one Internet café or four homeowner associations

"As in any edited volume, some chapters are stronger than others, though the overall level of quality is quite high. Although the contributors come from a variety of disciplines, the majority are anthropologists, as are the two editors. As a sociologist, I felt less than impressed by the methodology of many of the studies. The problem may lay more in disciplinary habits than in actual research rigor; anthropologists tend to say very little about methodology in articles, while sociologists tend to say a lot. Of course the real constraints of conducting research in China, where statistics are unreliable and authorities are suspicious of foreign social scientists, mean that qualitative methods and small samples are the only data available. Even so, it is reasonable to wonder how much stock to put into a study of one Internet café or four homeowner associations."

from Carolyn Hsu's book review on Privatizing China: Socialism from Afar. Edited by Li Zhang and Aihwa Ong. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press