Sociology and anthropology in twentieth-century China between universalism and indigenism 9789629964757, 9629964759

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Sociology and Anthropology in Twentieth-Century China

Titles in The Formation and Development of Academic Disciplines in Twentieth-Century China Series Learning to Emulate the Wise: The Genesis of Chinese Philosophy as an Academic Discipline in Twentieth-Century China Edited by John Makeham

Sociology and Anthropology in Twentieth-Century China: Between Universalism and Indigenism Edited by Arif Dirlik, with Guannan Li and Hsiao-pei Yen

Transforming History: The Making of a Modern Academic Discipline in Twentieth-Century China Edited by Brian Moloughney and Peter Zarrow

Sociology and Anthropology in Twentieth-Century China Between Universalism and Indigenism

Edited by Arif Dirlik, with Guannan Li and Hsiao-pei Yen

The Chinese University Press

Sociology and Anthropology in Twentieth-Century China: Between Universalism and Indigenism Edited by Arif Dirlik, with Guannan Li and Hsiao-pei Yen © The Chinese University of Hong Kong 2012 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from The Chinese University of Hong Kong. ISBN: 978-962-996-475-7 THE CHINESE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Chinese University of Hong Kong Sha Tin, N.T., Hong Kong Fax: +852 2603 6692 Fax: +852 2603 7355 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.chineseupress.com Printed in Hong Kong

Contents

About the Series

vii

List of Contributors

ix

1. Zhongguohua: Worlding China The Case of Sociology and Anthropology in 20th-Century China

1

Arif Dirlik 2. Academic Universality and Indigenization: The Case of Chinese Anthropology

41

Wang Jianmin 3. The Synthesis School and the Founding of “Orthodox” and “Authentic” Sociology in Nationalist China: Sun Benwen’s Sociological Thinking and Practice

63

Guannan Li 4. Searching for a Place beyond Modern Chinese History: A Study of the Sociologist Lei Jieqiong

89

Liang Yue 5. Cultural Policy and Culture under the Guomindang: Huang Wenshan and “Culturology”

109

Guannan Li 6. Li Anzhai and Frontier Anthropology: Tibet, Discourse of the Frontier, and Applied Anthropology during World War II, 1937–1945

139

Hsiao-pei Yen 7. Southeast and Southwest: Searching for the Link between “Research Regions” Wang Mingming

161

vi · Contents 8. Chinese of Different Nationalities, China, and the Anthropology of Chinese Culture

191

Tan Chee-Beng 9. The Movement to Indigenize the Social Sciences in Taiwan: Origin and Predicaments

209

Maukuei Chang 10. From Sinicization to Indigenization in the Social Sciences: Is That All There Is?

255

Allen Chun 11. Studying Taiwan: The Academic Politics of Bentu in Post-Authoritarian Taiwan

283

Ya-Chung Chuang 12. On the Practice of Market Transition

307

Sun Liping 13. Narratives of the “Sufferer” as Historical Testimony Guo Yuhua

333

Index

359

About the Series

The Formation and Development of Academic Disciplines in Twentieth-Century China John Makeham, Series Editor

The series is the principal outcome of three annual workshops held in Canberra, Beijing and Hong Kong between 2007 and 2009 on the topic of “the Formation and Development of Academic Disciplines in TwentiethCentury China.” Our aim in these workshops was to construct a historically informed multidisciplinary framework to examine the complex processes by which traditional Chinese knowledge systems and indigenous grammars of knowledge construction interacted with Western paradigms to shape the formation and development of modern academic disciplines in China. The modern disciplines were formed as intellectuals sought new roles for themselves in the context of dramatic political change. New institutions—above all academic (schools, universities) and media (newspapers, book publishing)—provided the social basis for much work on specialized disciplines from the late Qing through the Republican period. The mutual interaction of traditional Chinese and modern Western knowledge paradigms and institutional practices shaped the formation and development of modern academic disciplines in China. Modern scholarship remains largely silent about how different domains of traditional knowledge practice responded to common challenges and the consequences of this for subsequent disciplinary developments. To what extent were new knowledge systems viewed as tools in the recovery of tradition rather than its abandonment? What were the thematics, conversations, controversies, and dominant modes of argument across these domains as they responded to the new challenges? To what extent and under what conditions did practitioners of traditional forms of learning concede authority to Western knowledge paradigms?

viii · About the Series

Specifically, we have sought to understand and analyze how traditional forms of Chinese scholarship were adapted to new knowledge paradigms; to identify the role played by indigenous “grammars” (inherited problematics and standards of rational justification) in shaping the formation of academic disciplines, and the concrete forms in which these grammars interacted with Western paradigms and concepts; to demonstrate how indigenous grammars of knowledge construction, and their ongoing complex interaction with Western paradigms, decisively influenced the formation and development of individual academic disciplines; and to examine the significance of the growing trend toward the indigenization (bentuhua) of knowledge systems and how it relates to broader contemporary concerns about the indigenization of knowledge in many social science and humanities disciplines.

List of Contributors

Mau-kuei Chang is a research fellow of the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, and adjunct Professor of the Department of Sociology, Taiwan University. His research and teaching interests include social movement studies, identity politics, and ethnic and nationalism. His recent publications include the formation of multiculturalism in Taiwan, and the studies of Waishengren (mainlanders) in Taiwan. He has an edited volume (with Zheng Yong-nian) titled “Social Movement Studies on both Sides of Taiwan Strait” (Xin Ziran, 2002). He received his PhD degree in sociology from Purdue University in 1984, and has visited UC Berkeley and McGill University as Fulbright and exchange scholar; and has been a Visiting Chair professor at Leiden University of the Netherlands. He served as the President of Taiwanese Sociological Association (2008–2009). Ya-Chung Chuang has a PhD from Duke University and teaches anthropology in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan. Chuang is the author of “Democracy in Action: The Making of Social Movement Webs in Taiwan” (Critique of Anthropology, 2004) and “Place, Identity, and Social Movements: Shequ and Neighborhood Organizing in Taipei City” (Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique, 2005). He is currently writing a book concerning social movements and cultural politics in contemporary Taiwan. Allen Chun is a Senior Research Fellow in the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. His research interests include socio-cultural theory, (trans)national identity and (post)colonial formations. In addition to Unstructuring Chinese Society: The Fictions of Colonial Practice and the Changing Realities of ‘Land’ in the New Territories of Hong Kong (Harwood Academic Publications 2000, reprinted by Routledge, 2002), he has edited a special double issue in Cultural Studies 14(3–4) entitled “(Post)colonialism and Its Discontents”, a special issue in Social Analysis 46(2), entitled “Global Dissonances,” and co-edited a book entitled Refashioning Pop Music in Asia: Cosmopolitan Flows, Political Tempos and Aesthetic Industries (Routledge-Curzon). His major papers have appeared in diverse journals.

x · List of Contributors Arif Dirlik lives in Eugene, Oregon, in semi-retirement. He most recently held the first Liang Qichao Memorial Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Tsinghua University, Beijing (2010) and the Rajni Kothari Chair in Democracy, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, New Delhi (2011). Dirlik taught at Duke University for thirty years as professor of history and anthropology before moving in 2001 to the University of Oregon where he served as Knight Professor of Social Science, Professor of History and Anthropology, and Director of the Center for Critical Theory and Transnational Studies. From 2007 to 2009, he was Chair Professor of Chinese Studies, Professor by Courtesy of the Departments of History and Cultural Studies, and Honorary Director of the Chinese University of Hong Kong-Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation Asia Pacific Center for Chinese Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His most recent book-length publications are Culture and History in Postrevolutionary China: The Perspective of Global Modernity (the “Liang Qichao Memorial Lectures”) (The Chinese University Press, 2011) and Global Modernity: Modernity in the Age of Global Capitalism (Paradigm Publishers, 2006). Yuhua Guo, is Professor in the Department of Sociology, Tsinghua University. She received her PhD (1990) from Beijing Normal University. Her main areas of research are anthropology, peasants’ oral history, social memory, and problems of social justice in the process of social transformation. Recent publications include “Life Cycle and Social Security: A Sociological Exploration into the Life Course of Laid-Off and Unemployed Workers,” Social Sciences in China, 2005: 5; “Psychological Collectivization: Cooperative Transformation of Agriculture in Jicun Village, Northern Shaanxi, as in the Memory of the Women,” Social Sciences in China (Winter 2003); “Digital Divide and Social Cleavage: Case Studies of ICT Usage among Peasants in Contemporary China,” The China Quarterly (September 2011). Guannan Li is currently teaching Asian history at Dowling College on the Long Island, New York state. Guannan graduated from Peking University as an undergraduate with a broad training in history, philosophy, and literature. His PhD dissertation from the University of Oregon explores the GMD ideology of “national revival” and its social implementations in the 1930s. Guannan is currently working on a book manuscript that is based on his PhD dissertation. Liang Yue is an MPhil candidate of Chinese Culture at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include modern Chinese intellectual history, Chinese feminism and modernity.

List of Contributors · xi Tan Chee-Beng (PhD, Cornell Univer sity) is Professor at the Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. His major areas of interest have been cultural change, ethnicity and identity, ethnic relations, Chinese overseas, religion, anthropology of food, indigenous peoples and development, and his research sites include Southeast Asia and south China. His recent publications include Chinese Overseas: Comparative Cultural Issues (2004), as co-editor, The Chinese in Malaysia (2000), Changing Chinese Foodways in Asia (2001), Food and Foodways in Asia (2007), The World of Soy (2008), and as editor, Southern Fujian: Repro duction of Traditions in Post-Mao China (2006), Chinese Transnational Networks (2007). His email address is [email protected]. Wang Jianmin is Professor of anthropology, at Minzu University of China (Central University of Nationalities), his areas of research are mainly the history of anthropology in China, methodology of anthropology, anthropology of art, and the studies on the history and cultures of ethnic groups in Xinjiang, Northwestern China. He is Harvard-Yenching Visiting Scholar 1998–1999, also visiting professor and researcher in France, Taiwan, and universities of mainland China. His book, The History of Ethnology in China (two volumes) is a foundational work in the field. Wang Mingming is professor of anthropology at Peking University. He has conducted ethnographic and historical research in Fujian, Taiwan, Yunnan, Sichuan, and South France. He has published extensively on anthropology and history. Among his numerous publications, are Social Anthropology and Sinology (1997), The Historical Predicament of the Sinification of a Western Science (2005), The West as the Other (2007), The Intermediaries: The Tibetan-Yi Corridor and the Reformation of Anthropology (2008). Hsiao-pei Yen is currently a PhD candidate in the History Department at Harvard University. She has published an article on the New Life movement and the Modern Girl in Asian Studies Review and an article on the formation of racial identity in 1930s China in the edited volume China in the 1930s. She has received the NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant and the Academia Sinica Dissertation Fellowship. Her research interests lie in, among other things, the dynamics between scientific imperialism, the evolving Chinese nationalism, and frontier politics in Republican China.

Chapter 1

: Worlding China The Case of Sociology and Anthropology in 20thCentury China Arif Dirlik

Sociology and anthropology, along with the other social sciences, were foreign imports in the organization of knowledge in China. While some Chinese scholars trace social thought in China as far back as the late Zhou Dynasty (roughly 11th–3rd centuries BCE), this is quite misleading as the “social” as a category was very much a product of the encounter with Euro/America, and what “social” thought there had been earlier was indistinguishable from the cultural, the political, and even the religious. The new disciplines would also have a checkered career, entangled as they were in the vagaries of revolution. Introduced into Chinese thinking beginning in the late 19th century, teaching and research in these new fields were initially dominated by scholars from North America and came into their own as disciplines in the 1920s and 1930s. As in Europe, the social sciences in 20th century China developed along conflicting trajectories, motivated by needs of order and governance, on the one hand, and reform and revolution, on the other, both shaped by the problems thrown up by a modernizing society. Their development was further complicated in the Chinese case by their foreign origins, which has made the question of “nationalization” into a central question in both their evaluation as disciplines and the tasks expected of them. The infant disciplines suffered a serious setback following the victory of the Communist Party in 1949 with the establishment of a state-sponsored Marxism, which for three decades suppressed not only the so-called bourgeois social sciences but also Marxist social sciences that did not conform to the demands of official Marxism. The disciplines were revived following the “reform and opening” after 1978 and have grown rapidly over the last three decades.

2 · Arif Dirlik

This introduction briefly sketches the establishment of sociology and anthropology as disciplines, the concerns that guided the work of Chinese sociologists and anthropologists as the disciplines came into their own as professional undertakings, and ongoing debates over the nationalization of the disciplines. It covers the period before 1949, with brief mention of subsequent developments. More detailed analysis of these questions is offered in the essays in the volume which focus on different aspects of these disciplinary projects. My main goal here is to provide a broad historical context for the discussions offered by the contributors to the volume, some of whom continue to play important parts in shaping the present-day trajectories of these disciplines in the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan.1

Sociology and Anthropology: Origins and Domestication2 Sociology The social sciences were entangled in questions of politics from their very origins. The first translations of works of sociology and anthropology into Chinese were undertaken not with disciplinary concerns in mind but due to late Qing (1644–1911) efforts to understand the sources of strength of the Euro/American powers that threatened the dynasty’s survival. According to his student Liang Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929), the celebrated Confucian reformer Kang Youwei 康有為 (1858–1927) included a section on sociology in his curriculum in the private academy that he had established in Guangzhou as early as the early 1890s, most probably based on materials made available in missionary publications. The first major work of sociology to appear in Chinese (in 1904) was Herbert Spencer’s The Study of Sociology. It was one of a series of translations from English undertaken by the reform-minded intellectual, Yan Fu 嚴復 (1854–1921), who was one of the first Qing intellectuals sent abroad to study naval matters as part of the government’s self-strengthening reforms. His translations—which included Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, and Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics—had considerable influence on early twentieth-century Chinese thought, especially in the spread of Social Darwinian ideas among intellectuals already preoccupied with the question of China’s survival in a world of national competition. Yan Fu himself “prescribed sociology as an antidote to political radicalism....

Zhongguohua: Worlding China · 3

With his idea of sociology intertwined with elitism and political gradualism, [he] set the tone for later Chinese sociology, particularly of the Anglo-American variety.” 3 In his translation of Spencer, Yan Fu had used the term qunxue 群學 (“collectivities” or “masses”) to render sociology into Chinese (this was also the term used by Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao). The term shehuixue 社會學, which would eventually come to stand for sociology, was first used in translations of works on sociology from Japanese, first by Han Tanshou 韓曇首 in 1898 and subsequently by the distinguished radical intellectual Zhang Taiyan 章太炎 (1868–1936) in a 1902 translation of Sociology (Shakaigaku 社會學) by the Japanese author Kishimoto Nobuta 岸本能武太.4 The term had a long lineage in Chinese thought, where it had meant something along the lines of “gathering of she (or communities).” The Japanese neologism, shakai (shehui), brought with it a new understanding of the term which would take hold of Chinese thinking as social and political developments drove late Qing intellectuals to reconceive shehui as society, in the Euromodern sense of a structured or organic entity with its own internal logic and dynamics. “American missionary sociology,” as Wong Siu-lun has described it, was to play a central part in the formation of sociology as a discipline.5 The very first department of sociology in China was established in 1915 at Hujiang University in Shanghai, an undertaking of American Methodist Episcopalians. With the exception of Xiamen University, founded by an overseas Chinese entrepreneur from Singapore, which established a Department of History and Sociology in 1922, until the mid-1920s practically all departments of sociology were in private American missionary institutions, nourished by support from universities in the US. Scholars from the US were prominent in both teaching and research in sociology. A Japan-educated professor at Beijing University, Kang Baozhong 康寶忠 (1884–1919), offered courses in sociology beginning in 1916, but otherwise the teaching of sociology was limited in these early years to professors from the US teaching in missionary institutions. Not surprisingly, the activities of these scholars in either teaching or research were guided by the practical missionary interests that had brought them to China in the first place: altruistic goals of reforming China which were often indistinguishable from the more fundamental aim of spreading the Gospel, both of which required a close understanding of Chinese society. Exemplary among them was John Stewart Burgess (1883–1949), graduate of Oberlin, Princeton, and Columbia, who

4 · Arif Dirlik

was to found the sociology department at Yanjing University and make it into one of the leading departments in the country. Burgess was also a pioneer of the social survey method, which in the hands of American sociologists produced the first major analyses of social problems; a major concern that that they would pass on to their Chinese students. The significance of missionary institutions in shaping sociology in China went beyond the mere presence of these institutions. They also provided the intellectual and ideological context for the nourishing of the first generation of Chinese sociologists, who would come of professional age in the late 1920s and 1930s and establish sociology firmly as a discipline. Not all Chinese sociologists were trained in American institutions. Important figures in Chinese sociology such as Tao Menghe 陶孟和 (1888–1960) and Fei Xiaotong 費孝通 (1910–2005), not to speak of Marxist sociologists, received some or all of their training in England or Europe. Textbooks translated from Japanese also provided Chinese students with their first introduction to sociology. But as sociology was established as an academic discipline from the late twenties, US-trained students played a leading and dominant part in organization and research. Prominent among the first generation of US-trained sociologists who received their schooling in the late 1910s and early 1920s were Sun Benwen 孫本文 (1891–1979), widely recognized as the dean of sociological studies in the 1930s (Beijing University, Illinois, New York University, Columbia); Pan Guangdan 潘光旦 (1899–1967), the biological determinist (Tsinghua, Columbia); Wu Wenzao 吳文藻 (1901–1985), outstanding in community studies (Tsinghua, Columbia); Chen Da 陳達 (1892–1976), foremost scholar of Chinese overseas, labor issues, and population (Tsinghua, Columbia); Wu Zelin 吳澤霖 (1898–1990), sociologist and ethnologist (Tsinghua, Wisconsin, Ohio); Wu Jingchao 吳景超 (1901–1968), economic and urban sociologist (Minnesota, Chicago); Huang Wenshan 黃文山 (1895–1982), founder of the field of “culturology” (Beijing University, Columbia); and Lei Jieqiong 雷洁琼 (1905–1993), sociologist of women and the family (University of Southern California). Upon their return to China, these individuals played important parts in the establishment and staffing of the departments of sociology that proliferated from the mid-twenties. Fudan University in Shanghai established a department of sociology in 1925, followed by Guanghua, Daxia, and Tsinghua Universities (1926), Central and Jinan Universities (1927), Northeast University (1928), Labor University in Shanghai (1929), and Zhongshan University in Guangzhou (1931). By 1930, there were sixteen

Zhongguohua: Worlding China · 5

departments of sociology—eleven independent departments, two each jointly with history and politics, and one combined with anthropology. Other universities offered courses on sociology through various institutional arrangements. After several abortive efforts, in 1928 Chinese sociologists in Shanghai established the first professional organization, The Southeast Association of Sociology, which was combined with a similar association in Beijing in 1930 to form the first national association, “The Chinese Society of Sociology” (Zhongguo shehuixue hui 中國社會學會). The executive committee included the most prominent sociologists of the day: Sun Benwen, who played a major part in the organization and served as director; Xu Shilian 許仕廉 (1896–?), Wu Jingchao, Wu Zelin, Chen Da, Tao Menghe, You Jiade 游嘉德, and Qian Zhenya 錢振亞. The Association made its own the journal Sociology (Shehuixue 社會學) that had been inaugurated by the Southeast Association, with Sun Benwen as its chief editor. In the meantime, the Yanjing Department of Sociology had established in 1927 its own publication, Sociological World (Shehuixue jie 社會 學界), which would last for eleven years. Together, the Association and these journals announced the coming of age of professional sociology in China.6 Nevertheless, between 1930 and 1940 there was a hiatus in the development of sociology in Chinese universities which, according to Sun Benwen, was due to the “misunderstanding” of sociology, presumably on the part both of the general public and the Guomindang government in power after 1927.7 The “misunderstanding” he referred to was the confusion of sociology and socialism, which may have made sociology suspect in the eyes of the authorities. The development of sociology did not regain its momentum until the war years, when the Guomindang government, with its newly established “social affairs department,” began to show serious interest in social work and welfare. By 1947, twenty-two universities had departments of sociology—nineteen of them independent departments—with 144 working sociologists (including anthropologists), only ten of them foreigners.8 The confusion of socialism and sociology may have been due to the preoccupation of professional sociologists with social problems, community studies, and rural research, but it was as old as the history of sociology in China. Reformers and revolutionaries of the late Qing had observed a close connection in contemporary European political discourses between social problems, the study of sociology, and socialism (often confused—as in the case of Sun Yat-sen 孫中山 (1866–1925), for

6 · Arif Dirlik

instance—with the institution of social policies to resolve social problems). By the late 1920s, the “confusion” was due primarily to the influence on Chinese social thinking of Marxism and, to a lesser extent (as in the case of the anarchist-inspired Labor University), anarchism. This hiatus in institutional growth did not mean that sociology (or anthropology) stagnated. Rather, the ongoing transformation of departments during the “Nanjing Decade” with the addition of new research groups, new courses, and research projects gives the impression of ongoing experimentation with the best ways to accommodate faculty interests. Institutional innovations were accompanied by proliferating signs of intellectual vitality and professional maturation. These years witnessed extensive research activities organized by Chinese sociologists themselves, not to mention the training of a new generation of social scientists. Intellectual debates born of the conf licting affiliations of Chinese social scientists with various schools in the social sciences clarified significant theoretical and methodological questions concerning different approaches to social analysis, the relationship between the various social sciences, and their domestication within the Chinese context. Below I will say more on these debates, which were enlivened by the visits to China of distinguished sociologists and anthropologists such as Robert Park (1864–1944) from the United States and Alfred RadcliffeBrown (1881–1955) from England. Finally, a great deal of social science literature was introduced both through translation and through the significant scholarly output of Chinese scholars. Sociological work in the two decades before 1949 was guided as much by the training sociologists had received abroad as it was dictated by the circumstances of Chinese society. In his survey of Chinese sociology, Zheng Hangsheng identifies four schools in Chinese sociology: Rural Reconstruction (xiangcun jianshe 鄉村建設), Comprehensive or Syncretic (zonghe 綜合), Community (shequ 社區), and Marxist. Rural reconstruction, while it influenced the work of sociologists, was led by non-sociologist activist intellectuals such as the Confucian-inspired philosopher Liang Shuming 梁漱溟 (1893–1988) and YMCA-related James Yen 晏陽初 (Yan Yangchu; 1893–1990), both of whom engaged in rural experiments with village reform and local governance, with particular emphasis on education. Their examples stimulated numerous efforts at rural reconstruction in the 1930s that involved sociologists such as Chen Xujing 陳序 經 (1903–1967), Li Jinghan 李景漢 (1894–1986), Wu Jingchao, Xu Shilian, Yang Kaidao 楊開道 (1899–1981), and many others, who received their

Zhongguohua: Worlding China · 7

practical training in sociology in the course of these efforts. While these sociologists did not necessarily agree with Yen’s Christianity or Liang’s Confucianism, they brought their own sociological interests to the practical goal of reforming rural China. The Syncretic school was the “orthodox” counterpart to Marxist sociology. It insisted on bringing together various aspects of society in sociological study and integrating sociology with other disciplines. Its foremost representative was Sun Benwen, who had studied with Robert Park at the University of Chicago, as well as William F. Ogburn (1886– 1959) and Franklin H. Giddings (1855–1931) at Columbia. What distinguished the Syncretic school from the equally comprehensive claims of Marxism was its emphasis on culture and social psychology in the shaping of society. Sun Benwen placed a great deal of emphasis on social problems, but the Syncretic school in general was longer on theory than on practical research. Sun himself would exert enormous influence on sociological thinking not only through his organizational activities and his impressive output of texts and theoretical work. He was a foremost voice in the call for the sinicization of sociology (see below) by the production of sociological work by Chinese social scientists based on Chinese realities. The third school was the school of community studies which was responsible for much of the research in these years on rural and urban China. Its leading figure was Wu Wenzao, who had studied with Franz Boas (1858–1942) and Ruth Benedict (1887–1948) in Columbia. Upon his return to China, he assumed a position in the Yanjing University Department of Sociology and quickly made it into a vanguard in social surveys. Most prominent among the talents he nurtured were Fei Xiaotong, Lin Yaohua 林耀華 (1910–2000), Li Anzhai 李安宅 (1900–1985), and Zhang Zhiyi 張之毅 (1919–1987), who all authored extensive and seminal works on social life and values, village and town structures, industrial life, the family, fertility, etc. Theoretically, members of this school were distinguished by their emphasis on anthropological work. The most famous of them all, Fei Xiaotong, had studied with Bronislaw Malinowski (1884– 1942) in the London School of Economics. Li Anzhai had been a student of Alfred Kroeber (1876–1960) in the University of California-Berkeley, while Lin Yaohua was a graduate of the Department of Anthropology at Harvard. Finally, Marxism. Following the establishment of the Communist Party of China in 1921 and the influx of Marxism into Chinese thinking,

