中国缺什么？其实每一个中国人心里都清楚，但从一个日本人口中说出来，总会觉得有些不自在。近藤大介先生的这本书写得很有分寸：他来北京工作数年，但从不扎堆在“日本老乡”之中，而是愿意天天乘地铁、搭公交，与周边的中国人搭讪、交往，时时刻刻感受“中国特色”，还娶了一位中国太太。所以，这位“中国女婿”对中国的批评，实在留着客气。
我在中国居住多年。如果说日本是我心中‘最温柔的部分’，那么中国也是我不可或缺的一部分。
我有一个中国妻子，更多时候，我享受着她对我的‘中国式管理’，至今，我们仍然彼此爱慕如初恋，我们知道彼此拥有什么；我们也时常如两面镜子，通过对方照出自身所缺。”
——近藤大介
【编辑推荐】
中日虽互不信任，但也要彼此摸底。
这是隔海相望的一次“国民谈心”，通过对方，照出自身所缺！
是国家性的缺失，还是国民性的痼疾？
哪怕一个伟大的国家，也常常通过它的缺点和所处的时代联系在一起！
这是一个日本学者对中日国民性进行观察的反思之作！
作者真正探究到了中日文化的精髓，并实现了有趣的跨文化比较！
中国缺少优质的服务、缺少细腻的技术，中国人仍然很不团结；日本缺少责任心、缺少广阔的视野，日本的后继力量堪忧……。
近藤大介在中国居住多年，他将我们司空见惯的现象娓娓道来，既非尖锐批评，又非一味吹捧，幽默与自嘲中多带诚恳，此种“诚实的尴尬”难能珍贵。

An exceptional ethnography marked by clarity and candor, Sidewalk takes us into the socio-cultural environment of those who, though often seen as threatening or unseemly, work day after day on “the blocks” of one of New York’s most diverse neighborhoods. Sociologist Duneier, author of Slim’s Table, offers an accessible and compelling group portrait of several poor black men who make their livelihoods on the sidewalks of Greenwich Village selling secondhand goods, panhandling, and scavenging books and magazines.
Duneier spent five years with these individuals, and in Sidewalk he argues that, contrary to the opinion of various city officials, they actually contribute significantly to the order and well-being of the Village. An important study of the heart and mind of the street, Sidewalk also features an insightful afterword by longtime book vendor Hakim Hasan. This fascinating study reveals today’s urban life in all its complexity: its vitality, its conflicts about class and race, and its surprising opportunities for empathy among strangers.

Studies of Chinese society commonly emphasizze men's roles and functions, a not unreasonable approach to a society with patrilineal kinship structure. But this emphasis has left many important gaps in our knowledge of Chinese life.
This study seeks to fill some of these gaps by examining the ways rural Taiwanese women manipulate men and each other in the pursuit of their personal goals. The source of a woman's power, her home in a social structure dominated by men, is what the author calls the uterine family, a de facto social unity consisting of a mother and her children.
The first four chapters are devoted to general background material: a brief historical sketch of Taiwan and a description fo the settings in which the author's observations were made; the history of a particular family; the relation of Chinese women to the Chinese kinship system; and the interrelationships among women in the community. The remaining ten chapters take up in detail the successive stages of the Taiwanese woman's life cycle: infancy, childhood, engagement, marriage, motherhood, and old age. Throught the book the author presents detailed information on such topics as marriage negotiations, childbirth, child training practices, and the organization of women's groups.

Over the past thirty years, whilst Japan has produced a diverse set of youth cultures which have had a major impact on popular culture across the globe, it has also developed a succession of youth problems which have led to major concerns within the country itself. Drawing on detailed empirical fieldwork, the authors of this volume set these issues in a clearly articulated 'social constructionist' framework, and put forth a sociology of Japanese youth problems which argues that there is a certain predictability about the way in which these problems are discovered, defined and dealt with. The chapters include case studies covering issues such as: Returnee children (kikokushijo) Compensated dating (enjo kosai) Corporal punishment (taibatsu) Bullying (ijime) Child abuse (jido gyakutai) The withdrawn youth (hikikomori) and NEETs (not in education, employment or training) By examining these various social problems collectively, A Sociology of Japanese Youth explains why particular youth problems appeared when they did and what lessons they can provide for the study of youth problems in other societies. This book will be of huge interest to students and scholars of Japanese society and culture, the sociology of Japan, Japanese anthropology and the comparative sociology of youth studies.

An essay on aesthetics by the Japanese novelist, this book explores architecture, jade, food, and even toilets, combining an acute sense of the use of space in buildings. The book also includes descriptions of laquerware under candlelight and women in the darkness of the house of pleasure.

Why would a country strongly influenced by Buddhism's reverence for life allow legalized, widely used abortion? Equally puzzling to many Westerners is the Japanese practice of mizuko rites, in which the parents of aborted fetuses pray for the well-being of these rejected 'lives.' In this provocative investigation, William LaFleur examines abortion as a window on the culture and ethics of Japan. At the same time he contributes to the Western debate on abortion, exploring how the Japanese resolve their conflicting emotions privately and avoid the pro-life/pro-choice politics that sharply divide Americans on the issue.

In the West the Japanese house has reached iconic status in its architecture, decoration and style. Is this neat, carefully constructed version of Japanese life in fact a myth? Inge Daniels goes behind the doors of real Japanese homes to find out how highly private domestic lives are lived in Japan. The book examines every aspect of the home and daily life-from decoration, display, furniture and the tatami mat, to eating, sleeping, gift-giving, recycling and worship. For students and researchers in anthropology and architecture, The Japanese House re-evaluates contemporary Japanese life through an ethnographic lens, examining key topics of consumption, domesticity and the family. Highly illustrated throughout, the book will appeal to all those who are interested in Japanese culture, and in how and why people live the way they do in modern Japan.

Through innovative fieldwork and ethnographic writing, Hecht lays bare the received truths about the lives of Brazilian street children. This book changes the terms of the debate, asking not why there are so many homeless children in Brazil but why, given the oppressive alternative of home life in the shantytowns, there are in fact so few. Speaking in recorded sessions they called 'radio workshops', street children asked one another questions that even the most experienced researcher would be unlikely to pose. At the center of this study are the children who play, steal, sleep, dance and die in the streets of a Brazilian city. But all around them figure activists, politicians, researchers and a global crisis of childhood.