-Lao peasants is linked with a sense of being an ethnoregional minority within a polity that has been highly centralized since reforms instituted at the end of the nineteenth century. Much of the social action of Thai-Lao peasants with reference to the political-economic constraints on their world can be understood, as long-term research in one community reveals, as having been impelled by rational calculation aimed at improving the well being of peasant families. The ways in which peasants have assessed in practice the justice of these constraints as well as the ways in which they have assessed the limits to entrepreneurship must be seen, however, as being rooted in moral premises that Thai-Lao villagers have appropriated from Theravada Buddhism as known to them in their popular culture.

Unquestionably the most comprehensive single study of High T'ang poetry to have appeared in English, Stephen Owens' book surveys a crucial segment of Chinese literary history and attempts to define a period style. Copious notes and translations enhance the analysis of less well-known poets and major figures, including two lengthy chapters on Tu Fu and Li Po. The book contributes to both criticism and pedagogy.

Statements on Democracy Wall in Beijing and in posters and underground publications throughout China, especially in 1978 and 1979, document in depth for the first time the arguments of Chinese dissidents. The dissidents maintain that without “the Fifth Modernization” of guaranteed personal freedoms and “true socialist democracy,” the four modernizations cannot succeed and China cannot become a “great socialist country.” Recent publications, some of which are reviewed in this article, give a fair sampling of these arguments and must be taken into account in future evaluations of the Chinese Revolution.

Women have assumed a prominent role in China's post–Cultural Revolutionary fiction, just as they did in the literature of the May Fourth period. Addressing issues that apply not just to women but by implication to society as a whole, writers like Zhang Jie and Zhang Xinxin experiment with new literary forms to describe the special problems that continue to afflict women: problems of male domination and discrimination and, in some ways more burdensome, problems of self-definition and self-fulfillment. Recognizing the obstacles to their equality, productivity, and happiness, they are somewhat disappointed and disillusioned about the new society in which they once fervently believed.