8 · Arif Dirlik

Marxists played an important part in the teaching and diffusion of sociology. Communist Party leaders in general—such as Li Dazhao 李大釗 (1889–1927) and Mao Zedong 毛澤東 (1893–1976)—were interested in social issues and social research. Not all, however, explicitly addressed issues of sociology and the social sciences. Among those who did were Qu Qiubai 瞿秋白 (1899–1935), who had had some brief experience in the Soviet Union, served for a while as head of the Sociology Department in the left-dominated Shanghai University, and authored several books on sociology; Li Da 李達 (1890–1966), who was educated in Japan, was a prolific theorist, and taught in a number of universities, including Beijing University and Zhongshan University; and Xu Deheng 許德珩 (1890–1990), who was educated in France and Germany, translated Émile Durkheim into Chinese, and wrote several works of his own. Critical of the Comte’an sociology of order, Marxist authors brought into Chinese sociology issues in the materialist conception of history, with particular emphasis on class, labor, and women. Possibly most important in terms of social investigation was Chen Hansheng 陳翰笙 (1897–2004), who was educated in Germany and invited by Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培 (1868–1940) to head the Institute of Social Sciences of the newly founded Academia Sinica in 1928. His rural surveys across the breadth of the country in the 1930s were important in informing Communist approaches to land revolution. Marxism was especially influential in the promotion of historical sociology. Marxist debates over the nature of Chinese society and its historical development played a major part in turning attention to the writing of social history and in nurturing an interdisciplinarity that cut across political boundaries as well. Marxism was important not just for Communist intellectuals, but also for Guomindang intellectuals such as Tao Xisheng 陶希聖 (1899–1988), whose institute at Beijing University was a major source of studies on Chinese economic and social history. Needless to say, while professional sociologists such as Sun Benwen were critical of Marxist sociology for its political agenda, the sociology that they practiced was infused with concerns and premises that were the contribution of the materialist conception of history to European sociology at its very origins. Not all Chinese sociologists are easily classified into these categories. An example is Chen Da, who had studied with Giddings and Ogburn in Columbia (Giddings was his Ph.D. advisor, Ogburn his classmate from Reed College in Oregon) but brought to their stress on culture and social

Zhongguohua: Worlding China · 9

psychology materialist orientations of his own. While in the US, Chen Da authored a study of Chinese Overseas, with emphasis on their laboring conditions. He followed this interest up in the 1930s in his studies of Overseas Chinese communities (qiaoxiang 僑鄉) in China. He was also recognized as a foremost sociologist of labor and population. His work with the Institute of Pacific Relations (founded by the Rockefeller Foundation) also gave him a leftist slant on the problems of China (which did not prevent him from getting into trouble during the Hundred Flowers Movement in 1957 for his advocacy of resurrecting sociology, which by then had been taken out of university curricula).9 Lei Jieqiong, the lone woman to receive significant attention in some surveys of sociology, is a similar case. Lei studied sociology at the University of Southern California, achieved the highest honors for her scholarship, and upon her return to China, acquired a post at Yanjing University, which she held from 1931 to 1937. Subsequently, she served in numerous prestigious university positions and was active in democratic circles. Lei’s primary interest was in issues of women and the family. But she also produced critiques of women under Fascism and brought a historical materialist perspective on gender, with particular interest in the relationship between women’s conditions and the unfolding women’s movement in China.10 Marxists such as Qu Qiubai and Li Da would probably have had little difficulty agreeing with a statement Sun Benwen made in the conclusion to his Principles of Sociology (Shehuixue yuanli 社會學原理) that “sociology is a science, socialism is a kind of advocacy; the two should not be confounded.” 11 Marxists believed that a fundamental goal of sociology was to serve as a guide to social transformation. On the other hand, they also believed that sociology of the kind practiced by “bourgeois” sociologists was no less political in its service to capitalism. Whether or not sociology in China served capitalism is a moot point. What is less doubtful is that already in the 1930s professional sociologists were closely associated with the Guomindang government and shared in its goals of social reform and engineering.12 Professional sociology in the 1930s, moreover, bore upon it the imprint of its missionary origins, as well as the social reformism that Chinese sociologists internalized in their education in the United States. The particular circumstances of Chinese society reinforced the practical goals that drove Chinese sociology from its beginnings. It is interesting, moreover, that a sociologist such as Sun Benwen, writing of sociology’s mission to resolve social problems, could stipulate that “the

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interest of the country and nation should be at the core of the solution,” as if subjecting sociology to national goals was politically innocent.13

Anthropology The first anthropology departments in China were not established until the late 1940s, just before the victory of the Communist Party in 1949. In 1947, Jinan University, Zhejiang University, and Tsinghua University established anthropology departments, followed the following year by Zhongshan University. The time lag in the establishment of anthropology departments is neither surprising nor significant. Anthropology was a relatively new discipline. Few universities in the US and Europe had anthropology departments until after World War II. In many cases, moreover, anthropology was part of sociology departments. It is more than likely that a Chinese student who studied anthropology in the US would have been enrolled in a sociology department.14 This situation was replicated in Chinese universities. Scholars with degrees in anthropology, such as Wu Wenzao, Huang Wenshan, or Fei Xiaotong, found disciplinary homes in departments of sociology. Courses in anthropology, too, were more often than not offered through those very same departments. On the other hand, given the significance of rural reconstruction and community studies in guiding research, sociologists themselves were drawn to ethnographic methods, which further blurred the distinction between the two disciplines. The founding of departments of anthropology in the late 1940s signaled not the beginnings of anthropology as a discipline but rather the separation of anthropology from sociology, which merely established the autonomous disciplinary identity of the two fields—not necessarily to the advantage of either except in an institutional sense. An additional dimension in the case of China was a difference in the scope of research. One Chinese scholar in the forties (Cen Jiawu 岑家梧, 1912–1966), writing with reference to ethnology (minzuxue 民族學), observed that ethnographic work in China faced problems quite different than those in Europe and North America. Being a product of colonialism, ethnography in the case of the latter two was devoted to the discovery and delineation of differences in cultural identity. Chinese society, too, was constituted of different nationalities, and cultural difference was an important issue, but being part of the same polity, China, these nationalities were also united by cultural commonalities that were the products of

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a long history of interactions. Discovering this commonality in difference was a major challenge that distinguished Chinese ethnography.15 The distinction Cen drew between ethnographies in the two contexts may provide us with insights into another reason for the blurring of boundaries between sociology and anthropology in the Chinese context. In Europe, and subsequently in North America, the division between sociology and anthropology also marked a distinction between objects of study; the one was devoted to the study of contemporary industrial societies, by definition Euro/American (and white), the other to the study of pre-Euromodern, especially colored and “primitive,” ones. Cen no doubt exaggerated the commonalities between the nationalities in China (especially Han and others), as well as the differences in attitude between Chinese scholars and the Euro/American anthropologists who had trained them. In the discussions over ethnology and sociology in the 1930s, influential anthropologists such as Wu Wenzao, Huang Wenshan, and even Cai Yuanpei argued, very much in the vein of colonial social science, that sociology had as its domain contemporary civilized societies whereas ethnology (and, by implication, anthropology) applied to primitive peoples and the past. In China, this corresponded to the distinction between the Han and minority nationalities.16 Whether or not the commonalities between the nationalities in China outweighed their differences, as Cen claimed, however, it is nevertheless quite the case that the inside/outside distinction that marked the division of labor between sociology and anthropology in Euro/America was much less applicable to social research in China where both were contained within the same political, if not necessarily the same economic, social, or cultural, space. The objects of study may not have been identical, but they did overlap, and there were good reasons for disciplinary crossings from the one over to the other. If we think of anthropology in terms of its constituent fields of biology, archeology, linguistics, and ethnology or culture (the “fourfields” of US anthropology), anthropological work and concerns, too, go back to the early twentieth century and were entangled in issues of nationalism even more inextricably that than in the case of sociology. China’s multi-nationality, a challenge to nationalists, may account for the prominence of ethnology in particular. On the other hand, archeological discoveries from the late nineteenth century were to raise questions about Chinese origins which also stimulated early advances in archeology. No

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less important was the discovery in nationalist politics of the “people,” further endowing with political significance culture at the ground level. Beijing University had established a Department of Archeology by 1922. The following year, an association was created for the study of folklore. In 1927, Zhongshan University established a Department of History and Philology, which was followed by a similar department at the Academia Sinica when it was founded in 1928. One foreign figure, in addition to American “missionary” sociologists, was to play an important part in the development of these various aspects of anthropological work. This was Sergei M. Shirokogoroff (1887– 1939), a Russian ethnologist of China and Central Asia, who spent most of his life teaching and researching in China. His numerous books, many of which were translated into Chinese, were widely influential. So was his teaching. Shirokogoroff taught a variety of subjects, first at Zhongshan University and subsequently at the Institute of History and Philology at the Academia Sinica. In 1929, he moved to Tsinghua University, where he helped establish the Department of Sociology. Under his inf luence, anthropology was added to the title of the department (if only briefly), and courses on anthropology to the departmental curriculum. Among the students who came under his strong influence was Fei Xiaotong.17 The development of ethnology in China would be given a powerful impetus by Cai Yuanpei, former Chancellor of Beijing University, Minister of Education under the Guomindang, and head of the Academia Sinica when it was established in 1928 by the new Guomindang government. Cai was educated in Germany, where he had come under the influence of evolutionary ethnology and esthetics, both of which may have had something to do with his intellectual attraction to anarchism. While chancellor at Beijing University, he had promoted the study of archeology and anthropology. An article he wrote in late 1926, “On Ethnology” (Shuo minzuxue), followed by his establishment of the Institute of History and Philology and the section on anthropology of the Institute of Social Sciences at the Academia Sinica, have given him something of a status of the founder of ethnology in China. While Cai’s essay was relatively brief, it was significant in its clarification of differences between ethnology and ethnography, as well as between anthropology and ethnology. The essay referred to the importance of historical work in grasping the formation of nationality, but it gave equal stress to on-the-ground investigation.18 With his interest in esthetics, Cai was also inclined to admit into the scope of ethnology all societies, a position which, as I have noted above, would be

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challenged by social scientists in the 1930s who advocated restriction of ethnology to the study of “primitive” societies. Ethnology would advance rapidly in the 1930s, although here it is necessary to make note of some confusion. Much as historians of sociology such as Zheng Hangsheng assimilate anthropology and ethnology to sociology, historians of ethnology such as Wang Jianmin return the favor, including within ethnology all work with ethnographic implications. This is due not to confusion on the part of historians, but rather to the absence of a clear distinction between the fields in the composition of departments and research institutions, in research projects, and in method and theory. There were, nevertheless, significant signs of autonomous development. The Chinese Society of Ethnology (Zhongguo minzuxue hui 中國民 族學會) was established in Nanjing in late 1934. While there were sociologists among the founders (the ubiquitous Sun Benwen), the society’s agenda was clearly directed at ethnological work: “to research Chinese nationalit(ies) and their cultures.” 19 While the journal planned did not materialize due to financial reasons, a collection of research work (Minzuxue yanjiu jikan 民族學研究集刊) was published in 1936 through the Sun Yat-sen Cultural Institute in Shanghai. By 1948, six such collections would be published. Publications connected with the Society included Monumenta Serica, published by the Catholic Furen University (the society seemed to have strong German connections, as some of its meetings were also held in the German/Austrian/Swiss Alumni Society in Nanjing). At the first annual meeting in December 1935, the guest speaker was Radcliffe-Brown, who gave a lecture on “Recent Developments in Social Anthropology.” The society served to bring some coherence to ethnological work. It developed quickly with branches in a number of locations around China. In his history of ethnology in China, Wang Jianmin suggests that, in general, ethnologists (which would include sociologists) in North China, under the influence of Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski, were inclined to functionalism, while those in South China were more historical in approach.20 He further divides ethnological practice into three regional groupings in terms of research interests. Prominent scholars in eastern China included Sun Benwen, Huang Wenshan, Wei Huilin 衛惠林 (1901–), Wu Zelin, Wu Dingliang 吳定良 (1893–1969), etc., who were grouped around Academia Sinica, Central University (later Nanjing University),

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Jinling University in Nanjing (then the national capital), and Daxia, Hujiang, and Jinan universities, as well as the Sun Yat-sen Cultural Institute. Eastern China scholars were mostly interested in the collection of historical materials with emphasis on national culture, folk literature, and language. In the South, Zhongshan University in Guangzhou and Xiamen University in Amoy served as the central institutions, with prominent ethnologists and historians such as Luo Xianglin 羅香林 (1905–1978), Chen Xujing, Yang Chengzhi 楊成志 (1902–1991), Lin Huixiang 林惠祥 (1901–1958), etc. They, too, were historical in approach, with particular interest in archeology, language, and physical anthropology. They also conducted research among minority nationalities in Southwest China. Northern ethnologists, perhaps the most inf luential of all, were grouped around Yanjing, Beijing, Tsinghua, and Furen universities, as well as the archeology department of the Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica, with Yanjing University playing a leading role. They were the best connected to scholars abroad. Among them were China’s most famous social scientists, including Wu Wenzao, Pan Guangdan, Li Anzhai, Fei Xiaotong, Lin Yaohua, etc. Dominated by functionalists, as noted above, this group of scholars was most interested in research in contemporary society. With the Japanese invasion after 1937, many Chinese scholars followed the Guomindang government to Western China. Tragic as it was, the invasion proved to be a boon for ethnologists as they found themselves in areas of China populated by national minorities. From 1937 to 1945, ethnologists conducted extensive research among minority nationalities, which also had the result of equating ethnology firmly with the study of such groups. One institutional product of the move to the West was the establishment in 1941 of the Western Frontier Research Institution, headed by Li Anzhai, which also published its own newsletter on frontier anthropology. A graduate of Yanjing University, Li had gone to the US to study with Alfred Kroeber and Robert Lowie (1883–1957) at UC-Berkeley and subsequently with Edward Sapir (1884–1939) at Yale University. One of the few Chinese scholars to have worked with indigenous people (the Zuni) abroad, Li would emerge over the years as a pioneer of Tibetology in China. The work done by Li and his wife/collaborator, Yu Shiyu 于式玉 (1904–1969), would also form the basis for the Communist Party’s Tibet policy in later years.21

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Following World War II, research in ethnology and anthropology, along with sociology, proliferated. This development was to be cut short with the victory of the Communist Party, and the educational reorganization of 1952, which abolished departments of sociology and anthropology and placed restrictions even on Marxist work. Ethnology would survive because of its political importance, as the management of minority nationalities was, and has been, a major concern of the government. But ethnology, too, would be brought within much narrower theoretical boundaries with the establishment of Stalinist orthodoxy. The social sciences have been resurrected since 1978, and they are presently more integrated with Euro/American social sciences than ever before, not just within the PRC but with the many scholars of Chinese origin living and working abroad. These contemporary developments are too broad in scope and complexity to be included in this introduction. Some aspects will be taken up in the essays below. Here I will take up only one: the politics of sociology and anthropology as expressed in the question of “making the social sciences Chinese” (shehui kexuede Zhongguohua 社會科學的中國化), which first appeared in the 1930s, but has acquired even greater urgency at a time of cultural and educational globalization. Now, as then, the question divides social scientists. Its persistence, however, allows glimpses into the relationship between the social sciences and nationalist anxieties that are as old as the histories of these disciplines.

Indigenizing Sociology and Anthropology: The Politics of the Social Sciences Calls for the indigenization of the social sciences are as old as the introduction of modern Euro/American social science in China in the late 1920s. These calls have been driven by concerns that have changed over time, as have the contexts to which they are responses. While there has been a remarkable consistency over the years in the formal definition of indigenization or, alternatively, of “making the social sciences Chinese” (Zhongguohua 中國化), these terms are by no means transparent in their implications. “Indigenization” (bentuhua 本土化) and Zhongguohua are used interchangeably in the literature on the social sciences. Their translation into a conventional idea of “sinicization” has further burdened the terms with culturalist readings that are the legacies of imperial Chinese historiography. Such readings are quite misleading unless we understand

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“sinicization” in materialist and concretely historical cultural terms, which may also be the most accurate way of understanding them with reference to the imperial past as well. In his detailed two-volume study of the history of Chinese sociology before 1949, Yang Yabin notes that “how to integrate sociological theory with the realities of Chinese society, and make sociology Chinese, was a central task of sociology in the 1930s and 1940s.” 22 This commonplace description of the process of making sociology Chinese—or, for that matter, of indigenizing it—will be recognized readily as an academic version of “making Marxism Chinese,” referring to the ideological appropriation of Marxism for the Chinese Communist Party in the early 1940s that was to be hailed thereafter as the greatest achievement and outstanding characteristic of Mao Zedong Thought. The first calls for “making sociology Chinese” in the 1930s preceded Mao’s pronouncements of the 1940s, and were products, as was Mao’s own ideological work, of giving a national face to modernity that was a general concern of the 1930s, especially in the second half of the decade. Still, it is arguable that Mao’s appropriation of Marxism provides a paradigm—not least in its ideological tensions—for grasping the nativization of all theoretical imports from abroad. There would be a slight shift in terminology following the “opening and reform” of the late seventies under the Deng Xiaoping leadership that succeeded revolutionary Maoism. But the problems of modernity made Chinese continues to bear tensions and contradictions that have refused to disappear with the change in course in Chinese politics—or the academic disciplines. The ambiguities built into the Chinese appropriation of Marxism are also visible in the uses of the paradigm with reference to the social sciences. It has not always been clear if making Marxism Chinese simply meant attentiveness to the realities of Chinese society without further implications for theory, as Mao’s own usage sometimes suggested; a need to revise theory itself in accordance with native social and cultural demands to produce a “Chinese” theory; or an ongoing dialectic between Marxism as universal theory and particular Chinese understandings of it. I have suggested elsewhere that the difficulties presented by making Marxism Chinese may account for Mao’s preoccupation with contradictions and the primacy he gave to practice in addressing questions that did not lend themselves to resolution at the level of theory.23 These ambiguities are also important to understanding the conflicting interpretations of Marxism over the years in accordance with changing political goals.

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Recognition of such contradictions may also be necessary to grasp difficulties that attend efforts to nativize the social sciences. While integrating social theory with the realities of Chinese society has remained the goal of making the social sciences Chinese, what this may entail remains problematic to this day. It has also assumed different dimensions at different times. Historians of the social sciences have applied the paradigm to the social sciences from their origins in the twentieth century. It seems, however, that it was only in the 1940s, following the Maoist interpretation of Marxism, that social scientists began to rephrase concerns with domesticating the social sciences in terms of this new paradigm. The question of how to reconcile the demands of imported theory with the empirical evidence of Chinese society was a problem for Marxist social scientists from the late 1920s, as they sought in social analysis solutions to the difficulties of socialist revolution in a society that theoretically was lacking in the preconditions for such a revolution. Political loyalties precluded the questioning of the claims of Marxist theory to universal validity. The result was the tailoring of evidence to fit the demands of theory, which merely produced fruitless conflicts between competing universalisms. While Marxist debates over the nature of Chinese society and its past produced the first social histories of China, they failed to reconcile the contradiction between history and theory, which in the end would be resolved not theoretically but by political fiat.24 For liberal social scientists, the question of the indigenization of sociology appeared first in the 1930s and 1940s, coinciding with the professionalization of the social sciences as the first generation of social scientists returned from abroad (mostly the United States) to lead newly established departments in Chinese universities. Their primary concern was the domestication of the new social sciences by providing them with a Chinese content. This involved research into Chinese society to explore how issues in the social sciences appeared within China’s particular circumstances, as well as the production of Chinese materials for research and teaching that would replace the foreign texts, drawn from research in Europe and North America, that initially had provided the material for the social sciences, taught for the most part by foreign scholars. In its sixth annual meeting in January 1937, the Chinese Sociological Association (Zhongguo shehuixue she 中國社會學社) called for the “establishment of a Chinese sociology” (Zhongguo shehuixue zhi jianshe 中國社會學之建 設) through a program of community studies. Such studies were already

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under way in the 1930s; as a major concern of contemporary sociology in the United States, community studies had been part of the education of this generation of sociologists. This meeting attached them to the development of “Chinese” sociology. Based on the concrete realities of everyday life, community studies were deemed to be the ideal vehicle for grounding sociology in Chinese soil. What this implied for sociological theory is not very clear as may be gleaned from the writings of contemporary sociologists such as Sun Benwen, whose views on the domestication of sociology are often cited by historians. In his own work as well as in more programmatic writings, Sun was a foremost exponent of bringing Chinese materials into sociological work and teaching. This entailed compilation of material on Chinese social theory and ideals, detailed research in urban and rural China, and the production of texts and reference works with Chinese content. While Sun endowed sociology with an important political and cultural function in serving national needs, he was careful to distinguish socialism and sociology and to reject the former for its “subjectivity.” Sun’s distinction may be read as an effort by a professional sociologist to rescue sociology from its subjection to politics. The function he assigned to sociology in serving national needs was hardly free of politics, however, and subjectivity was also at work in bringing into sociology Chinese social ideals. How these ideals were to be articulated to sociology as a “science” remained an open question in his work, as well as the works of other contemporaries.25 These questions, and to a large extent the disciplines they concerned, were sidelined for several decades after 1949. When the question of the social sciences re-emerged in the late 1970s and early 1980s, it was social scientists from Taiwan, Hong Kong and the United States who played the leading role, even though the “re-opening” of China provided the immediate context. Initiated by intellectuals in Taiwan around 1980, this new round in efforts to make sociology Chinese brought together sociologists from Hong Kong, Singapore, The People’s Republic of China and the United States. Rather than establish a “Chinese” sociology, the participants sought for the most part to bring a Chinese voice into sociological theory.26 The circumstances under which the discussions were conducted were vastly different than those of the 1930s and 1940s. By the late 1970s, sociology and anthropology in the United States and Europe had undergone

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significant transformations. The critique of the complicity of professional sociology and anthropology in colonial and neo-colonial ventures was informed by a new interest in post-Stalinist Marxism, that issued in a turn to political economy in new theoretical departures represented most importantly by world-system analysis and dependency theory (itself a product of Latin American social scientists), as well as attention to questions of social oppression that included, in addition to class relations, issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and indigenous peoples. At the same time, important changes had taken place in the immediate circumstances of Chinese sociologists. The discussions coincided with increased attention globally to the success of East Asian societies in the global capitalist economy. This was reflected in the appearance of the Asia Pacific idea, as well as a recognition that these societies might be empowered by social dynamics and cultural characteristics that gave them an edge even over the earlier centers of capital. The result was a renewed interest among Chinese and non-Chinese analysts alike in social practices ranging from kinship to guanxi networks, and in the values that informed them. Confucianism turned almost overnight from an explanation of Chinese backwardness to the source of Chinese success. At the same time, however, the existence of multiple Chinese societies in Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the People’s Republic of China, not to speak of Overseas Chinese around the world, presented new challenges to making sociology “Chinese,” as these societies had developed along different trajectories for the past three decades, if not longer. Rather than revolutionary politics, these debates were now driven by a new identity politics that also complicated efforts to indigenize the social sciences. The relationship between history, culture, and theory assumed even greater complexity. The sociologists involved themselves hailed from a multiplicity of locations and participated in theoretical discussions not only in the periphery, as the Taiwan sociologist Xiao Xinhuang described sociology in Taiwan, but also at the center. Moreover, they also differed in the demands of their immediate context. This was especially the case with sociologists in Taiwan who already faced pressures from the democratization of Taiwanese society and the emergence of political and social movements in the cause of Taiwanization. They were intensely aware as professionals of the universal demands of theory, and equally sensitive to the problems of encompassing diverse social and cultural realities in one grand theory.27

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According to Lin Nan, whose essay led the volume of US sociologists’ contributions to the discussion, the “sinicization of sociology” was intended “to blend (rongna 容納) Chinese social and cultural characteristics and national character into sociology.”28 It was different from the creation of a “Chinese sociology,” with scholarly and professional goals, or the application of sociology to Chinese society. The level of sinicization was to be determined “by the extent to which sociology acquired Chinese social and cultural characteristics and a Chinese national character.” But “sinicization was an undertaking that transcended regional and national boundaries; social and cultural characteristics and national character entailed structures, relations between the group and individual, and different layers in society, which could all be blended into theory and method.” 29 As examples of Chinese social and cultural characteristics that sinicization might entail, Lin specified family and kinship relations, centralized power which affected relations of hierarchy at all levels, the value systems and practices that bolstered the system, the consequences for society of a unified script, factors involved in China’s development in an East Asian context that might offer different views on development than, say, those found in world-system analysis. Bringing forth new kinds of evidence in these areas, and the reformulation on that basis of theory, might, according to Lin, effect a theoretical revolution that could perhaps resolve the “paradigm crisis” in sociology. Following Thomas Kuhn, he suggested that this required a community of scholars working to this end, which was an opportunity for Chinese scholars. While Lin’s discussion stressed structural factors, other contributors to the volume, especially those working in specific areas such as social psychology, alienation, women’s sociology, etc. placed greater emphasis on everyday values that needed to be brought into the process of “sinicization.” Taiwanese sociologists in particular, according to Xiao, who conducted surveys among them, thought it was necessary to bring into consideration Chinese ethical values, as well as the concepts in which those values were imbedded: the “transmission of the Dao” (daotong 道統), humaneness (ren 仁), Heaven (tian 天), propriety (li 禮), yinyang 陰陽, etc.30 In either case, however, whether dealing with structures or cultural values, scholars involved in the discussion for the most part agreed that the goal of “sinicization” was not to divide Chinese sociology from the world but to enrich sociology world-wide. According to Xiao’s survey, scholars in Taiwan were divided almost evenly on the question of whether

