Through Other Eyes - by Barbara E Ward (Hardcover)

About the Book

Through Other Eyes offers a rigorous, empirically grounded account of Hong Kong's boat people--known locally as the Tanka--during a period of rapid postwar transformation.

Book Synopsis

Through Other Eyes offers a rigorous, empirically grounded account of Hong Kong's boat people--known locally as the Tanka--during a period of rapid postwar transformation. Drawing on decades of fieldwork conducted between 1950 and 1967, Barbara E. Ward analyzes the social organization, economic practices, and ritual life of Tanka fishing communities, highlighting their complex credit systems, family structures, gendered division of labour, and distinctive religious practices. She documents the profound effects of mechanization between the 1950s and 1960s while situating these changes within broader debates on peasant economies, modernization, and the relationship between cultural models and social behaviour. Ward's influential formulation of "conscious models" provides an analytic framework for understanding how communities interpret and negotiate social change. Spanning topics from modernization to lineage, folk religion, factory life, and women's status in Asia, Through Other Eyes stands as a classic of Hong Kong anthropology and a rare account of a culture in rapid transition.

About the Author

Barbara E. Ward (1919-1983) was a British social anthropologist renowned for her pioneering research on South China, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia. A specialist in Chinese social organization, she conducted multiple periods of fieldwork in Hong Kong between the early 1950s and late 1960s, including extended residence in the fishing village of Kau Sai. Her scholarship spans fishing communities, Hakka migration and Kongsi associations in Borneo, factory organization in Hong Kong, rural credit systems, socialization, and gender roles in Asian societies. Ward's work is distinguished by its theoretical innovation--particularly her influential elaboration of "conscious models" in Chinese social life.