A Serbian Village by Joel Martin HalpernReview by: D. G. MacRaeThe Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 38, No. 90 (Dec., 1959), pp. 276-277Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School ofSlavonic and East European StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4205155 .

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276 THE SLAVONIC REVIEW

It should be noted, however, that Polaczek does broach the locational

problems of the Polish steel industry. He very incisively notes (pp. 129 ff.) the trend of this industry to move away from coal?towards the Silesian

periphery. In fact its new powerful centre, the Nowa Huta integrated giant which is expected to reach an eventual capacity of about three and a half million tons of crude steel a year, is growing on the Vistula banks near Cracow, i.e. in the area which can be considered a part of the Upper Silesian basin only when this term is used in a wide sense.

The excellent study of Polaczek ends with a few common-sense remarks on the problem of Silesia in an all-European context. They whip up an unsatisfied appetite for some speculation on Silesian perspectives against the changing role of coal at the threshold of another revolution in energy.

London Alfred Zauberman

A Serbian Village. By Joel Martin Halpern. Columbia University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1958. xviii + 325 pages. Biblio?

graphy, tables, maps and illustrations. Index.

With few positive defects this is nevertheless a rather disappointing book. The author and his wife spent a year in Serbia, most of it apparently in the single village which he here describes in a fairly systematic fashion. His work was directed towards the acquisition of a Ph.D., and it bears

many of the stigmata of this origin. It is introduced by Conrad Arensberg, whose work in rural Ireland provides a convenient standard for the measurement of achievement in European village studies. The present book does not rate very high by this standard.

It is essentially an inventory of facts about life in the village of Orasac. No competent British social anthropologist or sociologist could have pro? duced so unquestioning, so unanalytical, and therefore, so unscientific a

compilation. It is not even fair to regard this study as typical of American cultural anthropology, for much American work is far higher in achieve? ment. We badly need studies of European peasant communities, and it would be especially fascinating and important to have objective and scientific accounts of such communities undergoing social change through the imposition of a communist way of life. It is therefore extremely dis?

appointing that this book attains no higher level than that of competent, not very penetrating, reporting.

The trouble is, essentially, lack of theory. Sociologists and social anthro?

pologists are often inclined to self-doubts about their too great concentra? tion on theoretical problems. It is only when one comes on this sort of work that we realise that even bad or untidy and imperfect theoretical

postulates are a lot better than none. The only substitute for them is the sort of understanding that a sensitive literary artist can provide, and to ask this from social scientists, in general, is clearly to ask too much.

Orasac, from this account, appears to be fairly typical, except for three

points, of European peasant communities. The economy is still compara? tively near the level of subsistence. Interests are, above all, local; social

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REVIEWS 277

solidarity is 'mechanical'; social control, to some considerable degree, patriarchal, and ritual and religion play a central part in it by reinforcing and reaffirming social solidarity and social values. Like all human com?

munities, Orasac is constantly undergoing social change and this change is, in general, towards greater division of labour, decreased localism, secularisation, and increasing demands for higher personal consumption.

Two of the things that differentiate Orasac from the majority of Euro?

pean peasant communities are the relics of the zadruga, an extended patri? archal, patriolocal family unit, and the clan system. One would have liked to have learned more about the fate of the zadruga and its internal

composition than Dr Halpern tells one. One would like also to know very much more about the clan system. Dr Halpern gives one, incidentally, many facts about it, but it is clearly something that should be treated

systematically, and no such treatment except of an excessively formal and non-functional kind, is attempted.

The third feature of Orasac which is of unusual interest is, of course, that here we have a comparatively primitive village community in a communist society. Admittedly, Yugoslavia's communism is exceptional in its divergence from the patterns of the Soviet world. All the same, one would like to have seen a lot more information on the impact of com? munism?or its failure to have an impact?than we are given. Halpern has clearly not thought much about the problems of social change. If he had he could not but have provided us with a valuable book. As it is, all he has done is to provide a reasonably pleasant, no doubt objective, but

essentially dull catalogue of aspects of Serbian village life. It is extremely alarming to learn from the blurb that, having completed this research in

1954, Dr Halpern has since done 'research in India, East and South

Europe, Scandinavia and Alaska'. It would be nice to think that he will have time to return to Orasac and practise some of the techniques of

investigation and analysis which social anthropology can offer in order to produce a second and better study of what sounds like a most attrac? tive society. As it is, both the student of Slavonic affairs and the sociologist can use this transparently honest book as a source on an important subject while wishing that it had been something more.

London D. G. MacRae

Summary Notices

English-Polish and Polish-English Dictionary. Compiled by Tadeusz Grze- bieniowski. Wiedza Powszechna, Warsaw, and Methuen, London, 1958. xxiv + 368; xi + 307 pages.

Mr Grzebieniowski has compiled a useful dictionary which includes

many modern terms and offers a wider selection of idiomatic expressions than its recent predecessors. It has another advantage over them: Polish words are at last given in modernised spelling. Two popular dictionaries,

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