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or not it was desirable to create a national sociology.31 Hong Kong and Singapore sociologists for the most part were not interested at all in the question of “sinicization.” US scholars, on the other hand, viewed “sinicization” as a form of “indigenization” (bentuhua), which was little more than a means in the long run to “globalization” (quanqiuhua 全球化). The most adamant about “sinicization” were scholars from the People’s Republic, who displayed a chauvinistic (shawenzhuyi 沙文主義) attitude even toward their Chinese compatriots in their affirmation of Chinese characteristics.32 Again, “sinicization” covered a broad ground: from the transformation of Chinese society through theory, to the outright rejection of national differences in theory (which perceived difference only as a matter of the circumstances to which theory was applied), to the opportunistic uses of theory for national ends (yang wei zhong yong 洋為中用, making the foreign serve the Chinese) at the hand of mainland scholars, who saw no further cultural significance in theory, to the conviction especially of US sociologists that theoretical formulations to emerge from “sinicization” would produce a paradigm revolution in sociology. With the possible exception of mainland scholars, “sinicization” meant to Chinese sociologists not the capturing of sociology in a Chinese national space, but bringing into sociology Chinese voices, sentiments, and the social and cultural characteristics of Chinese society in order to create a more cosmopolitan and globalized sociology; to use a word that has become popular since then, a multicultural and multiculturalist sociology. They were anti-Eurocentric—they knew that sociology bore upon it the stamp of its origins in nineteenth-century industrial Europe—but their specific focus was on the contemporary hegemony of US sociology, which provoked national claims on sociology in Europe as well. Even in the case of PRC sociologists with their “chauvinism,” we need to recall that the national characteristics they claimed also included as a formative moment the legacy of the “sinicization of Marxism.” There were other Chinese sociologists, referred to by Xiao, who may have perceived a possible contradiction between “sinicization” and the universal claims of sociology, but this was largely muted—especially for US sociologists, who referred to themselves as border sociologists, who were outsiders as such to the workings of sociology in the PRC and Taiwan, and whose identification was primarily with their professional bases in the US. The contradictions presented by “sinicization,” ironically, arose more from a conf lict between concretely Chinese and broadly universalist

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theory, but rather from the problems Chinese societies presented to the project of “indigenization.” The differences in historical context between this discussion and those of the 1930s and 1940s are nowhere more evident than in the meaning of “Chineseness.” The different implications of indigenization (in addition to Zhongguohua, quyuhua 區域化, or regionalization, and difanghua 地方化, or localization, all of which are encountered in the discussions) could hardly be contained in one conception of a Chinese nation or culture shared by all the participants. 33 Strangely enough, a general treatment of the problems of “sinicization,” such as that offered by Lin Nan, did not even refer to the question, possibly because his self-image as an “outsider” made him reluctant to take up an issue of great sensitivity. It was brought up by Xiao Xinhuang, who referred in his concluding essay to “four Chinas,” differences among which needed to be respected. 34 The question came up also in Xiao’s portrayal of sociology in Taiwan, an essay on national minorities in China addressing issues of assimilation, and in the paper on women’s sociology, referred to above, where the author suggested that differences between the PRC, Hong Kong, and Taiwan provided an opportunity for comparing women’s status in Chinese societies with different economic systems.35 The only one to meet it head on was a discussion of alienation by Ma Liqin. What he had to say is worth quoting at some length: In determining the objectives of research, we must use a definition of “China” that is open-minded and broad. What is the “China” in the term Zhongguohua? The China here needs to be taken as China in a broad sense, including Taiwan, the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and all the societies of Chinese overseas. This broad understanding of China has great significance for research into alienation. First, [the idea of] China must take as its main assumption Chinese, and Chinese cultural life; so that wherever there are Chinese and Chinese culture, there is Chinese society, and wherever there is Chinese society, there is China. This way, we are not limited by politics and its territorialities ... Secondly, giving priority to Chinese society over the state in defining China, we have [an idea of China] that is richer in its dynamism, transformations, and variety.36

Ma concluded his essay by observing that to make China more dynamic and democratic, it might be better to help Chinese understand the workings of society, in other words to emphasize “the sociologization of China” (Zhongguo shehuixuehua 中國社會學化).37 This could be read, at a political level, as a call for the recognition of equal status in “Chineseness” to a variety of Chinese societies. Its conceptual and methodological

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implications were equally significant, as indigenization now implied indigenization in different locations of Chinese. To the juxtaposition between a Euro/American sociology with its universalist claims and Chinese particularities was now added still another layer that juxtaposed a Chinese universalism versus the particularities of different Chinese societies. In the case of Taiwan, this would turn within the decade to the substitution of Taiwanization for sinicization.38 This discussion, too was inconclusive where issues of theory are concerned. The participants were much more explicit about bringing Chinese voices into theory, but without challenging the possibility of a universal theory. If there is any conclusion to be drawn with respect to theory, it is that theory could achieve greater universality by incorporating different voices.39 Ultimately, the issue was to bring Chinese differences into theory to enrich theory, rather than to create a separate Chinese theory that would lead to fragmentation and preclude the possibility of theory except at the most limited local level. Efforts to make social science Chinese continue to be a major preoccupation of Chinese social scientists. Since the 1990s, these have taken another turn due to the circumstances of the social sciences in China and abroad. Changes in China are marked by greater openness and pluralism. Interestingly, much the same may be said for the social sciences in Europe and North America, where questioning the global hegemony of Eurocentric social science has acquired the status of new fashion.40 Most interesting, however, may be the global situation. As global modernity has led to conflicting claims on modernity, modernity’s ways of knowing have come under increased questioning. The present witnesses ethnic, national, and civilizational, as well as class and gender, claims on knowledge. On occasion, challenges to epistemological hegemony extend beyond the social to the natural sciences.41 Epistemological universalism, ironically, has become a casualty of the globalization of modernity. The social sciences as they have developed over the last century and a half from their European origins are clearly at risk. It does not follow, however, that indigenizing the social sciences has become any easier. In the case of China, the discussions have become more prolific and self-conscious than ever before. It is impossible here to discuss the many turns they have taken, nor am I qualified to do so. But the continuing difficulties may be illustrated by an analysis of the problem in a recent text on the history of Chinese sociology that is worth quoting at some

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length because of the many issues it touches upon. Authored by a team under the leadership of the distinguished sociologist Zheng Hangsheng of People’s University, the text was published in English as well as Chinese. This text introduces a further layer of difficulty into the discourse by equating “sociology with Chinese characteristics” (you Zhongguo tesede shehuixue 有中國特色的社會學) and “making sociology Chinese” (shehuixue Zhongguohua 社會學中國化), especially in the English version, which substitutes “sociology with Chinese characteristics” where “making sociology Chinese” is used—with quotation marks—in the Chinese text. I quote from the English version, which corresponds closely to the Chinese text, with slight amendments for stylistic reasons: Essentially speaking, indigenization of Chinese sociology requires sociologists to describe and explain the social realities in China in a correct way and anticipate the prospect of social development in order to guide social development. The sign of indigenization is the development of sociological theories and methods with Chinese characteristics.... What is most important is to answer two questions. What is our guiding ideology and what do Chinese characteristics mean? The answer to the first question is that Chinese sociology must stick to the guidance of Marxism, Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, and Deng Xiaoping Theory, apprehending their standpoint, outlook, and methods in the observation of social life on the one hand, and having a good command of their theories about certain basic matters of Chinese society on the other. Any neglect of this will lead to the loss of our bearings in indigenizing sociology and to failure in solving the problem. What do Chinese characteristics mean then? It means that Chinese sociology must first have a foothold in Chinese social practice so as to investigate, study, and conclude. At the same time, Chinese sociology should engage in deep study of the history of Chinese social ideology to derive nourishment from the wealth of social ideological data and centuries old valuable tradition.... Indigenization is not anti-foreign ... it includes using foreign, particularly Western, sociology for reference, developing what is healthy and discarding what is not.42

The authors go on to stress that internationalization of Chinese sociology is of equal importance to indigenization. Internationalization includes, First, Chinese sociology is one of the branches of world sociology, with the ability and position that are required in the dialogue with international sociological academia so that Chinese sociology can be recognized. Secondly,

Zhongguohua: Worlding China · 25 Chinese sociologists should be able to expound Chinese society and construct the theory of Chinese sociology from the high plane of the world as well as the whole of humanity.... In the 21st century, both indigenization and internationalization will speed up, which will be an inevitable consequence of world trends toward integration and of China’s integration with the world.43

The explicitly political understanding of “indigenization” in this statement may not be to the liking of many social scientists in China who for the last three decades have made strenuous efforts to escape from politics in response to earlier political domination of intellectual life. The statement here clearly places indigenization within a socialist political program as defined by Deng Xiaoping. Were it to be updated to the present, it would presumably add “harmonious society” to its program as that now constitutes the national vision as defined by still a new generation of leadership.44 If changing visions may create a predicament for social scientists, that is not a problem in and of itself; after all, changing social forces and their political demands have been responsible for transformations in social science practice, more often than not with beneficial results, and it would be silly to pretend that the needs of the state and of governance does not play a part in the social sciences elsewhere. The statement is an important reminder that politics remains an issue in the practice of the social sciences, as well as in the problematic of indigenization. Professionalization does not necessarily take politics out of their practice, as many Chinese social scientists seem to pretend these days, following their counterparts in the US and Europe. The question is not whether there is a relationship between politics and the social sciences, but what manner of relationship it is, and whether or not such a relationship allows room for professional autonomy. The statement above clearly does, which represents a radical change from the immediate past. Most relevant here is what the statement may have to tell us about the indigenization of the social sciences, its temporal and spatial, historical and cultural dimensions. One of the most remarkable things (by no means uncommon in Chinese writings) is the status of Marxism as an integral part of the guiding ideology, already a fundamental part of a “Chineseness” to which the social sciences are to be indigenized.45 The implication here is that “Chineseness” itself is a historical category, formed out of the accretion of characteristics of a variety of origins. For the same reason, indigenization means incorporation in a historically

26 · Arif Dirlik

changing cultural space with open boundaries, rather than capture in a bounded Chinese cultural space, as is often implied in culturalist uses of the term “sinicization”: China and Chineseness themselves are subject to change as they indigenize cultural elements from abroad. In this case, moreover, the statement does not stop at the importation of cultural elements, but mentions also going out into the world (using a term that has become quite popular in recent years, zouxiang shijie 走向世界). Hence the use of the metaphor of “dialogue” as part of a process that involves in equal measure both indigenization and internationalization. This is not to accept uncritically the optimism that guides this statement, which ignores the power relationships involved in such exchanges; says little on how Marxist ideals (already included in the native legacy) might be reconciled to “centuries-old traditions” that they were intended to overthrow and transform; ignores divisions among Chinese social scientists who are by no means a homogeneous group culturally and professionally; is silent on internal inequalities, which are of special concern to anthropologists dealing with Han/minority issues;46 and is quite “Euro/ Sinocentric in its obliviousness to knowledge systems other than those of China and the West, which is a problem of Chinese thought in general. The statement also ignores serious differences between “nationalization” (as in Zhongguohua) and indigenization (bentuhua), which, taken concretely, refers not just to the national level but also to layers of local levels, as well as internal differences of various kinds. Nevertheless, at least at the level it takes up, the statement points to an important characteristic in the understanding of indigenization and nationalization in all the discussions mentioned above: that these terms have pointed to an insistence that the material and cultural realities of Chinese society be understood for what they are, as realities of their own rather than as poor copies of models imported from elsewhere. In all cases, there have also been demands for the recognition of Chinese voices, as well as an accounting for Chinese realities in any social science with universal claims (including Marxism). Zheng and his colleagues use the metaphor of “dialogue” in the interactions they envisage. Indigenization or nationalization of the social sciences since the 1930s have indeed been conceived above all as a “dialogic” relationship: not merely applying social science to China, or assimilating social science to an enclosed Chinese cultural space, but as an ongoing dialogue—maybe even a dialectic.

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Zhongguohua: A Critical Appraisal A critical appraisal is necessary of two dimensions of the problematic of nationalization (Zhongguohua) and indigenization, and the questions they raise. The one pertains to theoretical questions, the other to the question of difference, which motivates the effort in the first place. While the themes have varied over the years, there is a remarkable persistence of the issues involved. This itself may suggest prima facie the difficulties involved in resolving the problems thrown up by nationalization/ indigenization. The first sense of Zhongguohua, which appeared most urgently in the 1930s and 1940s but is by no means restricted to that period, has been the necessity of bringing the social realities and problems of Chinese society into social science work. There could hardly be any question about the necessity of such effort, nor is there anything particularly “Chinese” or national about it, as it should be a prerequisite of any social science with pretensions to universalism. This does not mean that such demands are superfluous or trivial, because they point to a real problem that is a major cause of theoretical and methodological ferment in the social sciences in our day. There is hardly any question that social scientists have failed to live up to their professions of ideological and cultural openness more often than we might wish. It is arguable that not only the theoretical derivations but the very premises of the social sciences have been constituted by the hegemonic assumptions about the world of Euro/Americancentered social scientists who have not hesitated to couch in universal terms parochial generalizations drawn from their own experience and ideals.47 On the other hand, they have been able to sustain this hegemony because social scientists from other societies, products of imported systems of knowledge and mostly trained in Euro/American institutions, more often than not have internalized these very same assumptions. Marxist historians in China in the 1920s and 1930s did not hesitate to read Chinese society in terms of supposedly universal schema of development. The very social scientists who advocated Chinese content and voices in the social sciences nevertheless failed to question the social and cultural premises of those social sciences, their claims to scientific validity, or their promise of universal truth. It remains unclear to this day whether the incorporation of “Chinese characteristics” into the social sciences is intended to enrich or to transform the disciplinary configurations and the theoretical structures of the

28 · Arif Dirlik

social sciences. The continued insistence on the importance of “Marxism with Chinese characteristics” as a guiding principle in the indigenization of sociology elides the question that Marxist sociology in China and elsewhere has been at odds with mainstream (formerly “bourgeois”) sociology, and is silent on the question of how a reconciliation is to be effected under contemporary circumstances, when basic Marxist concepts such as class have disappeared from sociological analysis almost everywhere, including China. Even when Chinese social scientists have voiced demands about bringing Chinese social and political ideals into the social sciences, they have failed more often than not to face the question of whether or not the social sciences as they have been constituted since the 19th century can survive reconstitution by the values of a preindustrial society. What is not clear in either case is whether indigenization is to issue merely in a local version of a global sociology, or whether global sociology is to be transformed in the process. If it is the latter that is the goal, it seems to me that it is necessary for Chinese social scientists to cultivate a more global vision that transcends national concerns and to articulate Chinese concerns not just to Euro/American social sciences, but also to the concerns of other societies marginalized by modern Euro/ American hegemony. The East/West or Chinese/Western binarisms that infuse discussions of the problem of indigenization obstruct such a global vision and in many ways perpetuate the Eurocentric biases of the social sciences. Such discussions seem to be guided more by considerations of power than by confrontation of basic problems in the so-called globalization of the social sciences. This leads me to the second dimension of the problem, the question of difference, and the many layers of difference that call for attention. This question was raised most directly in the discussions of the 1980s, possibly because they are most readily evident from the peripheries not just of Euro/American but also of Chinese societies. But they are also quite pertinent to the controversies in our day. What was most evident was the problematic nature of the whole idea of indigenization/nationalization. These clearly refer to different processes, and it is only a hegemonic subordination of the indigenous to the national that justifies their equation. “Indigenization” (bentuhua) is a term that refers to concrete grounding in place in both social and cultural terms, whereas “nationalization” (in this case “Zhongguohua”) refers to a more abstractly conceived space defined by the state, which contains within its commonalities many significant differences.48 The concept of

Zhongguohua: Worlding China · 29

Zhongguo is complicated further by the existence of a multiplicity of Chinese societies as well as of overseas Chinese populations. These societies may share certain characteristics, but they also differ significantly due to their historical trajectories.49 Differences among these various Chinese societies also underline local differences within them (in the case of mainland China, not just differences between nationalities, but regional and local differences as well). Indigenization, properly speaking, should be distinguished from “Zhongguohua” because it refers to a different level off difference than the nation, which may be “local” vis-àvis the global but is itself an abstraction vis-à-vis the concretely placebased. This also suggests that the relationship between indigenization/ nationalization is a contradictory relationship, if only in the sense of “the unity of opposites.” So is the relationship of the national to a larger global space of Chineseness marked by many differences; the latter is a vague amalgam of social, cultural, and phenotypical characteristics, but possibly owes its existence more than anything to discursive constructions of Chineseness. If Chineseness is a historical construct, than making anything Chinese is an unstable idea and may depend above all on practices that differ from one location to another. This is also indicated by the second difference I will take up here that pertains to the sociology of intellectuals and academic institutions. Chinese intellectuals, including professional academics, belong to a multiplicity of discursive communities and participate differently in professional activities. From the origins of professional social science in the 1920s to the present (except for the hiatus of the Cultural Revolution years), Chinese social scientists have also been parts of communities of social sciences that are international in scope. So have the institutions of social science, including universities. This situation was complicated with the appearance of different Chinese societies since the 1950s and has acquired further complexity with the large-scale migration of Chinese scholars abroad since the 1980s. If these scholars all believe in the necessity of “indigenizing” the social sciences, which is very doubtful, it is almost certain that they understand its desirability, processes, and outcomes differently. Differences between Chinese and Euro/American social science are not just differences between an inside and an outside, but differences that are increasingly internal to Chinese academia itself. These internal differences are likely to become sharper as Chinese society becomes ever more deeply involved in global capitalism, and displaced onto another plane than the national. It is important for us to

30 · Arif Dirlik

remember that the social sciences are not just products of Euro/American social and cultural circumstances, but intellectual products of industrial capitalism and its subsequent unfolding. They derive their relevance at least in part from their function in capitalist society. Their increased relevance in contemporary China, too, must be seen in terms of the development of Chinese society. Whether we speak of the problems of Chinese society, its cultural characteristics, or tendencies in its professional work, it is less and less productive to draw sharp boundaries between Chinese society and the world at large. If this is indeed the case, as many Chinese scholars also suggest, then the question of indigenization may be a distraction from the more important political questions raised by structural transformations—regional, ethnic, or social—in Chinese society. Making the social sciences Chinese has carried different meanings to different social scientists over the years: ranging from bringing Chinese voices into the social sciences to responding to the particularities of Chinese society within the social sciences, to the shaping of the social sciences by Chinese values. This last question, which may have the greatest significance for the theoretical structure and the ultimate goals of the social sciences, is itself quite complicated, as it refers to inherited values from the past as well as the values of contemporary Chinese societies that are a product at once of past legacies and modern struggles against internal and external injustices and inequalities. Whether Chinese social scientists look to the past, the present, or the future in the determination of Chinese values has significant consequences for the theory and practice of the social sciences. Indeed, contemporary calls for the nationalization of the social sciences, which made sense in the 1930s and 1940s, presently seem unduly defensive and retrogressive. Present-day China is no longer an object of imperialist hegemony, but a major player on the global scene. As Chinese society becomes ever more deeply entangled in contemporary global capitalism, it also experiences the contradictions of capitalism not as an external force but as the very constituents of its social and political structure. Conversely, Chinese political and economic power, with all its contradictions, is global in its reach and effects. It is possible to fall back upon past legacies in the definition of Chinese values and identities against external hegemonies, which has been a driving force in arguments for a Chinese social science. It is important to remember, however, that these hegemonies appear differently as China itself becomes part of a

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global structure of power. Under contemporary circumstances, indigenization or internationalization of the social sciences requires more than just an affirmation of a Chinese identity in the search for a Chinese voice or presence in the social sciences. It goes without saying that social scientists in China (and elsewhere) must be attentive to the particularities of their societies. But those particularities increasingly call for close attention to their global context and effects. Nationalizing the social sciences may soothe nationalistic anxieties, but unless China is to be viewed as a closed system, which is less feasible than ever before, efforts to make the social sciences Chinese make sense only if they are accompanied by simultaneous efforts at their globalization—not just with reference to “the West,” but with reference to societies globally. Any such effort needs to confront most urgently choices between compliance in the hegemonic legacies of the social sciences with their roots in the capitalist reorganization of society, albeit with “Chinese characteristics,” or drawing upon past legacies and the modern revolutionary experience in a global search for remaking the social sciences that is driven by commitment to social justice and democracy—at home and abroad.50 This search, too, is a legacy of the modern social sciences. While the particular dynamics of Chinese societies within an East Asian context played an important part in calls for indigenization, the phenomenon itself is not just Chinese or East Asian. The cultural commonality produced by the globalization of capital ironically has been accompanied by cultural fragmentation as populations around the world have seemingly discovered in cultural nationalism a means for the preservation and assertion of ethnic, national, or civilizational identities that are threatened by forces of economic and political globalization. The contradictory forces of hegemonic universalism and counter-hegemonic particularism are fundamental to the dynamics of what I have described elsewhere as global modernity, or modernity globalized. The cultural nationalist effort to revitalize traditions as markers of identity, moreover, are no longer simply defensive responses to a Euro-centered hegemonic universalism but are empowered by success in modernity—capitalist modernity— which finds expression in claims to “alternative modernities.” While global modernity represents a negation of an earlier period of Eurocentered modernity, however, it is still haunted by the cultural legacies of Eurocentrism, which continue to claim universal validity as integral constituents of the political economy of capitalism. The redistribution of power that marks global modernity plays out on a terrain that has been

32 · Arif Dirlik

shaped by capitalism, producing the contradictions that are crucial to grasping pervasive cultural fragmentation in the midst of economic and political globalization. This contradiction extends to epistemological questions as well, as our ways of knowing are very much entangled in the cultural contradictions of the age.51 The problem, therefore, is not just a Chinese problem but rather the relationship of the social sciences to political power more generally. The question has been raised once again in US anthropology in government efforts to deploy anthropology in the service of state policy, as in Afghanistan. What may be most crucial presently is greater attention to the legacy of the entanglement of the social sciences in political power, albeit with greater attentiveness to forms of knowledge, Chinese and otherwise, that have been marginalized and erased by a hegemonic social science.

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Notes 1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

The historical account offered below has been culled from available secondary literature in English and Chinese. Especially pertinent are R. Dav id A rkush, Fei Xiaotong and Sociology in Re volutionary China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981); Chang Hao, Liang Ch’ich’ao and Intellectual Transition in China, 1890–1907 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971); Yung-chen Chiang, Social Engineering and the Social Sciences in China, 1919–1949 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Arif Dirlik, Revolution and History: The Origins of Marxist Historiography in China, 1919–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Gregory Eliyu Guldin, The Saga of Anthropology in China: From Malinowski to Moscow to Mao (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1994); Nick Knight, Li Da and Marxist Philosophy in China (Oxford: Perseus Books, 1998); Nick Knight, Marxist Philosophy in China: From Qu Qiubai to Mao Zedong, 1923–1945 (Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer Books, 2005); James R. Pusey, China and Charles Darwin (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983); Benjamin I. Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964); Y. C. Wang, Chinese Intellectuals and the West, 1872–1949 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1966); Philip West, Yenching University and Sino-Western Relations, 1910–1952 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976); Siu-lun Wong, Sociology and Socialism in Contemporary China (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979); Zheng Hang-sheng (Hangsheng) 鄭杭生 et al., A History of Chinese Sociology (Newly Compiled) (Beijing: China Renmin University Press, 2003) (English version of Zhongguo shehuixue shi xinbian 中國社會學史新編 [Beijing: Higher Education Press, 2000]); Han Minghan 韓明謨, Zhongguo shehuixue shi 中國社會學史 [History of Chinese sociology] (Tianjin: Tianjin Renmin Press, 1987); Wang Jianmin 王建民 , Zhongguo minzuxue shi 中國民族學史 [The History of Ethnology in China], 2 vols. (Kunming: Yunnan Educational Press, 1997); Yang Yabin 楊雅彬, Jindai Zhongguo shehuixue 近代中國社會學 [Modern Chinese sociology], 2 vols. (Beijing: Chinese Social Sciences Press, 2001). The discussion below will not be footnoted unless direct reference is made to any one of these works. In the discussion below, dates are provided where available for scholars involved in the development of sociology and anthropology in China. Wong Siu-lun, Sociology and Socialism, p. 10. Zheng Hang-sheng et al., A History of Chinese Sociology, p. 95. Wong Siu-lun, Sociology and Socialism, p. 11. Zheng Hang-sheng et al., A History of Chinese Sociology, pp. 125–130. Ibid., p. 205; Han Minghan, Zhongguo shehuixue shi, p. 101. Yang Yabin, Jindai Zhongguo shehuixue, Vol.2, p. 959. Ibid., Vol. 2, pp. 511–577 and pp. 742–774.

