Editor's Introduction

Abstract

This issue of Chinese Sociology and Anthropology completes our translation of The People of T'ai-hang (T'ai-hang jen-chia), a collection of the family histories of poor peasants and workers from the T'ai-hang region. As the introductions to the spring and summer issues explain, these family histories were collected in the course of a nationwide social survey of family, factory, commune, and mine histories — the Four Histories Movement. The term "social survey" is not a euphemism here, for the histories of the poor peasantry of T'ai-hang were gathered by field-teams that presumably derived their materials from field interviews. On the other hand, such histories are not illustrations of the social survey in the social scientific sense, for each family history has been fictionalized and moralized to serve as a model of morally correct behavior. In this respect, T'ai-hang jen-chia is but one example of a multitude of role-model testimonials. As role-model literature, T'ai-hang jen-chia serves not only to describe the past in idealized terms, but to educate for the future and warn the present.