R. David ARKUSH

A young farmer directs a water buffalo. In the distance a factory is visible. Fei Xiaotong’s 1938 Ph.D. thesis, published as Peasant Life in China, argued that Chinese villagers needed revenue from rural industry to supplement their income from agriculture. PHOTO BY JOAN LEBOLD COHEN.
Fei Xiaotong, educated at the London School of Economics, was China’s most important anthropologist/sociologist and the author of a prodigious number of books and articles