Author Description

This volume is the outcome of a symposium entitled "The Study of East Asian Societies" held in Tokyo in honor of the eightieth birthday of Professor Fei Xiaotong, one of the founders of modern Chinese anthropology and sociology. The fourteen papers here,including two addresses by Professor Fei, deal specifically with the question of using one's own society as the direct object of anthropological and sociological study, and whether in a country as large as China, small-scale studies of individual communities can be representative of the country as a whole.