34 · Arif Dirlik 10 11 12 13 14

15 16

17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24 25 26

Ibid., pp. 816–853, for Lei Jieqiong. Zheng Hangsheng et al., Zhongguo shehuixue shi xin bian, p. 130. Yung-chen Chiang, Introduction to Social Engineering and the Social Sciences in China, pp. 1–22. Zheng Hang-sheng et al., A History of Chinese Sociology, p. 197. This was the case, for example, at Duke University, when this author joined the faculty in 1971. It was only in the mid-seventies that the Department of Anthropology was established as a separate department. The first anthropology department in the US was established by Franz Boas in Columbia University in 1896. A department was established in UC-Berkeley in 1901. The University of Chicago Department of Anthropology was not established until 1930, when anthropologists separated from the Department of Sociology. Discussed in Wang Jianmin, Zhongguo minzuxue shi, Vol. 1, pp. 286–287. Ibid., pp. 132–137. For a recent discussion of the relationship between sociology and ethnology, see, Wang Mingming, “The War Between Ethnology and Sociology and Its End: Notes and Remarks from a Chinese Anthropologist,” Paper presented at the conference, “Rethinking Ethnology: A Working Conference Sponsored by The Journal of Material Culture,” UCL (University College London), June 2009. I am grateful to Prof. Wang for sharing this paper with me. Gregory Guldin, The Saga of Anthropology in China, pp. 44–45. Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培, “Shuo minzuxue” 說民族學 [On ethnology], Yiban 一般 [In general] 1.12 (1926). Wang Jianmin, Zhongguo minzuxue shi, Vol. 1, p. 186. Ibid., pp. 139–144 and 162–166, for the discussion below. Owen Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontiers of China (Boston: Beacon Press, 1951), pp. xxiv–xxv. Yang Yabin, Jindai Zhongguo shehuixue, Vol. 2, p. 665. Arif Dirlik, “Theory, History, Culture: Cultural Identity and the Politics of Theory in Twentieth Century China,” Development and Society 29.2 (December 2000), pp. 73–104. For these debates, see Arif Dirlik, Revolution and History: Origins of Marxist Historiography in China, 1919–1937. For a discussion of Sun’s ideas, with a critique, see Zheng Hang-sheng et al., A History of Chinese Sociology, pp. 203–207. According to the accounts of this “movement,” “sinicization” was already in the air in Taiwan in the late seventies, but things really got under way with a conference in 1980 organized by the Institute of Ethnology of the Academia Sinica, “Shehui yu xingwei kexuede Zhongguohua” 社會與行為科學中國化 [The sinicization of social and behavioral sciences]. It was followed up by a conference at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1983, “Xiandaihua yu Zhongguo wenhua” 現代化與中國文化 [Modernization and Chinese culture], which included Chinese scholars from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and

Zhongguohua: Worlding China · 35

27

28

the People’s Republic. While the conference was broader in scope, “sinicization” apparently became a hot topic of discussion. The concern reached the United States the same year, when at the Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies in Tempe, Arizona, a round-table discussion was held on the subject of “Sinicization of Sociology: A Collective Portrait of Some American-Trained Chinese Sociologists.” The Institute of Ethnology Conference issued a volume, Shehui ji xingwei kexue yanjiude Zhongguohua 社會及行為科學研究的中國化 [Sinicization of research in social and behavioral sciences], edited by Yang Guoshu 楊國樞 and Wen Chongyi 文崇一 (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan minzuxue yanjiusuo, 1982). American sociologists published their own volume, Shehuixue Zhongguohua 社會學中國化 [Siniciation of sociology] (hereafter, SHXZGH), edited by Cai Yongmei 蔡勇 美 and Xiao Xinhuang 蕭新煌 (Taipei: Juliu tushu gongsi, 1986). that offered Chinese-American sociologists’ take on the issues involved. Cai Yongmei’s introduction to the latter volume gives a personal account of these conferences and publications. For similar concerns for “indigenizing” sociology in Korea, see, Park Myoung-Kyu and Chang Kyung-Sup, “Sociology Between Western Theory and Korean Reality: Accommodation, Tension and a Search for Alternatives,” International Sociology 14.2 (June 1999), pp. 139–156. Bringing a Chinese voice into scholarship has been a concern in recent years in many disciplines, most prominently in history. The concern in the latter case, however, has been almost exclusively with “historiographical traditions” of high culture. It follows civilizational divides, reminiscent of Orientalist mappings of the world. Orientalism may be a misnomer here or, conversely, be particularly pertinent, because Chinese historians do the same. See, for example, a report on a conference on the crisis of history, “Shixue wang nali zou?” 史學往哪裡走？ [Whither history?], in Jindai Zhongguo 近代中國 (30 April 1989), pp. 1–14, in which the distinguished historian from Hong Kong, Du Weiyun 杜維運, was the keynote speaker. The speech is devoted exclusively to the accomplishments of historical high culture in China and how its ideals might be reconciled to “Western” historiography. This question has dominated historiographical discussions at conferences in which I have been a participant. It avoids, needless to say, the changes experienced by Chinese populations everywhere. Sociologists, on the other hand, like anthropologists, draw attention to everyday experience in their dealings with the confrontation between theory and culture—which incidentally may have something to say about the classification of disciplines into nomothetic and idiographic categories. The intrusion of disciplines into the discussion of the relationship between culture and history is also an indication of how much things have changed since the 1930s. Lin Nan 林南, “Shehuixue Zhongguohua de xiayibu” 社會學中國化的下一步 [The Sinicization of sociology—the next step], in SHXZGH, pp. 29–44, on p. 32. This essay was delivered initially at the Tempe meeting.

36 · Arif Dirlik 29 30 31 32

33

34

35

36 37 38

39 40

41

Ibid., pp. 32–33. Xiao Xinhuang, “Shehuixue zai Taiwan” 社會學在台灣 [Sociology in Taiwan], in SHXZGH, pp. 271-310, on p. 307. Ibid., p. 301. Xiao Xinhuang and Li Zhefu 李哲夫, “Toushi sanshi nianlai haixia liang’an shehuixuede fazhan” 透視卅年來海峽兩岸社會學的發展 [Looking at the development of sociology on two sides of the Straits in the last thirty years], in SHXZGH, pp. 311–328, esp. pp. 315–316. In the course of the eighties, as attention turned to Taiwanization, Zhongguohua was downplayed, whereas bentuhua became more prominent in the thinking of Taiwan social scientists, with a specific focus on Taiwan. I am grateful to Chuang Ya-chung 莊雅仲 for pointing this out to me. Chuang was a graduate student in Taiwan in the late eighties. Xiao Xinhuang, “Fulu: Lü Mei Zhongguo shehuixuezhe tan shehuixue Zhongguohua” 附錄：旅美中國社會學者談社會學中國化 [Appendix: Chinese sociologists in the US discuss the Sinicization of sociology], in SHXZGH, pp. 329–345, on p. 339. Xiao Xinhuang, “Shehuixue zai Taiwan”; Guo Wenxiong 郭文雄, “Cong shehuixue Zhongguohua guandian kan Zhongguo shaoshu minzu zhengce yu yanjiu” 從社會學中國化觀點看中國少數民族政策與研究 [Viewing Chinese policy and reasearch on minority nationalities from the standpoint of Sinicization], in SHXZGH, pp. 151–164; and Zhou Yanling 周顏玲, “Shehuixue Zhongguohua yu funu shehuixue” 社會學中國化與婦女社會學 [Sinicization of sociology and women’s sociology], in SHXZGH, pp. 105–134, on pp. 122–123. Ma Liqin 馬立秦, “Lun shuli yanjiude Zhongguohua” 論疏離研究的中國化 [Sinicization of research in alienation], in SHXZGH, pp. 191–212, on p. 206. Ibid., p. 209. For discussions of Taiwanization, see John Makeham and A-Chin Hsiau, Cultural, Ethnic, and Political Nationalism in Contemporary China (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005). For an undertaking to this end, see Nan Lin, Social Capital: A Theory of Social Structure and Action (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). The most important challenge was the Gulbenkian Commission Report composed by Immanuel Wallerstein, Open the Social Sciences (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996). While the report stressed the Eurocentrism of the social sciences, it had little to say on challenges to them from outside of Europe. For an example of the latter, see the special issue on the globalization of sociology, Canadian Journal of Sociology/Cahiers Canadiens de Sociologie 33.3 (2008). Islamicization of sociology is discussed in Nilufer Gule, “Snapshots of Islamic Modernities,” Daedalus 129.1 (Winter 2000), pp. 91–117, esp. pp. 112–113. See also, Park Myoung-Kyu and Chang Kyung-sup, “Sociology between Western Theory and Korean Reality: Accommodation, Tension,

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42 43 44

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and a Search for Alternatives,” International Sociology 14.2 (June 1999), pp. 139–156. Vandana Shiva, Ashis Nandy, and Vine Deloria, Jr. have written extensively on this topic. For representative titles, see Vandana Shiva, Staying Alive: Women, Ecology and Development (London: Zed Books, 1989), Ashis Nandy, “History’s Forgotten Doubles,” History and Theory 34.2 (1995), pp. 44–66; and Vine Deloria, Jr., Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 1997). For recent discussions of knowledge systems with reference to Pacific studies, see Robert Borofsky, ed., Remembrance of Pacific Pasts: An Invitation to Remake History (Honolulu: The University of Hawai‘i Press, 2000). For ethnomathematics, see, Elizabeth Greene, “Ethnomathematics: A Step Toward Peace?” Dialogue (Duke University) 15.9 (20 October 2000), pp. 4–5. For foundations, see Jacob Heilbrunn, “The News From Everywhere: Does Global Thinking Threaten Local Knowledge? The Social Science Research Council Debates the Future of Area Studies,” Lingua Franca (May/June 1996), pp. 49–56. Ashis Nandy and Vine Deloria, Jr. have been distinguished speakers at the Duke University Pivotal Ideas series in spring 2000 and spring 2001, respectively. For a discussion of these challenges in relation to modernity, see Arif Dirlik, “Reading Ashis Nandy: The Return of the Past or Modernity With a Vengeance,” in Arif Dirlik, Postmodernity’s Histories: The Past as Legacy and Project (Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), pp. 119–141. Zheng Hang-sheng et al., A History of Chinese Sociology, pp. 446. In the Chinese text, the term used for indigenization in this context is bentuhua. Ibid., p. 447. Indeed, Zheng Hangsheng has undertaken this task in a later work, Jiansuo daijia yu zengcu jinbu: shehuixue ji qi shengceng linian 減縮代價與增促進步： 社會學及其深層理念 [Cut the cost and speed up progress: Toward a layered reading of sociology] (Beijing: Beijing shifan daxue chubanshe, 2007). This work also includes detailed discussions of problems in sociology, including the transformation of theory by bringing into it legacies of the past, experiences of the present, and social ideals for the future. Some histories of sociology in China, anxious to stress professional sociology, downplay the importance of Marxism in the origins of Chinese sociology. It is noteworthy that whether or not it is so named, Marxism also has been an integral part of the development of sociology in Europe and North America. On this important question, which involves nations within nations, see Wang Mingming 王銘銘, “Xixue ‘Zhongguohua’ de lishi kunjing—yi renleixue wei zhongxinde sikao” 西學中國化的歷史困境—以人類學維中新的 思考 [Challenges of “Sinicizing” Western learning—the perspective of anthropology], in Qiao Jian 喬健 et al. ed., Ershiyi shijide Zhongguo shehuixue yu renleixue 二十一世紀的中國社會學與人類學 (Gaoxiong, Taiwan: Li Wen Cultural Publishing Co., 2001) and Wang Jianmin, “Xueke shijiexing

38 · Arif Dirlik

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yu bentuxing: Cong Zhongguo minzuxueshi shuoqi” 學科世界性與本土性：從 中國民族學史說起 [Cosmopolitanism and indigeneity in the disciplines: From the perspective of the history of ethnology in China], paper presented at the conference, “Formation and Development of Academic Disciplines in 20th-Century China: Second Workshop,” Central Nationalities University, Beijing, 29 October–1 November 2008. Cited with the author’s permission. For a recent discussion, see, David Paul Haney, The Americanization of Social Science: Intellectuals and Public Responsibility in the Postwar United States (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008). This very illuminating account of the emergence of an “American” version of social science nevertheless leaves unclear, perhaps intentionally, whether “Americanization” refers to the preoccupation with science, or the more recent concern with the public responsibility of the social sciences. See also below the reference to the work of Michael Burawoy. For further discussion, see Arif Dirlik, “Globalization, Indigenism, and the Politics of Place,” Ariel 34.1 (January 2003) [actually published in 2005], pp. 15–29. See Tan Chee-Beng, Chinese Overseas: Comparative Cultural Issues (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004). The social sciences have been driven since their origins in the 19th century by conf licting impulses of order and radical change, which also imply different relationships to the state and to structures of power in society. The social sciences, moreover, are internally differentiated. The US sociologist Michael Burawoy in a recent presidential address to the American Sociological Association divides sociological practice into policy, public, professional, and critical work. The first two areas, Burawoy, notes, all along have been shaped by national circumstances. The discussion suffers from a fetishization of professional work, unfortunately, and says little about the interactions of these various practices and their impact on theoretical development and division. He also has little to say about sociological work in tricontinental societies that have been subjected to Euro/American domination, or about the implications for sociological work of different ways of knowing—disciplinary or cultural. The discussion is revealing nevertheless for pointing to the internal complexities of the social sciences and their entanglement in politics within and without the discipline, which should be a point of departure for any consideration of indigenization. See Michael Burawoy, “For Public Sociology,” American Sociological Review 70 (February 2005), pp. 4–28. The necessity of “globalizing” the social sciences is increasingly recognized by social scientists in North America and Europe, although how to reconcile cultural difference with universal “scientific” goals remains a problem. For examples, see Immanuel Wallerstein, Open the Social Sciences; several articles by Michael Burawoy, including “Third-Wave Sociology and the End of Pure Science,” The American Sociologist (Fall/Winter 2005), pp. 152–165, “A

Zhongguohua: Worlding China · 39 Sociology for the Second Great Transformation?” Annual Review of Sociology 26 (2000), pp. 693–695, “What is to be Done?: Theses on the Degradation of Social Existence in a Globalizing World,” Current Sociology 56.3 (2008), pp. 351–359, and “Rejoinder: For a Subaltern Global Sociology?” Current Sociology 56.3 (2008), pp. 435–444; and Dimitri Della Faille and Neil McLaughlin, “Sociology’s Global Challenge,” in a special issue of Canadian Journal of Sociology/ Cahiers Canadiens de Sociologie 33.3 (2008), pp. 485–495. Anthropologists, closer to the people they study and less nomothetically inclined, have been discussing similar problems since the 1960s. See the seminal volume edited by Talal Asad, Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter (New York: Humanities Press, 1973).

Chapter 2

Academic Universality and Indigenization: The Case of Chinese Anthropology Wang Jianmin

The new quest for disciplinary history has advanced from a mere retrospective of disciplinary development to an exploration of the academic debates and intellectual history of the discipline. The sinicization, or indigenization, of anthropology was once a much-debated topic among Chinese ethnologists/anthropologists, who enunciated different opinions and attempted to find more pragmatic and efficient ways for the future development of anthropology in Chinese academia. However, such discussion is confined to the realm of disciplinary history and does not go beyond dichotomization. Therefore, I provide my recent research on the relations between academic universality and research indigenization in ethnology and anthropology. 1 *** The disciplinary development of international social sciences and humanities, including ethnology and anthropology, faces the same general and specific problems, namely, the researcher must simultaneously deal with problems of commonality and difference. The challenge is most obvious in the case of Chinese academic development. Any international academic discipline follows its own norms and standards. At a time when the Chinese academy is opening up and becoming influenced by international ideas, the standardization of academic disciplines seems to be emphasized more by scholars as the pivot of academic development and disciplinary construction. Such standardization is often the first step in establishing a modern discipline of social sciences or humanities; it was no different for Chinese ethnology at its founding stage. The founders of Chinese ethnology began

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by defining the concept of the discipline. The famous Chinese educator Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培 published an essay, “On Ethnology,” in 1926. He pointed out that “ethnology is a knowledge that records or compares different cultures of nations. Ethnographie emphasizes the aspect of recording; it is also known as Beschreibende Volkerkunde in German. Ethnologie stresses the aspect of comparison; it is also known as Vergleichende Volkerkunde.” In other words, there were ethnography and ethnology; the former could also be called “recording” ethnology and the latter “comparative” ethnology. The Germans also used ethnology as a general term for the knowledge gained by investigating the cultures of ethnic groups.2 Ling Chunsheng 凌純聲 returned to China and worked in the Ethnology Section of the Academia Sinica after he obtained a doctorate in anthropology in France. His definition of ethnology was similar to Cai’s. He pointed out that “ethnology is divided into two kinds of research: the one emphasizing recording is called ethnography, and the one emphasizing comparison is called ethnology.” 3 Ling argued that ethnology was “a science which studies the origin, the development, the dissemination, and the transformation of culture.” 4 He regarded ethnology as cultural anthropology, or culturology, because its subject of study was culture: ethnology studied general theories of culture, and ethnography studied the culture of specific ethnic groups in specific locales. He further pointed out that culture was both the artifact and the system that humans created to deal with their living environment (including material life, spiritual life, family life, and social life).5 Other scholars also analyzed the definition of ethnology and its relation to other disciplines. The mainstream opinion of the time was that ethnology mainly studied the cultures of ethnic groups, especially those of primitive societies. The emphasis on culture became the distinguishing feature of this discipline and was gradually accepted by the Chinese public. Chinese scholars also discussed the relation between ethnology and other disciplines so as to illustrate the disciplinary features of ethnology and to give ethnology a clear and definite academic identity.6 Through the enthusiastic promotion of Cai Yuanpei and others, “ethnology,” sometimes known as cultural anthropology, was generally acknowledged as an academic discipline in the first half of the 20th century. At the same time, ethnology and physical anthropology were often labeled together as anthropology. The formation of disciplinary norms requires a basic theoretical framework. Before ethnology became an academic discipline, Chinese

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scholars had already begun to introduce ethnological theories. In 1903, Lin Shu 林紓 and Wei Yi 魏易 translated Völkerkunde [Ethnology], written by the German scholar Michael Haberlandt. The translation, Minzhongxue 民種學, was published by the official bookstore of the Jingshi daxuetang 京師大學堂 (the Imperial College in Beijing). Later, more ethnological writings were translated into Chinese. The decades from the late Qing into the 1930s saw an upsurge of Chinese students studying in the West and Japan. Some overseas students systematically studied ethnology and cultural anthropology, and some became advisees of famous scholars or had direct contact with them. Wu Wenzao 吳文藻, Yang Kun 楊堃, Sun Benwen 孫本文, and others devoted themselves to introducing foreign ethnological and anthropological theories after they returned to China. In order to enter into dialogue with international scholarly traditions, they translated canonical works of ethnology and made efforts to familiarize Chinese students with the theoretical dimensions, as well as the research paradigms, of international scholarship. Some of their writings, offering incisive analysis and elucidating thought, are still considered important theoretical studies in Chinese ethnology and anthropology. These include, for example, Wu Wenzao’s “Xiandai shequ shidi yanjiu de yiyi he gongneng” 現代社區實地 研究的意義和功能 [The meaning and function of modern community field research], “Xifang shequ yanjiu de jinjin qushi” 西方社區研究的近今 趨勢 [The current trends in Western community studies], “Gongnengpai shehuirenleixue de youlai yu xianzhuang” 功能派社會人類學的由來與現狀 [The origin and the state of the field of functionalism in social anthropology], and “Bulang jiaoshou de sixiang beijing yu qi zai xueshushang de gongxian” 布朗教授的思想背景與其在學術上的貢獻 [The theoretical background and the contribution of Dr. Radcliff-Brown]; Yang Kun’s “Faguo minzuxue zhi guoqu yu xianzai” 法國民族學之過去與現在 [The past and present of French ethnology], “Faguo minzuxue yundong zhi xinfazhan” 法國民族學運動之新發展 [New developments in French ethnology], and “Mosi jiaoshou de shehuixue xueshuo yu fangfalun” 莫斯教授的社會學學 說與方法論 [The sociological theory and method of Prof. Mauss]; Dai Yixuan’s 戴裔煊 “Baoyashi jiqi xueshuo shulue” 鮑亞士及其學說述略 [An outline of Boas and his theory], “Minzuxue lilun yu fangfa de diyan” 民 族學理論與方法的遞演 [The development of ethnological theory and method]. The paradigms of different schools, such as evolutionism, diffusionism, historical particularism, the Gestalt theory, and functionalism, were all introduced to Chinese academia.

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The formation of academic norms requires not only theories but also accordant research methods and methodology. The field research methods of ethnology established by contemporary international academia were the academic norms ethnologists should follow, which included how to form questions, how to stipulate and apply concepts, how to cite documents and materials, how to conduct field surveys, and how to write reports. Scholars such as Ling Chunsheng, Xu Yitang 徐益堂, Wei Huilin 衛惠林, Zhang Shaowei 張少微, Wu Wenzao, Wu Dingliang 吳 定良, and Ke Xiangfeng 柯象峰 compiled outlines and questionnaires for ethnological and frontier research by combining detailed research methods and participant observation, borrowed from the French ethnological school and other foreign schools, with their own field experiences. These outlines and forms include Minzu diaocha biaoge 民族調超表格 [Ethnological research forms], Quanguo fengsu jianyi diaocha wentige: shenghuo xiguan 全國風俗簡易調查問題格：生活習慣 [Concise survey questionnaires on cultural customs in China: Living habits], Wenhua biaoge 文化表格 [Forms for cultural research], and Wenhua biaoge shuoming 文化 表格說明 [Instructions for the forms for cultural research]. Scholars also began to discuss field research methods, attempting to push the progress of fieldwork by strengthening the theoretical aspect. For example, Ling Chunsheng analyzed the principles, methods, and problems of ethnological field research in his “Minzuxue shidi diaocha fangfa” [The field research methods of ethnology]. He pointed out that “people at a lower level of culture often have advanced language and thinking in describing concrete facts but very poor vocabularies for abstract concepts”; and “semi-civilized people have different categorizations of things from the ones we are familiar with ... they have different arrangements of and categories for the universe.” Therefore, “if there is an alternative interpretation of the question being asked, we should follow the vocabulary of the indigene”; and “we can’t ignore the spontaneous words of the indigene,” “it is fantastic if what he says is unintelligible and not understandable, because it will lead you to a road full of completely new and unthinkable views while your own old pass will only take you to an obvious and predictable destiny.” “If your translator belongs to the indigenous group about which you wish to research, there is a problem: he will often substitute his own opinions for the answers of the interviewees.” “If the translator is from other tribe, then there is [another] problem: he will re-interpret everything from his own cultural perspective, and therefore his translation cannot be precise.” Ling also stressed the importance of

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the research outline. “It does not matter if the researcher has experience of field research; he has to carry the research questionnaires with him.... When conducting field research for the first time, the researcher will feel more confident with the presence of the questionnaires. He can be more flexible in the use of questionnaires once his experience has accumulated.” 7 The opinions of these scholars show that they highly regarded disciplinary norms. In the process of establishing the discipline and developing the scholarship, the first generation of pioneering Chinese ethnologists did not only strive to introduce disciplinary norms, but also devoted themselves to anthropological fieldwork under strenuous circumstances. They hoped to strengthen the theoretical foundation through practice. According to Ling Chunsheng and others, it was necessary to begin with the “recording ethnology” (i.e. ethnography) if ethnology was to take root in China. Therefore, the earliest research activities mainly focused on field research. Many scholars were famous for their detailed and full-scale studies: they faithfully followed the international standards from drafting the research outline to carrying out the research. After the founding of the Ethnology Section at the Academia Sinica, affiliated researchers were sent to study the Hezhe in Manchuria, the She in Zhejiang, the Yao in Guangxi, the Miao in Hunan, the ethnic groups along the Yunnan-Burma border, and the Gaoshan in Taiwan. The Department of Sociology at Yenching University organized scholars to conduct fieldwork in Beijing, Hebei, Shanxi, Shandong, Fujian, and Guangdong in order to study social structure, family system, marriage, and lineage. Scholars from Lingnan University and Sun Yat-sen University also carried out studies of the Li in Hainan, the Miao, the Hakka in Guangdong, and the Yao, as well as the Dan people.8 After the Anti-Japanese War broke out, Chinese ethnologists conducted extensive research throughout West China, including Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Gansu, Qinghai, Xinjiang, and Tibet. They also covered other parts of China, such as Japanese-occupied Taiwan. Some of the studies involved investigations of the same ethnic groups in different areas, such as the Yao in Lingyun, Xiangping, and Jinxiu (Guangxi) and in Beijiang (Guangdong); the Yi in Yunnan and Sichuan; the Dai in Sipsongpanna and Dehong (both in Yunnan). These field reports offered invaluable comparative data. Some studies were published as monographs and others as essays. Even in the relatively short pieces, most scholars attempted to cover every aspect of cultural activity. For example, in a series of ethnographical articles on the Yao in Xiangping

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(Guangxi), Xu Yitang touched on their economic life, customs of birth and death, housing, divination, taboo, law, religion, and related documents; in his ethnographic reports about the Li of Hainan, Liu Xian 劉咸 paid attention to the origin of the Li, as well as their use of masks, their custom of wood carving as oath, tattooing, harmonicas, and the legend of their dog ancestor. Some other scholars, such as Yang Chengzhi 楊成志, Lin Yaohua 林耀華, Xu Yitang, Ke Xiangfeng, Jiang Yingliang 江應梁, Tao Yunkui 陶雲逵, Ma Changshou 馬長壽, and Liang Oudi 梁歐第, conducted research on the same ethnic group in the same or adjacent area at different times. They published a series of field ethnographies on the Yi in the Da Xiao Liangshan area. Their different perspectives and ways of analysis made the series more like a debate. In the practice of field research, some Chinese ethnologists also tried to blend into the life of their subjects. Their unremitting efforts formed a Chinese ethnological tradition that stressed practice. Their fieldwork continued even during the most difficult times and helped establish a firm foundation for the development of the academic discipline. Many important publications in the first half of the 20th century were based on the fieldwork done during this period. They include Ling Chunsheng’s Songhuajiang xiayou de Hezhe zu, Ling Chunsheng and Rui Yifu’s 芮逸夫 Xiangxi Miao zu diaocha baogao 湘西苗族調查報告 [Research report on the Miao in western Hunan], Fei Xiaotong’s 費孝通 Jiangcun jingji 江村經濟 [Peasant Life in China], Lin Yaohua’s Jinyi: Zhongguo jiazu zhidu de shehuixue yanjiu 金翼：中國家族制度的社會學研究 [The Golden Wing: A Sociological Study of Chinese Familism], Yang Maochun’s 楊懋春 [Martin C. Yang] Yige Zhongguo cunzhuang: Shandong sheng Taitou 一個 中國村莊：山東省臺頭 [A Chinese Village—Taitou, Shantung Province], Fei Xiaotong and Wang Tonghui’s 王同惠 Hualan Yao shehui zuzhi 花籃猺社 會組織 [The social structure of the Hualan Yao], Lin Yaohua’s Liangshan Yijia 涼山夷家 [The Lolo of Liangshan], Tian Rukang’s 田汝康 Mangshi bianmin de Bai 芒市邊民的擺 [Bai of the border people in Mangshi], Xu Langguang’s [Francis L. K. Hsu] 許烺光 Zuyin xia 祖蔭下 [Under the Ancestors’ Shadow], Fei Xiaotong’s Lucun nongtian 村農田 [The fields of Lu village] and Zhang Zhiyi’s 張之毅 Yicun shougong ye 易村手工業 [Handicrafts in Yi village] (both were in Earthbound China: A Study of Rural Economy in Yunnan), Wu Zelin 吳澤霖 and Chen Guojun’s 陳國鈞 Guizhou Miao Yi shehui yanjiu 貴州苗夷社會研究 [Studies of the Miao and Yi societies in Guizhou], and so forth. In their fieldwork, scholars paid attention to factual details and their representations; they adopted the

