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Using data from the 1995 China 1% Population Sample Survey, this article examines the impact of international migration on housing conditions in China. We find that international migration affects housing conditions differently in cities, towns, and rural areas. In rural areas, the impact of emigration on housing conditions is seen primarily through the increase of housing space, whereas in cities the impact of emigration on housing conditions is mainly reflected in the improvement of facilities. Although having a cadre in the household continues to be an important factor, international migration has begun to challenge, and even rival, this legacy of social stratification in China.

All three of the books under review— Science and Social Science by Malcolm Williams, Rethinking Science by Jan Faye, and Open the Social Sciences by the members of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences (Immanuel Wallerstein, chair)—argue for a broadly naturalist approach in which the social sciences are seen as of a piece with the natural sciences. Fortunately, all three do so in a discriminating way that avoids simple options and that appreciates the important ways the social-scientific disciplines require their own approach. Open the Social Sciences in particular also contains detailed and wise advice as to how the contemporary social sciences should proceed if they want to fulfill their ambition to explain human social behavior in a scientific way.