Organisation of work

THE EXTENT to which this monograph makes a contribution to the field of industrial sociology can be judged, of course, only by the author's professional colleagues in that field. It may also be weighed, however, as an exercise in the comparative method. On this score it is impressive. In addition to being substantively and methodologically sound, it has important implications for the use of the Human Relations Area Files in particular and for cross-cultural research in general.

Despite the common misconception of the Files as primarily an anthropological enterprise, the organization was actually estab lished to serve equally the sister disciplines of geography, psy chology, sociology, and human biology. This monograph, written by a sociologist and utilizing a conceptual framework derived exclusively from sociology and economics, demonstrates the utility of the Files for research in nonanthropological fields. It marks, moreover, a return to the great sociological tradition of com parative ethnographic research pursued by Spencer, Durkheim, Sumner, and numerous lesser figures of the past.

To revive this tradition fruitfully, the author has found it necessary to revise both the theoretical orientation and the meth odology of his predecessors. He postulates no evolutionary se quences of development but formulates and tests hypotheses regarding functional interrelationships among coexisting organiza tional forms. Reacting also against extreme cultural relativism, he demonstrates that valid and significant results can emerge from the "comparative study of selected aspects of culture."

The author's methods contrast sharply with those of the earlier comparative sociologists. He surveys, not an indiscriminate body of ethnographic literature, but the sources on a carefully selected representative sample of nonindustrial societies. Instead of lifting cases out of their cultural context, he analyzes the interrelationships among his variables within each of his sample cultures. He carefully defines his variables in trans-cultural rather than in culture-bound terms. And he arrives at his conclusions by first formulating hypotheses and then testing them statistically against the discovered intra-cultural relationships, not by an in tuitive assessment of excerpted materials.

The fact that sixty-four separate propositions have received. impressive statistical confirmation bears witness to the author's sophistication in theory and method, and at the same time offers substantial encouragement to all social scientists interested in cross-cultural research. The author, who has had no formal an thropological training and only minimal anthropological guidance, demonstrates precisely thereby the way in which the Human Relations Area Files renders the vast riches of ethnography and culture history readily accessible to anyone with a scholarly interest in human behavior.