Unlike many books, this book allows you to practice your knowledge of production systems. This book is a good addition to any production systems (production inventory control, production operations management) class. It provides a good, basic overview of many of the principles needed for the production control professional. The main advantage of this book is that it has a diskette with it to allow practice of the principles. A tool called ProDSS is included to aid in many of the calculations using Excel macros. These calculations include forecasting and labor requirements. There is also a simulation to evaluate your decisions against a factory environment. However, you must have the instructor text with diskette to utilize this feature.

I consider this text an excellent choice for the basics of production systems. It is also an excellent addition to any college level production systems class (although I really think another text like Factory Physics should be used also to provide more details to much of the content.)

Sangren begins the book with an account of the market town of Ta Ch'i in relation to its cachement area (that is, the area from which people came to market there) from the 18th century onward. He then describes levels of religious participation, including cross-island pilgrimages to the Mazho (Matsu in the old romanizaiton he uses) temple at Peikang. As much as he can, Sangre obscures that his data comes from Taiwan, not from China.

Sangren criticizes overly schematic categorizations of spirits into the traditional tricohotomy gods, ghosts, and ancestors and questions the idea that the pantheons is modeled on an authoritarian central government (either the Kuomingtang dicatorship that ruled Taiwan at the time Sangred did his fieldwork or imperial Chinese governments that never had effective control of Taiwan before ceding the island to Japan in 1895). However, Sangred substitutes an equally a priori and rigidly schematic yin/yang contrasts to various phenomena and generalizes his structural analysis to all of China translating the terms Taiwanese used from Hokkien terms into Beijinghua "Mandarin" throughout. It is obvious that Sangren is far more interested in theorizing about a singular Chinese civilization than in observing and talking to the people he supposesdly was studying (Taiwanese). His work in general is long on theory, short on experience-near ethnography and individuals living in Taiwan.

Writing anthropology presents many tactical problems. Your data covers vast expanses of life, you can go in many directions. Should you include ethnographic detail or should you go for the big picture ? Should you try to depict what you want to say through the lives of a few individuals or should you remain general ? Some writers avoid discussion of theory and write descriptive ethnographies, others weave complex webs that connect numerous theories and famous authors of the past, trying to steer a course towards some and away from others. Often anthropologists fall through one of the many cracks that gape along the path towards a successful book, usually by trying to do everything at once. Not so Sangren's interesting work on Taiwan. The description is rich, with excellent maps and photographs, but he strongly connects his work to theory. I would say HISTORY AND MAGICAL POWER... is worth reading, not because the author introduces interesting individuals or amusing descriptions of events, but because he "bounces off" many writers of the older school, i.e. those of structuralist-functionalist ideas such as Dumont, Durkheim, Freedman, Leach, Levi-Strauss, Sahlins, Skinner, and Turner. Though the book was published in 1987, it does not engage in the post-structuralist, literary criticism-based anthropology of these last years. I, for one, find both schools equally challenging.

The writer states that he wants to investigate how categories of thought are reproduced in Chinese institutions and how Chinese institutions reproduce categories of Chinese thought. He consciously rejects the old oppositions of "elite/folk", "text/ritual" or "great tradition/little tradition" saying that all these categories are found in each Chinese institution. He prefers to set up an objectivist perspective, though I am not sure that that is possible. In any case, Sangren then guides the reader through a discussion of the ritual construction of social space, dealing with folk religion, cults and pilgrimages associated with a particular geographic area, south of Taipei and connected ritual actions, bringing in a description of the economic and administrative systems as well. Further on, he connects the concept of yin and yang to ideas of order and disorder, then talks of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, pilgrimage, spirits and social identity. Finally there is a section on the social construction of power.

I admired this book because the author is widely read and does not hesitate to bring in examples from societies outside East Asia, (many anthropologists blinker themselves to one region, even though their training should promote the opposite). I found that the many theoretical issues taken up and points raised were useful for me in my work, though I am very far from a China specialist. I also admired the book because Sangren thinks broadly, makes many interesting connections, and constantly creates sparks that may light a fire in your own, private anthropological thought. If he didn't, ultimately, reach the goal that he aimed at, he came close, he created a book that should be of great interest to China experts and also to anyone interested in relating institutions and culture. This is not a book you can sit down and read for fun. It requires serious thought, but it is well worth your time. I feel it is a shame that such a book remains relatively unknown, while many lesser books attract more attention.