SOCIOLOGY IN ASIA: A ONE-DAY CONFERENCE.

The study of Asian societies has not yet had its share of attention within the framework of comparative sociology as a whole. As one step towards remedying this situation, a one-day conference, called by the British Sociological Association, was held in London, England, at the School of Oriental and African Studies on December 2, 1961, to discuss the position of sociology in Asia. Papers dealing with India, China, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand and Indo-China and Burma were presented at the conference. Coverage was thus fairly comprehensive, though certain areas, including the whole of the Middle East, were left out on this occasion. The aim of speakers present at the conference was to assess the present state of knowledge about societies they were considering, with special reference firstly to sociologists of Asian nationality and secondly to the current contribution of British scholarship. Papers that were presented, while they showed wide variation in the state of sociology in different countries, also showed for Asia as a whole a volume of work being done which western sociologists could ill afford to ignore. Some criticism arose in the discussion of the idea of regional research entrees and of inter-disciplinary teams assembled for area studies. There was discussion also of the alleged problem of translating sociological concepts into Chinese or Japanese.