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data collecting and processing methods used by Western scholars; they attended to specific cultural activities as well as their integration; and they observed and attempted to report as objectively as possible. Their ethnographies shared common features and set standards for fieldwork. Many of these outstanding ethnographical writings are still used as models and provide invaluable reference data for researchers today. Chinese scholars were also committed to professional training. In the early 20th century, with the introduction of ethnology and other new disciplines, social sciences and humanities burgeoned in China. In 1913, the Hujiang University in Shanghai began to offer courses in sociology, and in 1915 it established the first sociology department in China. In 1923, Li Ji 李濟, who was the first Chinese to receive a doctoral degree of anthropology from Harvard University, persuaded Nankai University to start the first anthropology department in China, offering two courses: Anthropology and History of Evolution.9 From the 1920s to the early 1930s, many institutions, such as Jinling College, Yenching University, Xiamen University, Western China Union College, Daxia University, Central University, Lingnan University, Sun Yat-sen University, Fudan University, Dongwu (Soochow) University, Guanghua University, Guangxi University, Central China University, and Fujian Union College, inaugurated their own departments of sociology. Most of these departments also offered courses related to anthropology. Although Beijing University did not have a sociology department, it offered courses in anthropology and ethnology. Many Christian universities offered courses in foreign languages and hired foreign professors. In addition, international foundations supported visiting positions and exchange programs. These facilitated the interaction of Chinese scholars with wider scholarly circles. English monographs on anthropological theory and methodology were used as textbooks or suggested readings in Christian universities, which helped Chinese scholars to understand and communicate with their foreign counterparts, in spite of the difficulty of translating these concepts into intelligible Chinese. Later, Chinese scholars compiled a Chinese textbook based on the early foreign-language textbooks, Wenhua renleixue 文化人類學 [Cultural anthropology], published by the Ministry of Education. Many Chinese scholars of the earlier generations trained researchers in accordance with foreign systems. Wu Wenzao of Yenching University in Beijing used the method of “songchuqu he qingjinlai” 送出去和請進來 (sending Chinese students to study overseas and inviting foreign professors to

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teach in China). He recommended many talented students to study with famous European and American professors and invited well-known scholars, such as Robert E. Park and Alfred Radcliff-Brown, to teach at Yenching. Yang Chengzhi at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou began to advise graduate students in the 1930s; his pedagogy emphasized a systematic study plan. Most professors stressed the importance of fieldwork and the application of ethnological method. Many even conducted fieldwork with their students. After the Second World War, due to the rapid development of anthropology and the growth of American influence in the international scholarly arena, anthropology became a more important discipline in the Chinese academic system, expanding in scope, and introducing pluralistic methods. Some Chinese scholars attempted to develop anthropology and to foster a more propitious environment for academic development in general. The Ministry of Education approved the founding of anthropology departments at Jinan University, Qinghua University, Sun Yat-sen University, Zhejiang University, and Furen University. The National Taiwan University also set up a department of archaeological anthropology in the autumn of 1949. To provide for better communication among Chinese scholars, Chinese anthropologists organized nation-wide associations. The Ethnological Association of China was founded in December 1934, and the Minzuxue yanjiu jikan 民族研究集刊 [Ethnological Studies], a forum for academic essays by Chinese anthropologists, was published by the Sun Zhongshan wenhua jiaoyu guan 孫中山文化教育館 [The Sun Yat-sen Institute of Culture and Education]. Even during the Anti-Japanese War and the civil war, the Association still managed to organize scholarly activities to promote collaboration among universities for academic advancement. Some scholars wrote essays to describe the state of the field, while others criticized its shortcomings and analyzed its problems. *** For the purpose of developing the areas behind the front during the AntiJapanese War, some ethnologists suggested a new academic field that would integrate ethnology and frontier governance. This new study— bianzhengxue 邊政學 (study of frontier politics)—would “focus on the political thought, facts, and systems, as well as governance, of the frontier ethnic groups.” 10 Within the broader framework of wartime nation-state

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building, ethnologists conducted research on the minority ethnic groups in Southwest and Northwest China, paying special attention to difficulties confronted by local societies, including economic, political, and cultural construction. They also cooperated with national political movements, such as the minzu suzhi gaizao 民族素質改造 (reconstruction of the national quality); promoted deeper understanding of the frontier minorities; and called popular attention to ethnology as an academic discipline. During the later period of the war, bianzhengxue departements were established at Central University and Northwest University to train specialists in minority culture, history, and language, as well as ethnological theory and methodology. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the integration of academic studies with politics was more prominent. Ethnologists and scholars from other fields actively participated in the construction of the new republic by contributing their knowledge as needed. The Central People’s Government sent some groups of delegates to visit the areas of minority ethnic groups in order to propagandize the Party’s guidelines and policies, to show friendship to the ethnic leaders, and to understand the needs of the people for the political construction of ethnic democracy. The members of those delegations included ethnologists such as Fei Xiaotong, Wu Zelin, Yang Chengzhi, Cen Jiawu 岑家梧, Jiang Yingliang, Hu Qingjun 胡慶鈞, Yu Wenhua 玉文華, Chen Zongxiang 陳宗祥, Zeng Zhaoxuan 曾昭璇, Dai Yixuan, Liang Zhaotao 梁釗韜, Li Zhichun 李志純, Shen Jiaju 沈家駒, and Shi Lianzhu 施聯朱. Lin Yaohua, Li Anzhai 李安宅, Yu Shiyu 於(于)式玉, Song Shuhua 宋蜀華, Xie Guoan 謝國安, and Wang Xiaoyi 王曉義 formed the Tibet Work Team. Many ethnologists were also members of other work teams sent by the government to minority regions. They conducted research to help the Chinese Communist Party and the government comprehend local situations and problems. They contributed much to the establishment of socialist democracy and local development in the ethnic minority regions. During the process of thought reform, these scholars studied Marxist-Leninist theories carefully, especially the writings related to minzu 民族 and ethnic issues. They criticized their own previous theoretical approaches and produced a series of writings reflecting their new learning. The academic reform in 1952 abolished the existing departments of sociology, anthropology, and ethnology in the universities. However, under the Sovietization policies, ethnology, which followed the Soviet model, was saved and renamed “Marxist ethnology.” The Central

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Institute of Nationalities established a research center and gathered many famous ethnologists. Some other scholars transferred to history departments and devoted their research to the ethno-history of minorities and the history of primitive society. Nonetheless, they still actively collaborated with the ethnic work (minzu gongzuo 民族工作) implemented by the Communist Party in the minority regions. They enthusiastically conducted field research and edited materials in an effort to explain the role primitive society played in the progress of human society. During the “Hundred Schools of Thought” and the “Advance to Science” movements in 1956, scientific research resumed and ethnologists zealously participated in the making of the Twelve-year Plan for Scientific Research on the Nationality Question and the History and Language of Minority Nationalities and other plans with different educational research institutions. The Central Institute of Nationalities established a department of history, created a masters program in ethnology in 1956, and invited Soviet specialists to teach. Conferences on special topics were held to re-define ethnology’s subject of study and its tasks. At the time, ethnology was considered to be a sub-discipline of history. Chinese ethnologists renewed and substituted their theoretical approach with the Soviet model. They shifted ethnology from the category of social science to that of historical science because ethnology “adopts the method of direct observation to study the cultural characteristics and lifeways of peoples throughout the world. It integrates the materials and results of history, archaeology, and linguistics. It studies the historical transformation and development of these features. It explores the origin, dissemination, history, and cultural relations of ethnic groups.” 11 Yang Kun called ethnology the “new historical science” and re-defined it as “a science that studies the developmental law of the minzu community.” 12 Chinese ethnologists were interested in utilizing historical materials to explain the stages of historical development of human society. Evolutionism was closely integrated into the construction of ideology. In the studies of ethnic identification, ethno-history, social character and morphology of ethnic minorities, the examination of historical sources was deemed far more important than understanding the concrete situation of these societies. Some scholars did not even regard ethnology or archaeology as independent disciplines: history was the only discipline of social science, and ethnology only differed from it in terms of research subject and method. In other words, the subject of ethnology was Chinese ethnic

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minorities, and its method was to carry out the research in their locales. With the newly developed “method of triple evidence” (sanchong zhengfa 三重證法), ethnology and archaeology complimented history to confirm the law of social development. A new academic norm was set up, imitating the Soviet model to a certain degree but still relevant to the Chinese situation. This new direction of ethnology centered on historical materialism and evolutionism. At this time, scholarly exchange still continued but only with foreign scholars of the socialist camp.13 Since 1953 Chinese ethnologists had been involved in the project of state ethnic identification. They paid attention to the origin and the meaning of the ethnic labels, as well as the attitude and opinion of the ethnic group toward such labels; to the historical origins, migrations, and languages of the ethnic groups that wanted to become a separate minzu; to the linguistic differences and similarities among various groups; and to the economic mode, social structure, culture, education, hygiene, religion, and customs of such groups. They also took into consideration the relationship between social structure and political construction.14 Scholars adopted Stalin’s four criteria of nationality, combining them with the specific social and cultural conditions based on their own research. They proposed a framework for ethnic identification to state officials. Thus, ethnic identification, a classification that was purportedly scientific, state-approved, and relatively stable, replaced the chaotic and shifting local ethnic identity.15 Significantly, during this relatively closed period, the Chinese ethnic classification system developed by earlier scholars, both Chinese and foreign, still played a rather important role in the identification process. Ethnologists applied historical reconstruction to help identify ambiguous and unidentified groups. They also merged some small ethnic groups into larger minzu, despite the strong intention of the former to remain separate. Today, these previously controversial demarcations have mostly been accepted by the minzu in question. Under the policy of “rescuing from backwardness” in 1956, the Ethnic Affairs Committee of the People’s Congress organized sociohistorical research about the ethnic minorities. Specialists from the Research Center of the Central Institute of Nationalities drafted the “Outline for the Socio-historical Research of the Ethnic Minorities,” which was then revised by the provincial Ethnic Affairs Committees, convened by the Vice-Chairmen, and some other ethnologists. Later, participating researchers received short-term training from the older

52 · Wang Jianmin

generation of ethnologists, such as Wu Zelin and Cen Jiawu, so research methods were passed on. Many senior ethnologists led these research teams. However, the anti-rightist campaign, initiated in 1957, brought another twist to the already unfortunate ethnology. Many senior ethnologists were labeled “bourgeois ethnologists” in public and were colored “white” in the academic field. Some researchers were forced to return from their socio-historical research project, and their work was criticized as “seeking the exotic” (lieqi 獵奇) or “searching for backwardness” (zhuanzhao luohou 轉找落後). Some were even classified as “rightists.” Ethnologists stopped drawing on foreign theories in fear of being accused of having “bourgeois academic thinking.” They could only adopt classic evolutionism as their theoretical foundation and simply used it to divide social developmental stages. Their field research was no longer concerned with obtaining a complete picture of cultural practices but rather opposed culture as the superstructure to economic foundation as the base. Moreover, they replaced academic discussion with “class analysis” and criticized Western anthropological theories. Their writings often began with citations of Mao. In order to prove their critical viewpoints, some scholars arbitrarily dissected time and space of their materials to produce distorted evidence. The major academic debates also centered on specific questions related to political struggle. The three series produced at the time—Overview of Nationalities Autonomous Regions (Ge minzu zizhi difang gaikuang 各民族自治地方概況), the Brief History of Nationalities (Ge minzu jianshi 各 民族簡史), and the Brief Gazetteer (Ge minzu jianzhi 各民族簡志)—used numerous literary texts as major sources and reflect these tendencies. Even in the newly revised Five Series of Nationalities’ Questions (Minzu wenti wuzhong congshu 民族問題五種叢書), one can still find this legacy. In an environment covered by the heavy fog of class struggle, ethnology was questioned, criticized, and labeled as a tool for the bourgeois class to seize colonies and to oppress the people. “Although in name, there are ‘Western ethnology,’ ‘Soviet ethnology,’ ‘ethnology of the old China,’ in reality, they are all ‘bourgeois ethnology.’” “Bourgeois ethnology cannot qualify as a discipline; strictly speaking, ‘bourgeois ethnology’ is not a science, and all of the other bourgeois ‘social sciences’ are not science either.” “Socialist China only criticizes, but does not inherit, the bourgeois social sciences. This principle also applies to ‘bourgeois ethnology.’... The ‘ethnology’ of old China (regardless of which school) has no room in the socialist new China. Only the theories of the nationality question

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proposed by Marx, Lenin, and Mao form the most fundamental and complete science for the studies of the minzu question. Therefore, we think, there is no need to create something like ‘Marxist ethnology’ out of the Marxist-Leninist and Maoist theories of the nationality question. A ‘Marxist ethnology’ is still a ‘bourgeois ethnology.’ The added label of ‘Marxist-Leninism’ is but pouring old wine into a new bottle.” 16 Ethnology as a discipline had no foothold in academia, and ethnologists dared not to mention even the name. During the Cultural Revolution, political criticism replaced academic research and academic discussions seldom followed any scholarly framework. Many experienced scholars were even categorized as “bourgeois counter-revolutionary academic authorities.” They were personally criticized and attacked, and some even died of humiliation. Scholarly dignity faltered. No one cared about academic universality, not to mention indigenization. Presenting the status quo and the revolutionary situation of the ethnic minorities became the only academic activities still left to ethnologists. The economic reform in the late 1970s and early 1980s introduced new opportunities for academic development. Ethnology was resumed as a discipline. In October 1980, the Chinese Ethnological Research Society was founded (the name was changed to Chinese Ethnological Society in 1984), and the Chinese Anthropological Society was created in 1981. The same year Zhongshan (Sun Yat-sen) University revived its department of anthropology; Xiamen University set up a department of anthropology and a related graduate program; the Central Institute of Nationalities established a department of ethnology in 1983; the re-opened SouthCentral Institute of Nationalities also had a department of ethnology; Yunnan University and the Institutes of Nationalities in Guangxi, Yunnan, and Guizhou also initiated majors in ethnology. These provided a haven for ethnology and anthropology. During the process of reconstruction, the new identity of Chinese ethnology and anthropology seemed to be related to both universality and indigenization, the two extreme ends of the scope. Reconstruction began with re-defining ethnology and anthropology and their special features. The first national congress of ethnology, held in October 1980, focused on how to establish ethnology as an academic discipline. Ethnologists, whose zeal had been repressed for so long, were finally able to speak of “ethnology” as a discipline and to present themselves as ethnologists in public with confidence. They discussed the meanings of ethnology. Influenced by the continuity of the disciplinary

54 · Wang Jianmin

development since the 1950s, some scholars defined ethnology as “a discipline whose subject was minzu. It studies minzu as an organic body by analyzing its origin, development, and the process of its extinction. It studies the productive forces and relations, economic foundation, and the superstructure. It is an independent discipline of the social sciences.” 17 Many other def initions also make minzu the research subject of ethnology: “Generally speaking, ethnology is a science that studies minzu. To be more precise, ethnology is a social science that studies the developmental law of all modern minzu and ethnic groups.” 18 “Ethnology is a historical science that studies all human communities at all stages of social development.” 19 It is obvious that the influence of the Soviet model still lingered. At the same time, there were also scholars who considered “ethnology not as a science that studies the law of social development, nor a science that studies the minzu community.” 20 “Ethnology is a science that studies the history, life, and culture of ethnic groups throughout the world. It is a form of knowledge that investigates, records, and compares ethnic cultures.” 21 The research subject of ethnology (cultural anthropology) should be culture and not simply the ethnic group; the latter was only a part of the former. Scholars who advanced such arguments were mostly those ones who had engaged in anthropological research in the first half of the 20th century, had turned to history or archaeology after the 1950s, and had therefore escaped the most serious criticism. Some of their students also supported this view. A number of scholars pointed out that after the resumption of ethnology as a discipline, the question of the research subject was still left unresolved. It was necessary to clarify what ethnology and anthropology studied, why it was, and how to study it. Many argued that ethnological study used to cover every aspect of material and spiritual life, ranging from tools and houses to art and religion. Because “culture” best recapitulated such diversity, the subject of ethnology should therefore be culture instead of minzu.22 After the 1990s, more international scholarly exchange led to a broad understanding that anthropology and ethnology focus on culture or ways of living. The debate also ref lected on the direction of anthropology or ethnology as an academic discipline. Some scholars insisted on their own opinions when participating in the process of formulating the system of national academic categories. The directory of university majors created by the National Education Committee, the directory of academic majors

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published by the Degree Committee of the State Council, and the category of national standard disciplines put forward by the Standardization Administration presented three different systems. 23 Beside this confusion, other problems—such as how to differentiate ethnology from cultural anthropology or socio-cultural anthropology, which theories to adopt, and how to conduct fieldwork—also received much attention when ethnologists and anthropologists were confronted with multiple orientations. During the short-lived cultural tide (wenhua re 文化熱) in the late 1980s and the reopening of the cultural field after the mid-1990s, some scholars devoted themselves to translating foreign academic theories and methods to better understand the dynamics of international academia and to build a foundation for dialogue with social scientists outside China. These translations played an important role in the establishment of new academic norms. The introductory textbook of anthropology provided a window onto the basic framework of contemporary cultural anthropology; famous ethnological/anthropological writings elucidated disciplinary theories and methods; even the Chinese translations of the dissertations and theses produced by the first generation of Chinese scholars who studied overseas had an effect on the academic reconstruction of Chinese ethnology and anthropology. Scholars who accepted anthropology (instead of ethnology) as their disciplinary label often preferred an international orientation. They were more interested in academic topics that were not specifically Chinese and often adopted and appropriated foreign concepts. They tended to find a relatively stable location to acquire field experience and materials. They often cited canonical ethnographical writings and theories. Yet their works were also criticized as “foreign eight-legged essays” (yang bagu 洋八股) or “being fettered by foreign conventions” (shi yang bu hua 食洋不化). Other ethnologists stressed the theoretical and methodological particularity of Chinese indigenous research. Some even contended that there was no need to listen to foreign scholars and accused their studies of China of being superficial and erroneous. After the disciplinary reconstruction, many scholars applied their learning to pragmatic ends: they conducted collective field research and applied their research with the aim of helping the economic development and cultural prosperity of ethnic minorities. However, in the process of integrating scholarship with nation-state politics, the differences between nation-states tend to be underlined (or even strengthened) under the banner of sinicization or

56 · Wang Jianmin

indigenization. For applied research, what requires further consideration is how to apply those theories and methods that reflect specific disciplinary features in order to critically re-think future development. During this process, building upon the tradition of making minzu the subject of research and of combining ethnology, ethno-history, and ethnic theory to form “minzu studies” (minzu yanjiu 民族研究), many new “disciplines” related to ethnic minorities emerged: Tibetology, Mongolian Studies, Manchu Studies, Turkic Studies, Yi Studies, Zhuangdong Studies (or Dongtai Studies), Miao Studies, Yao Studies, Buyi Studies, Naxi Studies, Chaoxian Studies, and so on. Ethnologists often play a significant role in these new fields. These disciplines or special fields cover more diverse content and tend to be multi-disciplinary. They provide a convenient means for ethnologists and anthropologists to absorb knowledge of other disciplines. In other words, the tendency of Chinese ethnology and anthropology in respect to research platforms, theoretical models, and scholarly interests is leaning toward a pluralistic future. *** Academic universality and indigenization do not have to be dichotomous. Universality provides the foundation for any discipline, and to some extent it reflects the purity of the discipline. But because ethnology and anthropology study ethnic groups and their cultures in different regions, the research subjects themselves are vastly diverse. Geographical features and socio-cultural environments differ from country to country and from region to region. The research topic, focus, and even the researcher’s own personal, political, and academic background affect the relationship between the researcher and the informant. Therefore, before the researcher applies one theoretical model, established in a given environment, to explain the phenomena of another environment, it is necessary to take into consideration differences in cultural concepts, systems, cultural accumulation, political and economic systems, and social realities. Academic development cannot be separated from its related sociocultural context. Establishing disciplinary norms and finding internal differences should proceed together. We should keep a critical attitude towards the international academic theories and methods that we want to learn about. Contemporary anthropology (which should also include ethnology of the European tradition) stresses the ethnographical research

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context. It applies the concept of intersubjectivity to examine the relation between the fieldworker and the informant. It also criticizes ethnology and anthropology as the legacy of Eurocentrism and attempts to improve academic research in dealing with cultural groups of different polities. In fact, Chinese ethnologists and anthropologists had already discussed such issues in the first half of the 20th century and came to useful conclusions. Wu Wenzao’s famous words concerning the sinicization question is insightful: “Our standpoint is: begin with trial and hypothesis and end with our own field verification. Theory follows reality and reality inspires theory. A new synthesis of theory and reality is necessary if sociology is to be planted in the Chinese soil. We have to train scientific specialists to conduct independent research with such a vision. Only by doing so can sociology be thoroughly sinicized.” 24 What he meant by “hypothesis” was the theoretical framework established by international academia, and “our own verification” referred to the practice of fieldwork in China. According to Wu, a researcher must be familiar with theory and also be a hard-working practitioner. Huang Wenshan 黃文山 and Sun Benwen took a different approach to the same question. They argued that a sinicized sociology and anthropology would apply foreign theory selectively in accordance with Chinese reality. Chinese anthropologists should have a comprehensive understanding of foreign theory and then synthetically draw from it and even examine and correct it with Chinese reality. Such was the way to achieve scholarly independence.25 Cen Jiawu and Ma Changshou stressed Chinese characteristics and contended that although foreign ethnology and anthropology had their own values, due to her different national situation China needed to establish her own ethnology and anthropology that was fundamentally different from the Euro-American colonial tradition. This independent Chinese ethnology and anthropology would have a unique perspective, method, and content that reflected Chinese characteristics. Universal ethnological principles should be critically applied to fit Chinese particularities.26 Despite individual preferences, the above attitudes in some degree all take into consideration the two aspects of standardization and indigenization. The insight of these pioneering scholars shows that sinicization or indigenization of ethnology and anthropology cannot be separated from academic standardization. In their long-term research practice, Chinese ethnologists and anthropologists not only introduced Western theories and methods but also stressed Chinese ideas and knowledge. Wu Wenzao and Yang

58 · Wang Jianmin

Chengzhi invited professors specialized in traditional learning to give lectures; Pan Guangdan 潘光旦 applied Western concepts to native materials hoping to develop new ideas and theories. Anthropological research in different areas also formed specific regional features. Although I do not think it is appropriate to call these regional features “schools,” these studies help deal with specific regional problems and promote a sounder development of Chinese anthropology toward a pluralistic future. However, this is not to say that we do not need to rethink the assertion of sinicization or indigenization. Indigenization can be a pursuit of scholarly independence, but it can also be a slogan or even a weapon that f launts “Chinese characteristics” against scholarly dialogue, against finding a common language based on universal norms, and against any international academic ideas. We should avoid a research model that promotes a specific regional study but at the same time restricts broader academic possibilities. Therefore, in my opinion, academic universality and indigenization compliment each other. In the case of Chinese ethnology and anthropology, commonality and relativism are deemed equally important at a stage when the disciplinary construction is incomplete and international scholarly exchange is indispensable. Constant retrospection is required in the process of disciplinary development. Concerns about academic universality and research indigenization play a crucial role in the introduction of theories, in the discussion of ethnological and anthropological research methods, in the practice of fieldwork, in the establishment of ethnology and anthropology or related departments in universities, and in the study of disciplinary history. Currently, academic norms have not been firmly established, and the discipline is still not widely implemented. In the construction of an indigenized discipline, we should put more effort into the work of standardization to save the claim of indigenization from becoming an empty slogan. On the other hand, in the practice of more individualized fieldwork and theoretical investigations, we should also pay closer attention to issues of indigenization. In other words, a more pragmatic strategy to attain a compromise between universality and indigenization is: to make academic universality the general outline for the disciplinary construction of ethnology and anthropology, and to leave concerns about indigenization to scholars who have already mastered the academic norms as their ultimate scholarly pursuit. Translated by Hsiao-pei Yen

