Steuber,Jason, and Guolong Lai eds.Collectors,Collections, and Collecting the Arts of China: Histories & Challenges

This volume,the third publication sponsored by the Harn Museum of Art and the University of Florida,contains a number of interesting discussions,investigations,and insights on the subject of collecting Chinese art in 1950s North America and Europe.Each chapter,dedicated to a single museum (in most cases),can stand on its own,in that each museum has its own history to share and its own challenges to face.I benefited from reading this work and learned much from its large quantity of information on museums' collecting histories and from the biographical accounts and studies of individual collectors.     

Collecting,Collections, and Practice in the Anthropologies of Health and Disease

Anthropologists studying health and disease collect data ranging from human remains to peoples’ lived experiences. Each of the books reviewed here reveals the social processes that shape how disease phenomena are observed, assessed, classified, and interpreted, both by the individuals who experience them and the researchers who study them. The classic anthropological themes of collection, exchange, circulation, social relations, and reciprocity resonate throughout. Theoretical and methodological differences aside, anthropologists remain united by a commitment to holistic and integrative approaches and the shared goal of providing historically and socially contextualized, nuanced understandings of the human condition.     

Collections,Collecting and Collectives: Gathering Heritage Data with Communities in the Mountains of Matatiele and Lesotho,Southern Africa

Gathering digital data is a twenty-first-century research concern. Working in the previously undocumented region of the Eastern Cape’s former 'Transkei' homeland presents several data collection opportunities and obstacles. Local community collectives can vastly enhance the data collection process, aiding in administration, field walking, translation and—as trained archaeologists—excavation and rock art documentation. In the last 7 years, the Matatiele Archaeology Rock Art (MARA) team has discovered over 240 archaeological sites, the vast majority of which contain rock art. The principal investigator (PI), postdoctoral fellows, technical skills specialists and students have all engaged with, helped train and benefitted from field technicians chosen by the local communities to work with us. With their help, we have undertaken excavations and taken thousands of documentary photographs. We have documented oral traditions and the indigenous knowledge of local healers, all of which research is produced, and stored, digitally and requires preservation in perpetuity. The present contribution outlines some of the many and varied ways in which this programme has undertaken these tasks, in the endeavour to redress the imbalance in this region’s history.     

Li, Feng and David Prager Branner,eds., Writing and Literacy in Early China: Studies from the Columbia Early China Seminar

This welcome new collaborative volume tells a story that has not been investigated adequately:the rise and spread of literacy in ancient China.While there is a large bibliography of studies of the writing system itself,few scholars have addressed the question of literacy,that is,how writing was used in society,how people were taught to read and write,and how the practice advanced both geographically from the center to the periphery,and socially from the elite to what one of the contributors calls "the lower orders." Feng Li and David Prager Brarmer are to be applauded for bringing together eleven engrossing articles representing the finest scholarship in English and immensely clarifying these crucial phenomena.Constraints of space preclude consideration of each chapter in this long and carefully annotated book;1 in what follows,I shall attempt to sketch what the book accomplishes and the evidence on which it relies.     

Rural settlement and economic development in Southern Italy: Troia and its contado, c.1020 - c.1230

The history of urban life in Southern Italy during the eleventh and twelfth centuries was particularly disjointed. At varying points many of the regions' cities were subject to the domination of petty Lombard princes, Byzantine emperors, Norman dukes and, as one passes into the twelfth century, Sicilian kings and German emperors. This paper uses the case of the northern Apulian city of Troia to show that, below this surface of political discontinuity, it is possible to discern a different understanding of an urban history. In highlighting the significance of the economic development of Troia's surrounding territory and the manner in which this created a damaging rivalry with the neighbouring settlement of Foggia, this essay emphasises the need to take into account local (and not only wider-ranging political) influences on the shaping of medieval south Italian urban life. In this context the paper also considers the importance of the development of a stable local government and a burgeoning civic conscience at Troia.     

History of Psychology in China: Contributions,Challenges, and Future

The history of psychology makes three major contributions:(1) promoting the development of psychology in China;(2) establishing the history of Chinese psychology as an academic discipline;(3) playing an important role in training the next generation of Chinese psychologists.This effort faces numerous challenges,including the reduction in undergraduate teaching hours,declining enrolments at the postgraduate level,limited innovation in research,and a lack of financial support.These challenges stem largely from changes in the Chinese academic assessing system,the greater weight placed on experimental psychology,and a fewer opportunities for researchers.To address these concerns the history of psychology in China should make the history of Chinese psychology its research priority,while also presenting its findings to the public,and developing innovative teaching and research approaches.