714 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE the concepts of the social sciences fleshed out with some human and/or technical details, it is, alas, unsatisfying. Daniel R. Headrick Dr. Headrick is professor ofsocial science and history at Roosevelt University and the author of The Tentacles ofProgress: Technology Transfer in the Age ofImperialism, 1850-1940 (New York, 1988). The Rice Economies: Technology and Development in Asian Societies. By Francesca Bray. Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell, 1986. Pp. xxi + 254; illustrations, tables, notes, glossary, appendixes, bibliog raphy, index. $24.95 (cloth); $15.95 (paper). The Rice Economies is devoted to an examination of the role of technical change in the evolution of the wet rice cultivation areas in East and Southeast Asia. Francesca Bray’s thesis is that the technology of wet rice cultivation is uniquely consistent with small-scale land and labor-intensive systems of cultivation. She argues that the hypothesis holds historically and in the recent post—Green Revolution period. As a result, an attempt to understand technical and institutional change in the wet rice cultivation regions of Asia is severely distorted when an attempt is made to interpret it through Eurocentric models of agricultural development. The book reviews the biology of the rice plant, the agronomy of rice cultivation, the unique role of water control in rice production, the role of rice in the wider economy and in the process of economic development, and the connection between technical change and changes in the relations of production—including land tenure re forms of the “land to the tiller,” group farming, and socialist types. Throughout the book the author is able to avoid the pitfall of viewing the historical change through the ideological perspective of the Green Revolution controversies of the last several decades. The references to the historical literature are particularly valuable. But Bray has a disturbing habit ofjuxtaposing and drawing inferences from widely disparate historical periods—such as comparing the seedgrain ratio of unimproved wheat in Western Europe in the 17th cen tury with the ratio for improved rice varieties in East Asia (p. 15). The book would have profited from a more consistent use of the distinction between biochemical and mechanical technology (p. 156). Yujiro Hayami and I, in Agricultural Development: An International Perspective (Baltimore, 1971; rev. ed. 1985), have shown, for example, that an induced innovation model—in which biological (or biochem ical) technology can be viewed as a substitute for land and mechanical technology as a substitute for labor—makes it possible to employ a single model to interpret the processes of agricultural development historically and in contemporary society. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 715 The Rice Economies is recommended as a useful introduction to the role of technical change in the development of the Asian economies in which wet rice cultivation plays an important role. It is not, however, the place to stop if one’s interest extends to problems of contempo rary agricultural development. The issues discussed in this book are treated in greater depth and with more rigor in the recent study by Randolph Barker and Robert W. Herdt, with Betty Rose, The Rice Economy of Asia (Washington, D.C., 1985). Vernon W. Ruttan Dr. Rlttan, Regents Professor in the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics and in the Department of Economics at the University of Minnesota, has written extensively on issues of technical change and agricultural development. He is the author of Agricultural Research Policy (1982). The Machine in the University: Sample Course Syllabi for the History of Technology and Technology Studies. Compiled and edited by Terry S. Reynolds. 2d ed. Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University, 1987. Pp. iv + 241; appendix. $7.95 (paper). Available from STS Program, Maginnes Hall 9, Lehigh University 18015. The second edition of The Machine in the University is a welcome resource for college and university teachers. Like the now outof -print hrst edition, its more than twenty course syllabi, ranging from history of technology survey courses to those covering broad technology-studies themes, provide teachers with ready ideas for course organization, student assignments and readings, and sample examinations. The volume also gives one a sense of the strengths and weaknesses in the held of technology studies...
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