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Notes 1

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I sometimes use ethnology and anthropology interchangeably in this article while acknowledging that these two closely related disciplines historically had distinct meanings and emphases. Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培, “Shuo minzuxue” 說民族學 [On Ethnology], Yiban 一般 [In general] 1.12 (1926). Ling Chunsheng 凌純聲, Songhuajiang xiayou de Hezhe zu 松花江下游的赫哲 族 [The Goldi Tribe on the Lower Sungari River], 2 vols. (Nanjing: Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 1934), p. 1. Ling Chunsheng, “Minzuxue shidi diaocha fangfa” 民族學實地調查方法 [The field research methods of ethnology], in Minzuxue yanjiu jikan 民族學研究集 刊 [Ethnological Studies], Vol. 1 (Nanjing: Zhongshan wenhua jiaoyuguan, 1936). Ling Chunsheng, “Minzuxue yu xiandai wenhua” 民族學與現代文化 [Ethnology and modern culture], Guoli Zhongyang daxue rikan [The National Central University daily news] 873 (21 December 1932). See Wang Jianmin 王建民, Zhongguo minzuxue shi 中國民族學史 [The History of Ethnology in China], 2 vols. (Kunming: Yunnan jiaoyu chubanshe, 1997), Vol. 1, pp. 131–136. Ling Chunsheng, “Minzuxue shidi diaocha fangfa” [The field research methods of ethnology], in Minzuxue yanjiu jikan 民族學研究集刊 [Ethnological Studies], Vol. 1 (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshu guan, 1936), pp. 45–75. For more discussion, see Wang Jianmin, ed., 20 shiji Zhongguo renleixue minzuxue yanjiu fangfa yu fangfalun 20 世紀中國人類學民族學研究方法與方法 論 [The Research Methods and Methodology of Anthropology and Ethnology of China in the 20th Century] (Beijing: Minzu chubanshe, 2004). See Wang Jianmin, Zhongguo minzuxue shi, Vol. 1, pp. 167–185. Nankai University, “Fenke gailue yu geke kecheng” 分科概略與各科課程 [Introduction of subjects and curricula], in Tianjin Nankai daxue yilan 天津 南開大學一覽 [General introduction to Nankai University, Tianjin] (Tianjin: Nankai University, 1923). Wu Wenzao 吳文藻, “Bianzhengxue fafan” 邊政學發凡 [Introduction to the study of frontier politics], in Bianzheng gonglun 邊政公論 [Frontier Affairs] 1.5, 6 (Chongqing: Bianjiang gonglun she, 1942). The Editorial Board of the Newspaper of the Central Institute of Nationalities 中央民族學院院刊編輯部, “Yixiang youguan minzu gongzuo de zhongyao cuoshi” 一項有關民族工作的重要措施 [An important measure of ethnic affairs], Zhongyang minzu xueyuan yuankan 中央民族學院院刊 [Newspaper of the Central Institute of Nationalities] (Beijing) 12.5 (1956), p. 1. Yang Kun 楊堃, “Guanyu minzu he minzu gongtongti de jige wenti—jianyu Ya Hanzhang tongzhi he Fang Dezhao tongzhi shangque” 關於民族和民族共 同體的幾個問題— 兼與牙含章同志和方德昭同志商榷 [On issues of minzu and the minzu community: A discussion with Comrades Ya Hanzhang and

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13

14

15

16

17

18 19 20

21

22

23

Fang Dezhao], in Xueshu yanjiu [Academic Research], No. 1 (Yunnan: Yunnan xueshu yanjiu bianji shi, 1964). Only a few Western scholars received access to China; for example, the Australian anthropologist W. R. Geddes visited Jiang Village, Fei Xiaotong’s fieldwork site. The Research Center of the Central Institute of Nationalities, “Shemin diaocha xuyao jiejue de jige wenti” 畬民調查需要解決的幾個問題 [Several questions to be solved on the investigation of the She people], in Zhongyang minzu xueyuan yanjiubu dang’an [Documents of the Research Center of CIN], Vol. 4 (Beijing: CIN, 1957). Stevan Harrell, “The Nationalities Question and the Prmi Problem,” in Melissa J. Brown, ed., Negotiating Ethnicities in China and Taiwan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 274–296. Shi Jin 史進 , “Dui ‘minzuxue’ de zhiyi—xiang Yang Kun xiansheng qingjiao” 對「民族學」的質疑—向楊堃先生請教 [Questioning ethnology: A discussion with Yang Kun], in Xueshu yanjiu 學術研究 [Academic Research], Vol. 2 (Yunnan: Yunnan xueshu yanjiu bianji shi, 1964). Zhongguo da baike quanshu zongbianji weiyuanhui; Minzu bianji weiyuanhui 中國大百科全書總編輯委員會．民族編輯委員會 [The “Ethnology” Section of the Editorial Committee of the Chinese Encyclopedia and the Editorial Board of the Encyclopedia of China Press] eds., Zhongguo da baike quanshu (minzu) 中國大百科全書．民族 [Encyclopedia of China: Ethnology] (Beijing: Zhongguo da baike quanshu chubanshe, 1986), p. 321. Yang Kun 楊堃, Minzuxue gailun 民族學概論 [Introduction to Ethnology] (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1984), p. 1. Yang Qun 楊群, Minzuxue gailun 民族學概論 [Introduction to ethnology] (Shanghai: Shanghai shehui kexue chubanshe, 1998), p. 5. Huang Huikun 黄惠焜, “Zhongguo minzuxue de gaige yu fazhan” 中國民族 學的改革與發展 [The reform and the development of ethnology in China], in Huang Huikun, Jitan jiushi wentan 祭壇就是文壇 [Essays on Cultural Anthropology] (Beijing: Guoji wenhua chubanshe, 1993), pp. 87–103. Jiang Yingliang 江應梁, “Minzuxue zai Yunnan” 民族學在雲南 [Ethnology in Yunnan], in Minzu yanjiu 民族研究 [Ethnic studies] (Beijing) 1 (1981), pp. 236–250. Zhong Nian 鐘年, “Woguo minzuxue ying zhuanxiang dui wenhua de yanjiu” 我國民族學應轉向對文化的研究 [Ethnology in China should turn to cultural studies], Minzuxue tongxun 民族通訊 [Newsletter of ethnology] No. 58 (Beijing: Chinese Ethnological Society, 1987). Chen Guoqiang 陳國強, Zhongguo renleixue 中國人類學 [Anthropology in China] (Xiamen: Chinese Anthropological Society, 1996), pp. 130–132. For information on the current situation, see Wang Jianmin, “Lun Zhongguo changjing xia renleixue yu minzuxue de guanxi” 論中國場景下人類學與民族 學的關係 [On the relation of anthropology and ethnology in the Chinese

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24 25

26

context], Zhongguo renleixue pinglun 中國人類學評論 [Chinese Review of Anthropology], No. 1 (Beijing: Shijie tushu chuban gongsi, 2007). Wu Wenzao, “Introduction,” in Lin Yaohua 林耀華, Liangshan Yijia 涼山夷家 [The Lolo of Liangshan] (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1947). See Sun Benwen 孫本文, “Zhongguo shehuixue zhi guoqu ji weilai” 中國社會 學之過去及未來 [The past and future of Chinese sociology] (transcript of paper presented at The First Annual Conference of the Chinese Sociological Society held at Yenching University, 1930); Sun Benwen, “Jianshe benwei wenhua de biaozhun” 建設本位文化的標準 [The standard for constructing one’s own culture], in Zhongguo wenhua jianshe taolun ji 中國文化建設討論集 [Collection of the Discussion on Constructing China’s Own Culture] (Shanghai: Jingwei shuju, 1936), pp. 58–59; Sun Benwen, Jindai shehuixue fazhan shi 近 代社會學發展史 [A history of the development of modern sociolog y] (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1947); Huang Wenshan 黃文山, “Minzuxue yu Zhongguo minzu yanjiu” 民族學與中國民族研究 [Ethnology and ethnic studies in China], Minzuxue yanjiu jikan 民族學研究集刊 [Collection of anthropological studies], Vol. 1 (Nanjing: The Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, 1936), pp. 1–26. Cen Jiawu 岑家梧, “Xinan bianjiang minzu yishu yanjiu zhi yiyi” 西南邊疆民 族藝術研究之意義 [Meanings of the studies on the arts of the ethnic groups along the southwestern frontier], in Zeshan 責善 [Selecting the good] 2.3 (Chengdu: Qilu daxue guoxue yanjiusuo, 1941); Cen Jiawu, “Zhongguo minzu yu Zhongguo minzuxue” 中國民族與中國民族學 [Ethnic groups in China and Chinese ethnology] Nanfang 南方 [The South], 1.3, 4 (1946); Ma Changshou 馬長壽, “Renleixue zai woguo bianzheng shang de yingyong” 人 類學在我國邊政上的應用 [The application of anthropology in the frontier politics of China], Bianzheng gonglun 邊政公論 [Frontier Affairs] 6.3 (1947), pp. 24–28.

Chapter 3

The Synthesis School and the Founding of “Orthodox” and “Authentic” Sociology in Nationalist China: Sun Benwen’s Sociological Thinking and Practice Guannan Li

Sun Benwen 孫本文, a professor of sociology in Nationalist China, established the so-called “synthesis school” (zonghe xuepai 綜合學派) within Chinese sociology and was the most important contributor to the maturation of Chinese sociology in the 1930s. The “synthesis school” advocated a sociological approach that analyzed society as a hyper-individual (chao geren 超個人) structure and totality; as an accumulative integration of the past, the present, and the future; and as an organic entity that requires the integration of the plural/synthetic economic, geographical, psychological, and cultural perspectives. Rooted in American sociology and aiming to establish sociology as a new form of knowledge and academic discipline in China, the “synthesis school” gained acknowledgment from both Chinese academia and the Nationalist government as “orthodox” (zhengtong 正統) and “authentic” (zhengzong 正宗) sociology. By examining Sun Benwen’s sociological thinking and practice, this paper seeks to answer the major problematic behind this study—how and why did the “synthesis school” achieve its authoritative status in Nationalist China. As demonstrated below, the process of establishing “orthodoxy” and “authenticity” within academia was deeply intertwined with the founding of officially recognized academic institutions and organizations, the creation of academic classics, and the introduction and the sinicization of some of the most prominent sociological and anthropological theories from the United States. More importantly, as Sun’s case clearly shows, the maturation of Chinese sociology closely corresponded to the period of ideological consolidation launched by the newly founded nation-state in the early 1930s.

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My concerns with the politics of discipline building problematize a common approach among Sun’s biographers. It is worth noting here that most of these biographers were Sun’s former colleagues and students.1 Motivated by a shared sympathy, these biographies on the one hand offer an approbatory narrative of Sun’s wholehearted involvement with the mission to build Chinese sociology, and on the other hand criticize the anti-intellectual Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that wrongly suppressed Sun’s academic achievements. In a post-revolutionary context, Sun’s biographers strive to re-conceptualize Sun’s sociological practice as representing a non-political Chinese intellectual tradition that was unreasonably purged during the “ten-year disaster” (shinian haojie 十年浩 劫). However, as far as I am concerned, this depoliticized approach (which takes its rationale from the general intellectual context since the 1980s as Chinese academia has struggled to break out of its ideological constraints) still results in an ideological “blind spot,” which not only intentionally ignores the political overtones of Sun’s academic practice, but also arbitrarily severs the close connection between knowledge formation and power configuration that Michel Foucault powerfully suggests by his neologism “power-knowledge.” 2 By narrating Sun’s life story from a critical perspective, the first part of this paper focuses on Sun’s major intellectual developments and debts. The second part situates the discussion of Sun’s endeavors to establish an institutional structure for Chinese sociology in a historical and political context of disciplinary construction and nation-state building. The analysis of Sun’s sociological thinking comes last. As I demonstrate in this part, Sun’s often lengthy and detail-oriented representations of his sociological system (Sun was probably the most prolific writer of sociology at the time) not only aimed to reconfirm the disciplinary identity of Chinese sociology, but also tried to establish a direct dialogue with contemporary American sociology. This was an effort to validate the scientific nature of social sciences in a distinctive Chinese context.

Sun Benwen: An Intellectual Biography In 1892, Sun was born into a scholar’s family in Zhenze, a town near Tai Lake in Wujiang County, Jiangsu Province, a prosperous region on the lower Yangzi River. Sun’s grandfather and father only managed to pass the lowest level of the imperial examination and were undistinguished teachers in local schools.3 For this reason, in an autobiography written

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during the 1950s, Sun traced his class origin to “a family of education workers” (jiaoyu gongzuozhe jiating 教育工作者家庭).4 Although this was probably an effort to redefine his class status under Communist rule, Sun’s statement is mostly true. As a vigorous researcher, prolific writer, talented leader and organizer, and popular classroom teacher, Sun devoted his entire life to the development of China’s modern higher education system. Due to his meager family resources, Sun started his schooling in private classes taught by his father. The abolition of the civil service examination by the Qing dynasty introduced new changes in young Sun’s life. In 1906, he managed to get into a new-style elementary school. Three years later, Sun was admitted into the Jiangsu Two-Grade Normal School (Jiangsu liangji shifan xuetang 江蘇兩級師範學堂), better known as “Yishi,” the Chinese abbreviation for the First Jiangsu Normal School (Jiangsu diyi shifan xuexiao 江蘇第一師範學校) in Republican China. Motivated by the surging revolutionary tide, Sun Benwen imitated Sun Wen 孫文 (Sun Yat-sen)’s handwriting when signing his name because the two names coincidentally shared two identical characters.5 This was probably Sun Benwen’s only connection with China’s revolutionary movements. Majoring in education in the Yishi, Sun was not a “trouble-making” radical, but rather an outstanding student. As Sun’s biographers note, his most revolutionary act was to hold a new-style wedding ceremony in a village Christian church. On the wedding day, the groom and the bride signed their wedding certificate, exchanged wedding gifts, and expressed their appreciation to their guests.6 To use newly imported practices to transform the old ethos accords with Sun’s later understanding of societal and cultural transformations. According to Sun, the recreation of civilization would not be accomplished through violent revolution, but must rely on the gradual introduction of new elements from foreign cultures. In 1915, Sun graduated from the Yishi and became an elementary school teacher. Unsatisfied, he applied to the department of philosophy at Peking University (commonly called Beida in Chinese), China’s most reputable university and the radical center at the time. Interestingly, not unlike Sun Benwen’s Yishi experience, the radical atmosphere in Beida left little trace on his intellectual development. Unable to identify a connection with Beida radicalism, Sun’s biographers continued to praise his outstanding school records. As the top student in philosophy, Sun was elected class president and granted a tuition waiver.7 Indeed, Sun Benwen was largely indifferent toward radical movements at Beida. One of his

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extra-curricular activities was his participation in a marginal studentfaculty society. The Peking University Public Consumption Society (Beijing daxue xiaofei gongshe 北京大學消費公社) aimed to use pooled money from its members to buy cheap daily necessities and books and resell them to students.8 Sun’s life story suggests an interesting intellectual pattern. Although twice a student at China’s radical intellectual centers, Sun seems to have had no interest in radical movements. Instead, his insistence on academicism (particularly in his later sociopolitical practice) reflected his strong anti-radical political stance. No matter how minimal the impact of radicalism on Sun Benwen, his time at Beida turned out to be a turning point for his academic career. There for the first time, Sun Benwen read some Euro-American sociological theories in a sociology course taught by Professor Kang Baozhong 康 寳忠, a Japan-educated political scientist. According to historian Yang Yabin, before Kang, sociology was exclusively taught by Westerners in church schools by using foreign textbooks. Therefore, Kang’s sociology course at Beida was the first ever taught by a Chinese professor in a Chinese university.9 As Sun Benwen recalled later, “Professor Kang Baozhong offered clear and detailed explanations of Western sociology. His lectures were elegant and his insights were profound. Centered on Franklin Giddings’ sociological thinking, Professor Kang also established his own theoretical system.” 10 When Sun later studied in the United States, he went to Columbia University to take Giddings’ sociology courses. Because of Kang’s influence, Yang Yabin designates him as Sun Benwen’s “kindergarten teacher” (qimeng laoshi 啟蒙老師) of sociology.11 After graduating from Beida in the summer of 1918, Sun went back to his hometown to take another teaching job in a local primary school, hoping to support his family with his meager salary. After two years of unsatisfying work, in 1920 Sun decided to go to study in the United States, which was another turning point in Sun’s life. His outstanding examination scores helped him win a government scholarship. Arriving in the United States in 1921, Sun first went to the University of Illinois. While continuing to study education at Illinois, Sun gradually put more and more emphasis on sociology and social studies. Sun’s reorientation to sociology was probably due to his exposure to American sociological theories in graduate school. But most important of all, he was highly motivated by a utilitarian understanding of sociology as the doctrine of national salvation. This understanding was deeply rooted in the colonial context in which Euro-American social theories were introduced from

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the late nineteenth century. For instance, the late Qing reformers such as Kang Youwei 康有為 and Liang Qichao 梁啟超 embraced sociology or qunxue 群學 (literally, the study of the mass) as a tool of statecraft by which to organize and educate the Chinese masses. Later Yan Fu 嚴復 deployed a newly discovered nationalism to reinterpret sociology as the Western secret to obtaining national wealth and strength. In addition to confirming sociology’s academic and scientific nature in the 1930s, Sun continued this conventional line of thinking by stating in the preface to The Principles of Sociology (Shehuixue yuanli 社會學原理), his most influential sociological work: “Since the revolution, social organizations have undergone drastic transformations. We are now facing external threats and internal crises. Given the jeopardy of the Chinese nation ... sociology must shoulder the responsibility to develop Chinese culture and save the Chinese nation.” 12 After obtaining a master’s degree in sociology from the University of Illinois in June 1922, Sun Benwen went to Columbia University to pursue the study of sociology, social psychology, and social statistics. There Sun worked with Franklin Giddings on psychological sociology, with Robert Woodworth on social psychology, and with William Ogburn on cultural sociology.13 Later in the 1930s, psychological and cultural sociology would become two foundation stones for Sun’s own sociological system. For unknown reasons, Sun did not stay at Columbia to pursue his doctoral study with William Ogburn. This was despite the fact that Ogburn’s cultural theories apparently occupied the most prominent place within Sun’s synthetic system. Instead, from July 1924 on, Sun chose to pursue his doctoral degree at New York University under the guidance of Rudolph Michael Binder. Sun’s Ph.D. dissertation, “China in the American Press: A Study in the Basis and Trend of American Public Opinion toward China as Revealed in the Press,” analyzed American public opinion on China from a sociological and psychological perspective. In September 1925, after obtaining his doctorate, Sun undertook postdoctoral work at the University of Chicago. At Chicago, Sun studied with Robert E. Park and William I. Thomas. The Chicago School would provide the intellectual inspiration when Sun developed his own sociological system in the 1930s.14 After completing his studies in the United States, Sun Benwen returned to China where he held professorships in sociology at Chinese universities for more than fifty years. After a brief stay in Fudan University for two years, Sun worked and taught at the Central University (later

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renamed Nanjing University in Communist China) until he died in 1979. In Nanjing, Sun held numerous important academic and administrative positions within and outside of the university. In the early 1930s, he emerged as a promising Chinese sociologist who not only introduced mainstream sociological theories from the United States, but also made pioneering efforts to mature and sinicize sociology within Chinese academia. This is the topic to which I turn in the next two sections.

The Maturation of Chinese Sociology and Sun Benwen’s Synthesis Approach The establishment in 1930 of the China Sociology Association (Zhongguo shehuixue xuehui 中國社會學學會), a nation-wide academically-oriented sociology association, indicated the maturation of the field. During this process, Sun Benwen played a most significant role, initiating the idea, building professional networks, and providing long-term leadership to the association. Because of these prominent contributions, Sun is credited as the founder of Chinese sociology. By revisiting Sun’s academic activities, this section does not just aim to retell a story of individual ambition and its realization. More importantly, Sun’s academic activities testify to the history of Chinese sociology and its related questions. Chinese sociology as a modern discipline originated in the socialist movement that addressed social issues and problems, particularly for the under-privileged classes in Chinese society. This intertwined relationship between sociology (shehui xue 社會學) and socialism (shehui zhuyi 社會主 義) created a great challenge for Chinese sociologists (many of whom were not socialists) to differentiate sociology as an academic discipline from socialism as a radical ideology. A further complication was the fact that Chinese socialist sociologists often deployed sociological theories to promote their radical strategies of political and social revolution. This often motivated political authorities to suppress both sociology and socialism alike. In the early 1920s, the New Culture Movement spurred the development of Chinese socialist organizations. As Arif Dirlik suggests in his book on the origins of communism, during this period, anarchism served as a major intellectual vehicle for radicals to articulate their political and social concerns.15 Inspired by the anarchist movement that flourished at the time, radical students established a number of locally based socialist societies, aiming to “transform society” (gaizao shehui 改造社會) by

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attending to social problems. One of the most well-known student organizations was the Social Progress Society (shehui shijin hui 社會實進會). Rooted in student summer camps in Beijing, the Social Progress Society was established in 1914 by students and faculty in Beijing. Its tenets showed strong socialist/anarchist overtones, which emphasized social service and social transformation as the basis of close-knit small organizations. The Social Progress Society relied on both sociological and socialist methods to achieve its announced political goal of social revolution. For instance, the Society launched social surveys (the best-known survey of this kind was the investigation of Beijing rickshaw pullers from 1914 to 1915), delivered lectures to local groups, opened new newspapers to criticize social conditions, and established night schools to spread education. As the society journal Xin shehui 新社會 [New society] advocated, social transformation must rely on “bottom-up” (xiangxiade 向下 的), “gradual” (jianjinde 漸進的), and “thorough” (chedide 徹底的) means. The journal rallied some major Chinese radical figures such as Qu Qiubai 瞿秋白, Zheng Zhenduo 鄭振鐸, and Geng Jizhi 耿濟之, who advocated social revolution based on mass movements.16 As a result, sociology’s deep entanglement with the socialist movement created urgent needs for professional sociologists to define the boundary of sociology as an academic discipline. From the early 1920s on, the institutional development of sociology within China’s higher education system gradually changed the situation. In 1921, Xiamen University established a Department of History and Sociology, which was China’s first sociology department. After that, Yenching University, Fudan University, and Tsinghua University launched sociology programs one after another. According to Sun Benwen’s statistics, by 1930, sixteen universities had already established sociology departments. Among them, eleven were independent, and the other five were joint-departments either with history, political science, or anthropology.17 By the mid-1920s, sociology courses offered by Chinese higher education institutions numbered in the hundreds although these courses heavily focused on social theories and neglected the areas of social investigation, social services, and social legislation.18 Meanwhile, in the 1920s, even with the minimal focus on social investigation, Chinese and foreign social scientists continued to launch social surveys both in urban and rural areas.19 In 1926, the first specialized social investigation institute was founded in China. The Directorate of the China Education and Culture Fund (Zhonghua jiaoyu wenhua jijin dongshihui 中華教育文化基

70 · Guannan Li 金董事會) created a social investigation department which later developed into the Social Investigation Institute (Shehui diaochasuo 社會調查所).20

Aware of the urgent need to introduce Euro-American social theories, Chinese sociologists launched large-scale translation projects. American sociology occupied a dominant position among the newly translated theories due to the fact that a great number of returning students were educated in the United States.21 Simultaneous developments in institution building, theory introduction, and social implementation marked the bourgeoning professionalization of sociology in China. Without doubt, all these were made possible largely due to the returning students from Euro-American universities, who brought back a new notion of professionalism. In 1922, Yu Tianxiu 余天休, a US-trained sociologist and a professor of sociology from Beijing Normal University, established the first academic organization for Chinese sociologists—the China Sociology Association (Zhongguo shehuixue hui 中國社會學會), which shared its name with the association set up by Sun Benwen in 1930. Yu designed the membership to be open to professional and academic sociologists. The Association published its own journal—Shehuixue 社會學 [Sociology] through the Shanghai Commercial Publishing House (Shangwu yinshuguan 商務印書館). Facing financial difficulties, the journal was discontinued in August 1925 and completely stopped publication in November 1932. Meanwhile, Yu Tianxiu launched a sociology series but only managed to publish one book although his original intention was to include six works. Based in Beijing, the association was apparently facing a challenging political atmosphere under strict warlord rule. In such a repressive political environment, the sensitivity of the social issues or problems discussed and sociology’s implicit connection with radicalism all emerged as serious obstacles to the future of the association. Moreover, it was organizationally weak and poorly funded. Centered on Yu, who was the only editor for the journal, the association and the journal later moved to Xi’an and Ji’nan, even less favorable locations than Beijing, where Yu Tianxiu busied himself with the founding of new universities.22 The founding of the Nanjing government and the semblance of unification achieved in 1928 opened new opportunities for the development of Chinese sociology. While the new regime urgently needed to consolidate its ideology and the state, the academic efforts in the name of an “orthodox” and “authentic” discipline showed a similar “consolidating”

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tendency as sociologists strove to establish academic authority and canons approved by the government. This attempt to distinguish social scientific theories from “heterodox” ideologies (particularly communism) helped to create an “authentic” lineage of knowledge that could be traced back to their teachers in prominent academic institutions in Europe and America. In 1928, the Nanjing government took a gigantic step and set up the Academia Sinica (Zhongyang yanjiuyuan 中央研究院), the most prestigious research institution in China, to conduct government-sponsored research activities. In addition to Institutes of Chronometry, Meteorology, History, and Linguistics, the Academia Sinica also established an Institute of Social Sciences with four departments of Ethnography, Sociology, Economics, and Law.23 The new national sociology association was thus founded in a favorable political climate. Sun Benwen played the most significant role. In September 1928, at a welcome banquet arranged for the return of Wu Jingchao 吳景超, a recent sociology Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, Sun proposed to invite professors of sociology in Shanghai to organize a regional sociology association. The idea was very well received by the dinner guests. Under the sponsorship of Sun Benwen, Wu Jingchao, and Wu Zelin 吳澤霖 (both of whom were Sun’s old acquaintances from the United States), the Southeast Sociology Association (Dongnan shehui xuehui 東南社會學會) was established. Sun Benwen was elected as the only regular member of the standing committee. In July 1929, with the support of his American-educated sociologist friends, Sun launched the association journal, Shehuixuekan 社會學刊 [Journal of sociology]. With its initial success, Sun felt a strong need to develop the organization into a national sociology association. After making contacts with some prominent sociologists in Beijing and Northeast China, Sun restructured the Southeast Sociology Association into the China Sociology Association. On 8 February 1930, more than one hundred sociologists and other delegates celebrated the founding of the national sociology organization and elected Sun Benwen as the association president. After the election, Sun presided over the first annual meeting in which sixteen sociology papers were presented. From 1930 to 1949, the Association held nine annual meetings, even during the period of the Anti-Japanese War (1937–1945) and the Civil War (1945–1949). 24 The first eight annual meetings produced around 150 sociology papers in total. Meanwhile, Sun adopted the Shehuixuekan as the association journal and served as its chief editor.

