Best of
Anthropology

1932

Remembering: A Study in Experimental and Social Psychology


Frederic C. Bartlett - 1932
    The landmark book described fascinating studies of memory and presented the theory of schema which informs much of cognitive science and psychology today. In Bartlett's most famous experiment, he had subjects read a Native American story about ghosts and had them retell the tale later. Because their backgrounds were so different from the cultural context of the story, the subjects changed details in the story that they could not understand. Besides containing important seminal concepts, Remembering is fascinating from a historical perspective. Bartlett discusses the ideas and research of Ebbinghaus, Freud, Jung, and Spearman. In addition, his comparison of Swazi African culture and British culture is a study in cross-cultural psychology that was ahead of its time.

Crises and Cycles


Wilhelm Röpke - 1932
    But this splendid and critically important treatise would certainly be among the nominees.Until this edition, this book has been darn-near impossible to obtain short of stealing from the Library of Congress. As a matter of fact, it has been mysteriously missing off the shelves there for years, so the only copies extant have been photocopies of photocopies 50 times over.So at last: we can present to you Crises and Cycles by one of the greats.During the thick of the Great Depression, the same year as John Maynard Keynes came out with his treatise, Wilhelm Röpke made this contribution to macroeconomics: an excellent exposition of the Austrian Cycle theory in the tradition of Mises and Hayek.He refutes Keynes before Keynes became popular, and also provides an argument against other prevailing theories. Röpke is not perfect: while his analysis is excellent, he recommends a reflation after deflation. Nonetheless, this is an important and much-sought-after treatise by an important member of the Austrian School.

Manchuria - Cradle of Conflict


Owen Lattimore - 1932
    Originally published in 1931. INTRODUCTION: THIS book is founded on the experience gained during about nine months of travel and residence in Manchuria, in 1929-30, under a fellowship from the Social Science Research Council, New York. Previous experience on the borders of China and Inner Mongolia, and a long journey through Mon golia and Chinese Turkestan, had convinced me that a study of Manchuria must be essential to an understanding of the vast territory that lies between China and Russia. Manchuria, Mongolia and Chinese Turkestan were once important as the lands in which the northern barbarians of Chinas frontier maneuvered in war and migration, working out among their own tribes their destinies of conquest in China or migration toward the West. They are now becoming a field of contest between three types of civilization the Chinese, the Russian and the Western. In our generation the most acute rivalry is in Manchuria, and the chief protagonist of the Western civilization is Japan whose interpretation and application of a borrowed culture is of acute interest to the Western world, as on it turns to a great extent the choice which other nations have yet to make between their own indigenous cultures and the rival conquering cultures of Russia and the West. During our stay in Manchuria my wife and I tried to make our experience as varied as possible, but at the same time to stay long enough in each region studied to insure that our impressions should not be too superficial. Thus we spent part of the winter in one room at an inn, in a mud-walled boom town on the Western frontiers of Manchuria, where Chinese colonists are rapidly taking over Mongol pastures and opening them to cultivation. Then we moved to another one room lodging in an old thatched schoolhouse, in a small town in Kirin province, where the population was old-fash ioned and predominantly Manchu. In the spring I went up again to the Western frontiers and traveled, first by military motor convoy and then riding with border troopers, among the Mongols. When the ice broke up on the great Sungari river, I traveled on one of the first steamers down to the junction of the Sungari with the Amur about four hundred miles. As the steamers were afraid to venture into the Amur, no settlement having yet been made of the dispute between China and Russia, I traveled on by cart, with a good deal of difficulty, for some distance along the flooded banks of the Amur, among the Fishskin Tatars. Later in the summer I visited Hailar, in the Barga region. In the intervals between traveling, or making long stays in the country, we visited the chief cities Mukden, Dairen, Harbin and Kirin city or made short stays at smaller towns, or in villages, or at temples in the hills. In the larger towns we naturally did our best to meet well-informed people of all nationalities, but out in the country we rarely saw a for eigner, and often went for weeks without speaking English except to each other. As we traveled very simply, had no need of an interpreter, used always the same means of travel as the people of the region and lived in the same kind of houses or inns, our contact with the life about us was as close as possible. We were thus able to collect a great deal of local tradition not only legend and folklore, but the memories of the older inhabitants besides noting the signs of that modern progress which is the chief enthusiasm of the younger generation...