self-conscious working class activity as usually defined, and labor migration and stabilization. Next, he focuses on the analysis of labor in the African past, colonial and precolonial. From this, his essay moves to look at the growing innovative literature expanding the boundaries of African labor studies-labor in agriculture, labor in the functioning of the so-called informal sector of the economy, and the labor of women and children. Finally, he returns to the question of commitment, considering first the assessment of workers' control in contemporary African workplaces and then the influence on recent scholarship of the black labor insurgency in South Africa. Mr. Freund concludes that there has been a flourishing literature on African labor that has passed rapidly and sometimes confusingly beyond the boundaries conventionally set for the subject. If there is a single issue that wittingly or unwittingly underlies all the relevant literature, it is the question of classclass formation, class history, class relationships, class consciousness. To what extent and from when and why can we speak of an African working class? He suggests that the future of labor studies will depend on extraneous and largely material factors rather than the arguments of intellectuals. In other words, the demands of Western capital, the needs of intellectuals, and the actual course of political and economic change in Africa will primarily determine whether labor continues to be as seminal a subject and how research on it will proceed. He suggests that there is and will remain considerable vitality in labor studies both as traditionally constituted and as infused with new considerations, while labor will increasingly be taken as a sine qua non for comprehending broader social and historical patterns. ASIA: CHINA
Theories of the Arts in China, edited by Susan Bush and Christian Murck. Papers from a conference held inJune 1979 sponsored by the Committee on Studies of Chinese Civilization of the American Council of Learned Societies, one of the two predecessor committees of the Joint Committee on Chinese Studies. Princeton University Press, 1983. xxvi + 447 pages. Cloth, $45.00. The purpose of the conference on which this volume is based was to stimulate interest in Chinese aesthetics. For five days, two philosophers and two cultural historians, along with ten historians of Chinese literature and eight of Chinese art, met to comment on and debate about these papers. 88
The topics of the papers include literary theory, images of nature, music theory and poetics, views of the arts during the Sung dynasty, and issues in Ming dynasty literary and artistic criticism. The contributors and their affiliations are: Richard Barnhart Susan Bush Kang-i Sun Chang Jonathan Chaves Kenneth DeWoskin John Hay Lothar Ledderose Shuen-fu Lin Richard John Lynn Kiyohiko Munakata Christian Murck Susan E. Nelson Maureen Robertson Tu Wei-ming John Timothy Wixted Pauline Yu
Yale University Harvard University Yale University George Washington University University of Michigan Harvard University Heidelberg University University of Michigan Macquarie University University of Illinois Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company (New York) Indiana University University of Iowa Harvard University Arizona State University University of Minnesota
Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts in the People's Republic of China, 1949-1979, edited by Bonnie S. McDougall. Studies on China 2. Papers from a workshop held in June 1979 sponsored jointly by Harvard University, the Committee on Studies of Chinese Civilization of the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Joint Committee on Contemporary China-the precedessor committees of the Joint Committee on Chinese Studies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. xvi + 341 pages. Cloth, $32.50. The papers in this volume constitute a broad and inclusive account of Chinese literature and the performing arts since 1949. Extending beyond fiction to poetry and drama, and covering songs, opera, and film as well, the papers reveal a more lively and varied cultural life than disclosed by studies confined to fiction and literary politics. Rather than stopping at the assumption that art reflects Party or government policy, the papers uncover the traditional roots of popular literature and the performing arts by employing literary and artistic methods of analysis. While often lacking in appeal to Western audiences, these popular arts have their own artistic validity and convey complex meanings to broadly-based Chinese audiences. The new materials and analyses presented in the volume demonstrate that variety and change, rather than monolithic uniformity, have characterized post-1949 cultural bureaucracies, writers, performers, and audiences. VOLUME
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