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From 1930 to the late 1940s, the journal managed to publish six volumes and twenty issues and was one of the most successful and important sociology journals in China.25 Sun’s outstanding organizational talent and his established academic status won him the long-term leadership of the association.26 As historian Han Minghan suggests, “Sun Benwen was one of the trailblazers (kaituozhe 開拓者) of Chinese sociology.” He was “one of the most influential figures in the field of sociology within Chinese academia.” 27 Due to these leading positions, Sun was widely acknowledged by the sociology profession as the “theoretical authority” (lilun quanwei 理論權威) in the field. As Sun’s student Guo Ji 郭驥 recalled, he ran out of time while preparing for the admission exam to the sociology department at Central University, and so he quickly scanned Sun’s book, Sociology ABC (Shehuixue ABC 社會學 ABC) on a train. To his surprise, almost all the questions in the test were based on Sun’s book. He won the sixth position among more than thirty candidates.28 Sun Benwen’s leading academic position was firmly built upon his efforts to create the “canons” of Chinese sociology in an era when sociology was relatively new to China. In 1929, Sun invited some of the most prominent Chinese sociologists to launch The Series of Sociology (Shehuixue congshu 社會學叢書). As Sun noted in the preface of the series, The immature development of Chinese social sciences and China’s urgent mission of social construction require a systematic series of sociological works. These works will provide a general knowledge of social behaviors not only for the common people’s reference, but also for social scientists’ research and social workers’ efforts at social construction.29

Aiming to produce a “comprehensive” and “systematic” knowledge of sociology, the series published fifteen books, three by Sun Benwen, before it had to be discontinued in 1939. The series covered general sociology as well as cultural, psychological, economic, biological, and geographic sociology. For the convenience of teaching sociology in college classrooms, in 1931 Sun compiled the works published thus far into a single college textbook, The Outline of Sociology (Shehuixue dagang 社會學大綱). In 1935, based on the previous book, Sun brought forward his own sociological theory and system in a new book, The Principles of Sociology (Shehuixue yuanli 社會學原理). The new book was designed to be more comprehensive, providing a general introduction to sociology by covering its basic concepts, methodology, and sub-categories. In 1940, the Education Ministry approved it as the college textbook for the study of sociology. It

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went through eleven editions and was the most authoritative textbook for sociology in Republican China. Han Minghan claims, “The Principles of Sociology was the magnum opus of Chinese sociology within academia during the 1920s and the 1930s.” 30 More importantly, this book won fame for the “Synthesis School” or the “Monolithic School” (zhengti xuepai 整體學派). In a paper entitled “The Basic Standpoints of Sociology” (Shehuixue de jiben guandian 社會 學的基本觀點), published in 1945, Sun characterized some major features of the synthesis approach. According to Sun, the “synthesis school” deploys a “monolithic” (zhengtide 整體的) approach to treat society as an undivided whole and a closed structure. Consequently, society should be the basic analytical unit in sociology. Moreover, because society is the aggregation of individuals, the synthesis school particularly observes and analyzes inter-personal behavior and relationships. Furthermore, it demands an organic approach to the study of society because the interconnectedness among individuals has transformed society into an organic entity. Finally, the synthesis approach requires both historical and temporal examination of society’s evolution because every social phenomenon has a historical dimension.31 Behind this synthesis approach stands a worldview that was fundamentally contradictory to the basic conceptions of Marxist sociology. By emphasizing society’s monolithic structure, the synthesis school strongly rejected the concept of class, which was deployed by Marxist sociologists to break down the integration or the totality of society. Believing in slow, gradual, and accumulative change, the synthesis approach opposed social revolution and embraced gradualism as the only means to achieve social transformation. More importantly, regarding itself as a synthetic science that aimed to establish universal laws of society through the employment of economic, psychological, geographical, biological, and cultural methods, the synthesis school problematized a singular Marxist approach that prioritized economic over all other factors for explaining the complexity of social phenomenon. Interestingly, when Sun Benwen was forced to recant his sociological ideas in the 1950s, he noted the following: Bourgeois sociology is an idealist theory (weixinzhuyi lilun 唯心主義理論) opposed to Marxism and Leninism ... Bourgeois sociologists never discuss certain fundamental questions such as production, productivity, relationships of production, and society’s economic foundation. Instead, they are [wrongly] preoccupied with the analysis of all kinds of geographical, biological,

74 · Guannan Li psychological, and cultural elements that may have an impact on social phenomenon.32

For the same reason, when Sun Benwen deployed the synthesis approach to review contemporary Chinese sociology in the 1940s, he simply disqualified Marxist sociology as a scientific theory and eliminated any Marxist works from his list of “authentic” sociology. For Sun, Marxist sociology was political propaganda that was more about “-isms” or ideology and its stated political goals of social revolution rather than a scientific theory. Not surprisingly, given this criteria, Sun’s Contemporary Sociology in China (Zhongguo dangdai shehuixue 中國當代社會學), the most comprehensive and authoritative discussion of contemporary Chinese sociology before the 1940s, included no works of Marxist sociology. Sun explained his standards for selection in the preface: “This book focuses on authentic (chunzheng 純正) sociological theory and its application. Any works that are associated with propaganda have not been included.... Materialist works do not belong to authentic sociology. For this reason, any theory that is based on this kind of perspective is not included in this book.” 33 Sun’s open statement of academic rigor or scientific principles represented his vigorous attempt to establish a disciplinary identity for sociology in order to address the long-standing confusion between sociology and socialism in China. Sun’s notion of authenticity with his reference to science revealed his wholehearted embrace of a positivistic methodological stance typical of American sociology. According to Roscoe C. Hinkle, major American theorists were more or less favorably disposed to this positivistic epistemological-methodological stance from 1915 to 1950 although the basic features of a common scientific method differed significantly before and after World War I.34 Exported from the US to China, these notions of objectivity, observability, and verifiability could not only claim universality for application to the particulars of Chinese sociological studies, but also disqualify those unorthodox or “heretical” ideologies. Contemporary Marxist historians find Sun’s interpretation of the history of Chinese sociology problematic, disturbing, and unacceptable. Han Minghan denounces Sun as follows: Although Marxist sociology neither held a dominant position within academia nor was recognized as an “authentic” (zhengzong) [form of] study, it resonated with the primary spirit of cultural and intellectual circles, particularly those corresponding to the Marxist school within the area of historical study. In other words, Marxist sociology resonated with the

The Synthesis School and the Founding of “Orthodox” and “Authentic” Sociology · 75 revolutionary situation in China, and it corresponded to the revolutionary trends among the Chinese intelligentsia. For this reason, Marxist sociology was preponderant over other sociological ideas. It was sociology’s mainstream. It was authentic sociology.35

This variation in standards helped justify completely different notions of authenticity among Chinese sociologists. For Sun Benwen, authenticity served to confirm US-produced positivism and officially approved academicism. But for Marxist historians, once the communist victory in 1949 had installed a new concept of legitimacy, authenticity was accordingly redefined as “authentically” Marxist and revolutionary. Either way, the newly constructed power configuration of legitimacy and authenticity must be contextualized within the nation-states’ distinctive ideologies. The orthodox and authentic status enjoyed by Sun’s synthesis school clearly reflects the dominance of American sociology in China before 1949. In the 1930s, the sociological works translated into Chinese were mostly texts by leading American scholars. Chinese sociology students from prominent American research institutions held more faculty positions than did those trained in European schools. Columbia and Chicago graduates took up the largest percentage of professorships. According to one statistic, even China’s American Christian schools produced more sociology graduates than their Chinese counterparts.36 Unsurprisingly, many leading Chinese sociologists were trained in the United States. Some of the best-known names included Sun Benwen, Xu Shilian 許仕廉, Yang Kaidao 楊開道, Wu Zelin, Huang Wenshan 黃文山, Qian Zhenya 錢 振亞, Liu Qiang 劉強, Wu Wenzao 吳文藻, and Wu Jingchao. Scholarly efforts to establish Chinese sociology were indeed a selective process of importing, transplanting, and maintaining the hegemonic nature of a particular type of knowledge production within the academy. The dominance of Sun’s synthesis school within Chinese sociology is also revealed through Sun’s intimate relationship with the Nanjing government. In addition to serving as the head of the sociology department at Central University for more than twenty years (1929–1949), Sun Benwen took numerous administrative positions within and outside of the university. From May 1930 to December 1931, he served as the head of the Department of Higher Education (Gaodeng jiaoyusi 高等教育司) in the Ministry of Education (Jiaoyu bu 教育部). From September 1932 to February 1934, Sun was the Provost of Central University. From September 1941 to February 1944, Sun was the president of the Central

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Normal Institute (Zhongyang shifan xueyuan 中央師範學院). From 1942 to 1947, Sun held a distinguished professorship “appointed by the Ministry of Education” (Bupin jiaoshou 部聘教授). Meanwhile, Sun also taught sociology at the Central Political School (Zhongyang zhengzhi xuexiao 中央政治學校), the civil counterpart of the Huangpu Military Academy whose major goal was to produce civil and party officials. In addition to offering regular sociology courses, Sun Benwen also ran training sessions for governmental officials. As a member of the Examination Committee in the Examination Yuan, Sun designed and graded examinations to select officials for the Nanjing government. Sun’s expertise in social issues also won him the position of design commissioner (sheji weiyuan 設計委員), designed to provide professional advice to the Ministry of Society (Shehui bu 社會部).37

From Cultural Sociology to the Synthesis School Generally speaking, Sun’s sociological thinking shifted its focus from cultural sociology in the late 1920s to the synthesis approach in the 1930s and 1940s. A list of Sun’s published works clearly reflects his theoretical reorientation. From 1926 to 1930, the four years after his return to China, Sun was dedicated to introducing American cultural sociology into the burgeoning sociology field in China. Among a number of prominent American sociologists and anthropologists Sun introduced to China, William Ogburn, his teacher at Columbia, loomed large in his early sociological writing. During this period, Sun published eight books: Cultural Theory in Sociology (Shehuixue shang zhi wenhualun 社會學上之文化論) (1927), Social Problems (Shehui wenti 社會問題) (1927), Sociology ABC (1928), Malthusianism ABC (Renkoulun 人口論 ABC) (1928), Culture and Society (Wenhua yu shehui 文化與社會) (1928), Fields of Sociology (Shehuixue de lingyu 社會學的領域) (1929), Society’s Cultural Foundation (Shehuide wenhua jichu 社會學文化基礎) (1929), and Social Evolution (Shehui bianqian 社會變遷) (1929). Dwelling on different aspects of sociology, all these works were centered on the sociological and anthropological notions of culture and how they could be used to conceptualize sociological boundaries, articulate sociological problematics, and apply sociological theory to explain social problems. This was the first stage of Sun’s intellectual development. After 1930, Sun’s theoretical concerns took an important turn. In the process of compiling The Outline of Sociology, which was based on the

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fifteen most influential sociological works at the time, Sun managed to develop a new system that could incorporate and synthesize other prominent sociological theories with multiple emphases on psychological, geographical, biological, and cultural aspects of social phenomenon. After publishing his encyclopedic The Principles of Sociology in 1935, Sun established the theoretical groundwork for the synthesis school. By examining Sun’s theoretical constructions and reorientation, this section analyzes Sun’s intellectual indebtedness to his American advisors and his creative efforts to establish a new sociological system. As Roscoe Hinkle suggests in his review of American sociological theory from 1915 to 1950, the introduction of the concept of culture was probably one of the most important intellectual changes that occurred in the 1920s and 1930s and was one of the major theoretical alterations in American sociology.38 Sun Benwen and other US-trained Chinese sociologists (such as Huang Wenshan, a professor of sociology and the founder of “culturology” in the 1930s) shared a common understanding of some basic characteristics of culture as a universal phenomenon and the most important sociological concept. Hinkle summarizes these basic features of culture, based on his reading of some of the most prominent American sociologists of the time, such as Charles A. Ellwood, Frank H. Hankins, William Ogburn, E. T. Hiller, Malcolm W. Willey, E. B. Reuter, Hornell Hart, Kimball Young, and L. L. Bernard. “Culture is the common adaptive pattern worked out to provide for aggregate adaptation and survival in relation to a common human nature in a common environment.” “Culture is an attribute of human groups.... It is the totality of common and accepted (learned) ways of thinking and acting in a group.” “Culture possesses an inter- or transgenerational duration or temporality. It is the persistence of learned behavior or activity from one generation to another.” And most importantly, “Any particular culture is asserted to become more or less an integrated (interrelated, interconnected, and interdependent) whole, totality, or system.” 39 Following along these lines, Chinese sociologists such as Sun Benwen and Huang Wenshan embraced culture/Chinese culture as a collective accomplishment achieved through human interaction with the natural environment, as a hyper-individual structure and totality, and as an accumulative integration of the past, the present, and the future. As Sun remarked in Society’s Cultural Foundation, “Culture is the result of human beings’ adjustment to their environment .... Culture is the collective appellation (zongming 總名) for all social activities in society.... Culture is indeed a complex whole, including both

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material (such as clothing and palaces) and non-material matters.” 40 These characteristics show Sun’s sociological conception of culture to be fundamentally different from radical notions of Chinese culture. An orthodox Marxist understanding of culture would denounce the totality of culture by prioritizing proletarian over elite culture, reject the role of the past in forming modernity, and attribute more value to society’s material foundation than to non-material culture. These differences would spur one of the most heated intellectual controversies about Chinese culture in the 1930s.41 Most prominent among Sun Benwen’s early sociological thinking was his employment of William Ogburn’s cultural theory to explain social change. Embracing the dualistic nature of culture, Sun accepted Ogburn’s commonly invoked dichotomy between material and nonmaterial culture. According to Sun, the only difference between cultural and non-cultural phenomenon was involvment with human action. Consequently, all social phenomena connected with humanity were cultural phenomenon, and vice versa.42 Moreover, Sun argued that social behavior was determined by both biological and cultural forces. As biological forces or man’s true nature (benxing 本性) remained unchanged, it was man’s learned cultural capabilities and characteristics that promoted change in social behavior.43 Consequently, cultural change was the true impetus for social transformation. For this reason, if one excluded the biological change of human populations, social change was indeed the equivalent of cultural change.44 According to Sun, social problems were prominent signs of social/ cultural change. Quoting William Ogburn’s theory of “cultural lag,” Sun believed that social problems occurred in a period of cultural maladjustment which resulted from the introduction of new (foreign) cultures. In the context of China’s deep political, social, and cultural crises in the 1930s, Sun seems not to have condemned the invasion of foreign cultures but rather to have argued that their introduction was necessary to transform social attitudes and initiate adjustments to China’s uneven cultural development.45 In this sense, as a social scientist, Sun’s solution for national salvation was unique. For Sun, China’s current crises were just temporary symptoms of cultural maladjustment, which could be overcome through slow, gradual, and accumulative changes of both material and non-material culture.46 This position was thus not only different from Chinese eugenicists’ proposal to transform the Chinese race, but

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also fundamentally opposed to Marxist social scientists’ advocacy of remaking society through violent social revolution.47 However, in the early 1930s, in the process of developing his own sociological system and structure, Sun gradually moved away from William Ogburn’s culturalist theory. Unlike Huang Wenshan, who believed that the study of culture could provide a separate domain of intellectual inquiry and thus advocated the founding of “culturology” (wenhuaxue 文化學), Sun Benwen rejected the concept of culture as the foundation of a complete theory. His intellectual reorientation seems to correspond to a similar theoretical development in American sociology. As Hinkle points out, although “the notion of culture had become widely diffused and accepted throughout American sociology in general and in sociological theory in particular in the mid to late 1930s,” it “never became the basis for the development of a distinctive orientation or theory.” 48 Sun probably faced the same sort of theoretical difficulties in designating culture as a separate sociological domain so as to justify the independent intellectual existence of sociology. In developing the synthesis approach, Sun perceived that it was insufficient to identify sociology as the study of culture because the concept of culture could often indicate a narrow sociological domain that was often deeply entangled with—and thus hard to differentiate from—the biological, geographical, psychological, and social. Both Sun and American sociologists reached the conclusion that “the entire domain of culture is divided among the various social sciences, with no residual remaining that could constitute an additional subject matter of inquiry for sociology.” 49 For this reason, in order to establish a natural-science model of the discipline, Sun held that sociology should deploy the synthesis approach to study society as a unified whole or system, establish general laws of social phenomenon, analyze inter-personal and inter-group relationships, promote social welfare for the entire society, and, most important of all, deploy a comprehensive geographical, biological, psychological, cultural, and social perspective to analyze social behavior. Only through these intellectual inquiries, could a generalized independent domain of sociology be confirmed.50 In other words, Sun Benwen probably found the concept of culture increasingly at odds with his ambition to make large-scale generalizations about society or create a universal theory of society. Because the concept of culture was substantially an importation from American anthropology, sociology’s devotion to the general laws of social structure always

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provoked conflicts with specific, particularistic, and historically-oriented inquiries pursued by the anthropological study of individual cultures.51 This dilemma is particularly illuminating in the Chinese context, where the boundaries between anthropology and sociology were often blurred. The commonly acknowledged distinctions between anthropology and sociology in Europe and America were not applicable to the Chinese case simply because the subject matter (Chinese society and culture) obscured or transcended the division between contemporary society and seemingly backward societies that informed the Euro-American distinction. Chinese social scientists thus reached a solution that on the one hand assigned the analysis of contemporary civilized societies to sociology while on the other hand made the study of China’s minorities the province of ethnology (minzuxue 民族學). As Arif Dirlik argues in the introduction to this volume, “The inside/outside distinction that marked the division of labor between sociology and anthropology in Euro/ America was much less applicable to social research in China where both were contained within the same political, if not necessarily the economic, social or cultural, space.” Sun’s abandonment of the concept of culture was his definitive gesture to confirm a disciplinary identity for sociology. In The Principles of Sociology, Sun began his sociological system with a discussion of the concept of “social behavior” (shehui xingwei 社會行為). As suggested by Sun, individual social behavior was the basic “unit” (danwei 單位) of complex social phenomenon. Its extensive interconnections and syntheses formed the totality of “social life” (shehui shenghuo 社 會生活). 52 Consequently, because of the fundamental nature of social behavior, Sun conceptualized sociolog y as “the science of social behavior.” 53 According to Sun, “By analyzing all phenomena that were associated with social behavior, sociology aims to characterize social behavior’s common features, examine its interrelationships, and establish the general laws of its transformation.” 54 The concept of “social behavior” now became the foundation that Sun used to define the basic meaning of sociology. Sun’s “social behavior” originated from Robert Park’s “collective behavior” (gongtong xingwei 共同行為). In acknowledging his intellectual indebtedness to Park, his teacher at Chicago and one of the most influential figures in the Chicago School, Sun indicated that he used the two concepts synonymously. As Sun noted, “According to Park, sociology is the science of collective behavior.” Not unlike his concept of social behavior, Park’s

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collective behavior “refers to the inter-individual interactions and the inter-group (tuanti yu tuanti jian 團體與團體間) activities.” To further support Park, Sun quoted Eduard C. Lindeman, an American educator, and Leopold von Wiese, a German sociologist, and concluded that von Wiese’s concept of “inter-human behavior” was intended to convey the same idea. It was only because the concept of social behavior was more general than collective behavior that Sun advocated the adoption of “social behavior” as sociology’s subject matter. In addition to its generality and universality, “social behavior” was obviously more conceptually sociological than Ogburn’s “culture.” Because of these advantages, Sun deployed it as an organizing theme to divide his entire sociological system into five areas: 1) discussion of the elements that may affect the formation of social behavior; 2) discussion of the process indicated by social behavior; 3) discussion of the institutions of social behavior; 4) discussion of the functions of social behavior; 5) discussion of the content and the direction of social behavior’s transformation.55 Within this new system, the concept of culture was only one of the four elements (geographical, biological, psychological, and cultural) that equally affect the formation of social behavior. As Sun remarked in Contemporary Chinese Sociology, “I not only emphasize the importance of culture, but also believe that psychological elements are equally important. Moreover, geographical and biological elements should not be downplayed.” 56 Only in the discussion of how culture possibly shaped and transformed social behavior did Sun continue to adopt Ogburn’s dualistic notion of material and non-material culture and employ “cultural maladjustment” to explain social transformation. The concept of “social behavior” contains strong psychological implications. It should be noted that social psychology had been a major focus of Sun’s studies in the United States. At Columbia, Sun took Franklin Giddings’ course on social consciousness in primitive societies and also worked with Robert S. Woodworth, an influential American psychologist and the head of the psychology department at the time. At New York University, he studied advanced psychology with Robert McDougal. Later, when he transferred to Chicago and continued to study sociology and social psychology, Sun was particularly interested in Robert Park’s theories of “collective behavior.” 57 Sun’s strong emphasis on social behavior led Chen Dinghong 陳定閎, one of Sun’s closest students, to conclude that, “To a great extent, Sun’s sociology is the psychological school within sociology. It is psychological sociology. With his continual

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emphasis on psychology, the early Sun put more focus on culturalist theory. But after the middle 1930s, he started to place more emphasis on psychological sociology.” 58 As far as I am concerned, Sun was not interested in developing a specific type of sociology as Chen claims. On the contrary, Sun’s intention was to build a generalized sociological system with the purpose of attaining recognition for sociology as an independent social science. For this reason, Sun carefully addressed another potential dilemma due to the close connection between the concept of social behavior and the established field of psychology. Sun explained the confusion over the boundary between sociology and social psychology as caused by a common misunderstanding: People believe that behavior is the subject matter of psychology. [By extension,] social behavior should be the subject matter of social psychology. If sociology also studies social behavior, it will cause great confusion. Actually, this belief is not true.... It is alright to say that behavior is the subject matter of psychology. However, psychology studies individual behavior while sociology studies social behavior. Their disciplinary boundary and starting point are completely different. Social psychology falls between psychology and sociology. It studies individual behavior in society. Its focus is individual. Its emphasis is on the interrelationship BETWEEN individual and society. In contrast, sociology focuses on society. It emphasizes interindividual relationships and inter-group activities WITHIN society.59

Because of this, social behavior became “the field monopolized by sociology” and sociology aimed for “general laws of social behavior.” According to Sun, this disciplinary identity would fundamentally demarcate sociology’s independent intellectual inquiry from those of other social sciences, just as economics focused on economic behavior, political science mainly examined political behavior, and so forth. More importantly, “because the subject matter for sociology is more general and broader than the inquiries of other social sciences,” Sun concluded that “sociology is a general social science (putong shehui kexue 普通社會科學) while economics, political science, ethics, and jurisprudence are special social sciences (teshu shehui kexue 特殊社會科學).” 60 Furthermore, by comparing, analyzing, and synthesizing the data on social behavior, sociology would provide a systematic and verifiable form of knowledge. This capability would enshrine sociology in the halls of science as Sun believed that “the scientific nature of sociology is indistinguishable from [that of] physics, chemistry, and biology.” 61

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Through positivist reasoning, Sun not only confirmed the disciplinary boundary of sociology in reference to other social sciences, but also verified sociology’s scientific nature. For this reason, Sun designated his sociological system as the synthesis school or the “systematic sociology” (xitong shehuixue 系統社會學).62 Any other designations such as the psychological school or the cultural school would simply miss the point. Through these theoretical exercises, Sun’s sociological thinking and practice was unquestionably one of the most significant steps toward the maturation of Chinese sociology in the 1930s.

Conclusion Sun’s intellectual trajectory as reviewed in this paper demonstrates a common theme of knowledge borrowing, reconstruction, and resettlement in the context of constructing a new modern discipline of sociology in 1930s China. But what made this process unique was his extraordinary success. Sun’s legacy is still visible. He is probably the most important founding figure in the history of sociology. He played a role in building the organizational and institutional structure for Chinese sociology; in professionalizing the nascent field through the publication of professional journals, sociology cannons, and college textbooks; and, most important of all, in theoretically validating the disciplinary identity and boundaries of sociology. However, this paper is more than a laudatory revisiting of Sun’s intellectual legacy. Sun’s academic career was deeply involved with the history of power-knowledge in a Foucauldian sense. The orthodox and authentic status enjoyed by his synthesis school was built upon a vigorous purge of unorthodox, heretical, and false sociology in academia. His authority was based on his constant reference to a positivist notion of scientism, a EuroAmerican imported knowledge production pattern, and an often implicit authorization and validation by the nation-state.

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Notes 1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

10

11 12

See Sun Shiguang 孫世光, ed., Kaituo yu jicheng: Shehuixuejia Sun Benwen 開 拓與集成：社會學家孫本文 [Path-breaking and succession: Sociologist Sun Benwen] (Nanjing: Nanjing daxue chubanshe, 2001). This volume is the most recent and comprehensive treatment of Sun Benwen’s life, education, intellectual development, and sociological thinking and practice. Sun Shiguang, the volume editor and Sun Benwen’s son, gathered a group of his father’s former colleagues, students, and researchers who contributed twelve memorial essays and research articles on Benwen. In the volume, Sun Shiguang also included some of the most important selections from Ben-wen’s sociological works and attached a chronological biography of his father. There is no thorough study of Sun Benwen’s sociological thinking and practice in the English language although both earlier and recent scholarship has taken a positive view of Sun’s important roles in the development of Chinese sociology. For example, see Siu-lun Wong, Society and Socialism in Contemporary China (London, Boston, and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd, 1979), pp. 1–36. Sun’s under-representation is partially attributed to his being overshadowed by Fei Xiaotong, another prominent Chinese sociologist. Unlike Sun’s rather theoretical and often overarching theoretical system, Fei established his fame through a unique empirical representation of Chinese peasant society. For a representative study of Fei, see R. David Arkush, Fei Xiaotong and Sociology in Revolutionary China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981). See Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punishment: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage: 1995). Ming Qiang 明強, “Sun Benwen xiansheng pingzhuan” 孫本文先生評傳 [An analytical biography of Mr. Sun Benwen], in Kaituo yu jicheng, pp. 5–6. Sun Benwen, “Zizhuan” 自傳 [Autobiography], in Kaituo yu jicheng, p. 3. Ming, “Sun Benwen xiansheng pingzhuan,” p. 7. Ibid. Ibid., p. 10. Ibid. Yang Yabin 楊雅彬, Zhongguo shehuixueshi 中國社會學史 [A history of Chinese sociology] (Ji’nan: Shandong renmin chubanshe, 1987), p. 32. Also see Han Minghan 韓明漢, Zhongguo shehuixueshi [A history of Chinese sociology] (Tianjin: Tianjin renmin chubanshe, 1987), pp. 35–36. Quoted in Chen Dinghong 陳定閎, “Enshi banniansong—mianhuai Zhongguo shehuixue de kaituozhe” 恩師百年頌─緬懷中國社會學的開拓者孫 本文教授 [Eulogy to my teacher: Memorializing the founder of Chinese sociology], in Kaituo yu jicheng, p. 41. Yang, Zhongguo shehuixueshi, p. 32. Sun Benwen, preface to Shehuixue yuanli 社會學原理 [The principles of sociology] (Shanghai: Shangwu yishuguan, 1935).

The Synthesis School and the Founding of “Orthodox” and “Authentic” Sociology · 85 13 14 15 16

17 18

19

20 21

22 23 24

25

26

27 28

Sun Shiguang, “Sun Benwen xueshu nianpu” 孫本文學術年譜 [Sun Benwen: An academic biography], in Kaituo yu jicheng, p. 249. Ibid., pp. 249–250. See Arif Dirlik, The Origins of Chinese Communism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). For a more detailed discussion of the Social Progress Society, please see Yang, Zhongguo shehuixueshi, pp. 39–45 and Han, Zhongguo shehuixueshi, p. 58. Yang, Zhongguo shehuixueshi, p. 53; Han, Zhongguo shehuixueshi, p. 55. According to research by Xu Shilian 許仕廉, a professor of sociology at the time, between 1926 and 1927, sixty Chinese universities offered 308 sociology courses. Most of them focused on social theories and social problems. Only thirty-eight courses were about social investigation, social services, and social legislation. See Yang, Zhongguo shehuixueshi, p. 54. Some of the most prominent examples included the investigation of Fenghuang village in Chaozhou, Guangdong province; the social survey of living costs in the countryside in North China; and the expanded study of rickshaw pullers. See Yang, Zhongguo shehuixueshi, pp. 56–57. Ibid., p. 58. Some examples of the translated works included Edward C. Hayes’ Introduction to the Study of Sociology (New York and London: D. Appleton and Company, 1915), Frank W. Blackmar’s Outlines of Sociology (New York: The Macmillan Company, [c1915]; first published 1905 as The Elements of Sociology), and Emory S. Bogardus’ Introduction to Sociology (Los Angeles: University of Southern California Press, [1917]). Ibid., p. 54. Han, Zhongguo shehuixueshi, p. 59. Yang, Zhongguo shehuixueshi, pp. 103–104. During the Anti-Japanese War, the seventh annual meeting was held separately in Chongqing, Chengdu, and Kunming, three major cities in the Nationalist-controlled areas. During the Civil War between the Chinese Communist Party and the Guomindang, the eighth and ninth annual meetings were also held separately in Nanjing, Peking, Guangzhou, and Chengdu. See Han, Zhongguo shehuixueshi, pp. 148–150; Ming, “Sun Benwen xiansheng pingzhuan,” pp. 16–17. The journal was discontinued twice during the Anti-Japanese War and the Civil War. See Ming, “Sun Benwen xiansheng pingzhuan,” p. 17; Han, Zhongguo shehuixueshi, p. 106. Sun was elected as president (lishizhang 理事長) of the China Sociology Association at the first, second, and seventh annual meetings. See Yang, Zhongguo shehuixueshi, p. 112. Han, Zhongguo shehuixueshi, p. 118. See Guo Ji 郭驥, “Sun Benwen laoshi de fengfan” 孫本文老師的風範 [Prof. Sun Benwen’s style], in Kaituo yu jicheng, p. 59.

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33

34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

42 43 44 45 46 47

48 49 50 51 52 53

Sun Benwen, preface to Shehui de wenhua jichu 社會的文化基礎 [Society’s cultural foundation] (Shanghai: Shiji shuju, 1929). Han, Zhongguo shehuixueshi, p. 123. See Yang, Zhongguo shehuixueshi, p. 151. Sun Benwen, “Guanyu xiandai zichanjieji shehuixue lilun de benzhi he neirong” 關於現代資產階級社會學理論的本質和內容 [Fundamentals and the content of modern bourgeois sociological theories], in Kaituo yu jicheng, pp. 229–230. Sun Benwen, preface to Dangdai Zhongguo shehuixue 當代中國社會學 [Contemporary sociology in China] (Shanghai: Shengli chuban gongsi, 1948). Roscoe C. Hinkle, Developments in American Sociological Theory, 1915–1950 (Albany: State University of New York, 1994), pp. 30–31. Han, Zhongguo shehuixueshi, p. 113. Yang, Zhongguo shehuixueshi, p. 105. See Ming, “Sun Benwen xiansheng pingzhuan” and Sun, “Sun Benwen xueshu nianpu,” in Kaituo yu jicheng, p. 20 and pp. 248–264 respectively. Hinkle, Developments in American Sociological Theory, pp. 172–173. Ibid., pp. 174–177. Sun, Shehui de wenhua jichu, pp. 23–24. Sun Benwen was one of the ten pro-Guomindang professors who promulgated a cultural manifesto in 1935, entitled the “Manifesto of Chinagrounded cultural construction” (Zhongguo benwei de wenhua jianshe xuanyan 中國本位的文化建設宣言). The manifesto initiated one of the most heated intellectual controversies on Chinese culture in Republican China. For a detailed discussion of the close association between the sociological and anthropological notions of culture and national politics, please see my study of Huang Wenshan in this volume. Sun, Shehui de wenhua jichu, 36. Sun Benwen, Shehuixue shang zhi wenhualun 社會學上之文化論 [Cultural theory in sociology] (Beijing: Pushe chubanshe, 1927), p. 60. Sun, Shehui de wenhua jichu, p. 127. Ibid., pp. 127–128. Ibid., pp. 131–132. In addition to debunking Marxism, Sun also critiqued the ideas of Pan Guangdan 潘光旦, a well-known Chinese eugenicist who advocated the improvement of the Chinese race as the way to overcome China’s crises. Hinkle, Developments in American Sociological Theory, pp. 182–183. Ibid., p. 183. See Yang, Zhongguo shehuixueshi, pp. 150–151. This theoretical dilemma applied to American sociologists too. Hinkle, Developments in American Sociological Theory, p. 185. Sun, Shehuixue yuanli, pp. 4–5. Ibid., p. 21.

The Synthesis School and the Founding of “Orthodox” and “Authentic” Sociology · 87 54 55

Ibid., p. 22. This structure was already in place when Sun wrote The Principles of Sociology in 1935. In a paper written in 1944, Sun elaborated and expanded this structure more clearly, centering it on the concept of social behavior. See Sun Benwen, “Shehuixue tixi fafan” 社會學體系發凡 [General elaboration of my sociological system], Guoli zhongyang daxue shehui kexue jikan 國立中央 大學社會科學季刊 [The National Central University quarterly journal of social sciences] 1.2 (Apr. 1944). 56 Sun, Dangdai Zhongguo shehuixue, p. 246. 57 Chen Dinghong 陳定閎, “Sun Benwen shehuixue lilun tixi jianlun” 孫本文社 會學理論體系簡論 [Brief analysis of Sun Benwen’s sociological theory], in Kaituo yu jicheng, p. 107. 58 Ibid., p. 108. 59 Sun, Shehuixue yuanli, p. 22. Emphasis is added by the author of this paper. 60 Ibid., p. 50. 61 Ibid., p. 27. 62 Sun, Dangdai shehuixue, p. 246.

Chapter 4

Searching for a Place beyond Modern Chinese History: A Study of the Sociologist Lei Jieqiong Liang Yue

Introduction Elements of western sociology were introduced to China in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, along with western technology and science, as part of self-strengthening and defense. Faced with imperialist aggression and the decline of traditional institutions, scholars such as Kang Youwei 康有為, Liang Qichao 梁啟超, Zhang Taiyan 章太炎, and Yan Fu 嚴復 pursued social reform by blending new ideas of social evolution and democracy with traditional approaches to social change. Following the fall of the Qing dynasty in 1912 and with an increasing number of students returning from Japan, the United States, and Europe, sociology as an independent subject came to be established in the many newly founded universities over the next three decades. Western sociological theories were imported systematically and comprehensively. By the 1930s and 1940s, under the Guomindang (GMD) government, sociologists brought their own perspectives to efforts to rebuild Chinese society. It was under these circumstances that Lei Jieqiong 雷洁琼, a female sociologist, returned from the United States to begin her teaching career in the foremost sociology department in China at Yanjing University (later known as Peking University). She would distinguish herself particularly in the study of women and the family. Drawing on information on Lei’s life and two volumes of her published works, I suggest below that Lei’s career mirrored the intellectual history of twentieth-century China. Two aspects of Lei’s career are of major concern in this study. First is the attention Lei gave to the nature of Chinese society and to social history, which had much to do with her commitments as a patriotic intellectual and democratic politician. The

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shift of attention from abstract political issues to concrete social problems in the late 1920s made the analysis of Chinese society and history essential for politically inclined intellectuals. What impact this shift had on Lei’s career is important for understanding the trajectory of her work. The second point relates to her study of Chinese women and family as a female sociologist working through the male-oriented discourses in sociology. In contrast to male sociologists and revolutionaries, who more often than not stressed the contribution of the women’s movement to revolutionary change, Lei emphasized the importance of paying attention to the benefits the revolution would bring to women.

Life, Career and Main Works Following a study by Su Ping,1 this discussion divides Lei’s career into four phases in terms of changes in her living environment and research focus. The first phase (from 1905 to 1924) covers her adolescent period. She was born in 1905 to a wealthy overseas Chinese family in Guangdong province. Her grandfather Lei Songxue, 雷嵩學, was a famous merchant who owned several restaurants in America. Her father, Lei Zichang 雷子昌, was a reformist educated in the Chinese classics. While he was not interested in Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao’s attempts to challenge the imperial regime, he agreed with the abolition of foot-binding and the promotion of women’s education. When Jieqiong was six years old, she was allowed to study with her brothers at home, subsequently enrolling in the Guangdong Girls’ Normal School (Guangdong shengli nüzi shifan xuexiao 廣東省 立女子師範學校) in 1913. During the May Fourth Movement in 1919, Lei joined student demonstrations in Guangzhou to promote anti-imperialism and became familiar with the social ideas that were introduced in New Youth (Xin qingnian 新青年). Although too young at the time to understand the progressive ideas propagated by that journal, her determination to study received further impetus from the experience. Soon after, she left Guangdong to further her education in the United States. The second phase (from 1924 to 1937) includes her study in the US and early teaching experience at Yanjing University. Initially enrolled in chemistry at the University of California, patriotic considerations led Lei to change to East Asian Studies at Stanford University and subsequently to sociology at the University of Southern California (USC). She graduated from USC in 1931 with a master’s degree and was awarded a Sigma Pi Alpha scholarship. In September of the same year, she returned to

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China to teach in the sociology department of Yanjing University at the invitation of the chief director of the College of Arts, Xu Shilian 許仕廉. In her teaching and writing during these years she displayed a concern for social issues, stressing birth control, children’s welfare, and the problems faced by female students. She also insisted on the importance of social investigation for the proper application of sociological theory to the actualities of society. Her students were routinely assigned to undertake social research in rural areas. The third phase (from 1937 to 1949) witnessed the peak period of her analyses of Chinese women and family problems. It was marked also by her involvement in the anti-Japanese struggle and the civil war that ensued. When Peking was occupied by the Japanese army in 1937, Lei moved to Nanchang (the capital city of Jiangxi province) and was assigned by Xiong Shihui 熊式輝2 to help set up an institution devoted to promoting women’s welfare. Her stay in Jiangxi from December 1937 to 1941 was a new beginning, especially in combining academic research with social realities. She was active in encouraging women’s participation in the anti-Japanese war. It was also during this period that she became familiar with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) policies and Marxist theories explaining social development. Her formulations of women’s emancipation took shape during this period in works such as “Research on the problem of the Chinese family” (Zhongguo jiating wenti yanjiu taolun 中國家庭問題研究討論) and “On the problem of women” (Funü wenti jiangzuo 婦女問題講座). After the Wannan Incident, 3 Lei moved to Shanghai and taught at Dongwu University beginning in 1941. On 30 December 1945, Lei, together with other patriotic scholars such as Ma Xulun 馬叙倫, Wang Shao’ao 王紹鏊, and Zhou Jianren 周建人, established the Chinese Association for Promoting Democracy. The aim of this association was to oppose civil war and search for peace and a democratic society. As an active member of the association, Lei became a victim of the Xiaguan Massacre4 in 1946. Because of her progressive activities, Dongwu University released Lei and her colleagues. She went back to the sociology department of Yanjing University in 1946. In December 1948, she would have a memorable meeting with Mao Zedong 毛澤東, Zhou Enlai 周恩來, and other leaders of the CCP. The fourth period (from 1949–1993) was marked by her activities as a democratic politician who worked closely with the CCP. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, Lei got involved in political circles as a member, and later as vice-chairperson, of the

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All-Women Federation Association, the Committee of the People’s Government in Peking and vice-director of the Peking Politics and Law College (Beijing zhengfa xueyuan 北京政法學院). During the Cultural Revolution, Lei was forced to work in rural areas until 1972, when she came back to Peking as a professor in the international politics department of Peking University. In 1979, Lei was selected as the vice-chairman of the Chinese Association for Promoting Democracy and the vice-mayor of Peking. Additionally, she took a part in the committee for constituting the Basic Law for Hong Kong and Macau in 1985 and 1988. From 1979 onward, Lei’s research focused on the new problems of women and the family that emerged in the reform period. Her works from this time include “Response to the problem of only children and young people above the average age for marriage” (Jiu dusheng zinü he daling qingnian wenti da jizhewen 就獨生子女和大齡青年問題答記者問), “Divorce is a social problem” (Lihun shi shehui wenti 離婚是社會問題), “Exploring remarriage among the elderly” (Laonianren zaihun wenti de tansuo 老年人再婚問題的 探索), and so forth.

Theoretical Orientation Lei’s varied experience, beginning with studying sociology in the University of Southern California, then getting to know Marxist social theory, and finally participating in the building of a democratic society, gave her work a two-pronged theoretical orientation. One was the sociological theory she learned in the US. Her use of such methods as participantobservation, procedures of data collection, and her descriptive rather than normative approach to research were greatly influenced by American sociology, dominated at the time by the Chicago School. The other was Marxism. Lei was eclectic in her use of the hodgepodge of western social ideas introduced to China. During her years in Jiangxi and later in Shanghai, Marxist social theory played an important role in influencing her ideas about women’s emancipation, national revolution, and social development. Probably due to her disagreement with the GMD’s New Life policy toward women, 5 she contacted CCP members when she came to Jiangxi province. Lei’s interest in the CCP’s political and social analyses of Chinese society was due partly to the Party’s ideas of liberating China from foreign forces and building a democratic society, which corresponded to her own thinking on constructing democratic society in 1940s. This in turn inspired Lei’s curiosity about Marxist theory.

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Thereafter, she started to read not only works by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but also Marxist theory written from the perspective of the CCP. In order to offer a better understanding of these two aspects of Lei’s theoretical orientation, two points will be illustrated in this part. The first is the transportation of sociology from Europe to America and the founding of the Chicago School. The second is the introduction of Marxist social theory to China and its influence on Chinese social thought. As early as the 1840s, inspired by the natural sciences, Auguste Comte in France sought to create a naturalistic science of society. This new social science was first called “social physics” and later “sociology,” a hybrid term compounded of Latin and Greek parts.6 Comte conceived of society as a biological organism. The essential point in sociological study was to view each element in the light of the whole system since otherwise no scientific study of society could be achieved. As Gordon Morgan has argued, this organic account of the structure of society established the fundamental assumption of European sociology, which could be traced back to the period of European feudalism, when there was a fascination with order, discipline, and appropriateness.7 This inclined European scholars to emphasize orderly social relations and a rigid division of social occupations in terms of status and systems of religious dignity.8 In this sense, the purpose of sociological study was not to dwell on isolated elements within society but to regulate the proper position of each element in the overall social order. This feudalistic model of order was to be challenged by Georg Simmel, who would be the immediate influence on the Chicago School beginning in the late nineteenth century. In the mid-1800s when sociology was transplanted to the US, there was a tendency to see the latter country through European lenses for the simple reason that European degrees were held in higher esteem and many European scholars were invited to teach sociology in American colleges. But the European focus on topics pertaining to the maintenance of status and rank distorted the more dynamic society of the US, and American sociology tended to be more problem-centered. The result was skepticism about the credibility of European scholarship. This was exacerbated by the terrible destructiveness of the First World War, which cast doubt on the notion that society was getting better in any simple way. In contrast to the European brand of sociology represented largely by Harvard and Columbia scholars, the University of Chicago department of sociology strove to understand US culture in sociological terms. Consciously distancing itself from European thought, the indigenized

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sociology of the Chicago School dominated American sociology from the 1920s to the 1940s.9 While by no means homogeneous, members of the Chicago School shared an emphasis on the intricate patterns in which individuals interact with one another and on how such interactions help structure society. While himself of European origin, the founder of the school, Georg Simmel, believed that society was merely a name for a number of individuals connected by interactions; thus the task of sociology was to study the forms social interactions took in diverse historical periods and cultural settings.10 Concentrating on the dynamic character of social elements, the Chicago School promoted participant-observation by sending students into the field to “get data.” Similar concerns marked Lei’s intellectual development as she studied sociology in the University of Southern California in the late 1920s; not only in her empirical studies of Americanborn Chinese for her master’s thesis, but also in her attention to social investigation in her work on women and the family in Chinese society. Similarly to Comte, Karl Marx authored grand theories of social change from the ancient or medieval past to its modern European present. He located the fundamental motive force of social development in the material forces and relations of production. These constituted the economic base upon which political, legal, literary, artistic, and philosophical development rested. They were responsible for social transformation and regulated specific forms of social organization.11 Based on the material production of life, Marx in the preface to his A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy identified four “progressive epochs” in historical development: the Asiatic, ancient, medieval, and modern bourgeois modes of production. The impetus for social change from one mode to another was provided by the contradictions of material life (the conflict existing between the forces and relations of production). Such transformation occurred through organized revolutionary action in which the exploited class rose up against the exploiting class. In the initial uses of Marxism in analyses of Chinese society, it was considered to enrich Darwinian views of change by providing social evolution with an economic dimension.12 Urban mass movements in China in the mid-twenties and the political crisis created by the GMD-CCP split in 1927 made class an urgent issue; many called for the re-analysis of social structure.13 This intellectual turn was responsible for the sudden expansion of literature on society and social problems. The

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so-called “Social History Controversy” of the late 1920s and early 1930s consisted mostly of disputes on the nature of Chinese society. Unlike other American-trained academic sociologists who would have nothing to do with the Marxists and their controversies, Lei was influenced by Marxist thought shortly after she came back to China to teach in Yanjing University. Although there is no evidence that Lei participated in or made any contribution to those controversies, it is reasonable to believe that her understanding of Chinese society in the mid-1930s was to a large extent based on the theoretical outcome of the discussions of the late 1920s.

Research and Work Except for the years from 1963 to 1974 during which Lei did not produce any academic or political work, her research may be divided into two periods. The first (from 1935 to 1949) is the formative step of using Maxism to analyze Chinese women and family issues. Her scholarship was very much related to her activities and observations in the rural areas of Jiangxi and in Shanghai. During the second period (from 1949 to 1993), Lei was more a representative of a democratic party advocating new policies toward marriage and women. There were significant continuities in her work, to be sure, but the periodization helps us better understand the shifts in her thinking and activities.

The Nature of Chinese Society and Chinese Social History To analyze society as a whole was the guiding principle of Lei’s sociology. She believed sociology dealt with all facets of society, and that different parts of social structure were connected coherently.14 It is not surprising that in dealing with Chinese women and family issues, Lei regarded them as one among many social problems and emphasized the necessity of taking the larger social, political, and economic background into consideration. Hence, before further discussion of her analysis of Chinese women and family, it is necessary to offer some explanation of her understanding of the nature of Chinese society and its history. My discussion differs from most works published in post-revolutionary China that define Lei as a Marxist sociologist; I question placing her in a rigid category. Rather, I stress her ambivalence on issues of Chinese social history,

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her search for a “third way” to the revolution (other than bourgeois and Marxist), and her apparent identification with the CCP after 1949. As mentioned above, the significant upsurge of interest in Marxist analysis from the mid-twenties accompanied urban mass movements that forced a social consciousness into the political thinking of Chinese intellectuals and convinced many young people of the necessity of total social transformation through revolutionary means.15 The central issues of the ensuing “Social History Controversy” were the nature of Chinese society in the 1920s and the appropriate periodization of Chinese social history. Seminal works produced around Marxist historiography at this time left a visible imprint on historical works in the thirties.16 Although the controversy declined and Marxist history passed into the domain of academics around the mid-1930s, those ideas were to play a part in guiding Lei’s understanding of the nature of Chinese society. “On the problem of women,” published in Jiangxi Women (Jiangxi funü 江西婦女) in 1939 and 1940, was Lei’s first article on social history. Departing from her early writings on social issues such as children’s welfare and family conflict, this article focused on general human social history. What is worthy of attention is the addition of “socialist society” as the fifth “progressive epoch” in Marx’s analysis of human historical development,17 with reference to the socialist mode of production in the Soviet Union. Lei applauded the superiority of economic centralization: With the purpose of improving the material and spiritual lives of labour, the mode of production is managed by society, and the allocation of goods is determined according to the principle, “to each according to need” (ge qu suo xu 各取所需). After the October Revolution, the Soviet Union became a socialist nation and a new economic structure was built up. The control of both national production and consumption by the government has prevented the appearance of the contradictions of capitalist societies arising from free competition, disorderly production, economic panic, and unemployment.18

Lei believed that the policy of “socializing production” (shengchan shehuihua 生產社會化) presupposed women’s equality to men in production, further implying that women need not depend on their husbands. Her reference to socialism as the fifth stage of history suggests a Stalinist inspiration for these ideas. The “Social History Controversy” had been marked by differences over periodization and the number of modes of production. These differences were abolished by political fiat when the Communist Party accepted as orthodoxy the five-stage view of history

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that had been enshrined in the Soviet Union with the publication in 1938 of Stalin’s History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. This shaped the work of younger Marxist historians who would achieve distinction in the 1940s and emerge as the establishment after 1949, such as Jian Bozan 翦伯贊, Fan Wenlan 范文瀾, He Ganzhi 何幹之, and Lü Zhenyu 呂振羽.19 Because of the close relationship between Lei and many CCP members during her stay in Jiangxi province, it is more than likely that this turn to Stalinist orthodoxy shaped her understanding of Marxism as well. Another interesting point is Lei’s hesitation at defining the nature of Chinese society. Unlike other social thinkers, for instance, Guo Moruo 郭 沫若, who were uncompromising in the delineation of Chinese history in terms of the five stages, Lei was quite vague in marking out the past, and while she quite clearly favored socialism, she refrained from presenting it as the inevitable outcome of Chinese historical development. Her uncertainty over the nature of Chinese society is visible in another article “An overview of the Chinese women’s movement over the past thirty years” (Sanshinian lai Zhongguo funü yundong de zong jiantao 三十年來中國婦女運動的總檢討), written two years later in 1941. The article begins with the argument that from the first Opium War (1839– 1841) on, Chinese society entered into the process of capitalist development (ziben zhuyi hua 資本主義化). On the one hand, the feudal agrarian economy gradually came under the dominance of the European capitalist economy. On the other hand, a national capitalist industry emerged and developed continually.20 This suggests that Lei considered Chinese society before the Western intrusion to be feudal. But in dealing with the nature of Chinese society after 1840, she tended to pursue a compromise. In discussing the nature of women’s movements from the 1911 revolution to the anti-Japanese war, Lei argued that the movement, marked by the characteristics of the national bourgeoisie, was obstructed in its development by the dominant forces of feudalism and imperialism. Chinese society was a blend of both feudal and capitalist modes of production, in which feudalism never completely vanished and capitalism never fully emerged. The anti-Japanese war not only rendered the discussion of the nature of Chinese society secondary to the immediate challenge of national salvation, it also shifted emphasis to the creation of a united front effort to struggle against imperialism. This was evident also in Mao Zedong’s concept of “New Democracy,” which emerged in these years as Party orthodoxy. The stress on democracy received further impetus from the

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civil war between the CCP and the GMD, which forced intellectuals to confront the question of the nation’s future. It was under these circumstances that Lei turned to the building a democratic society (minzhu shehui 民主社會). But she remained ambivalent as to whether this meant a bourgeois democratic or socialist democratic society. Lei first mentioned the necessity of achieving political democracy in 1945 in an article, “Purging traitors and realizing democracy” (Suqing hanjian yu shixing minzhu 肅清漢奸與實行民主). Lei argued that political democracy, which would connect people to one another and strengthen consciousness of the nation, was the most efficient means to eliminate traitors and sweep away the feudal remnants that nourished them. She also emphasized the importance of democracy for women’s liberation, improving children’s welfare, opposition to civil war, and reform of the educational system. In a subsequent article, “On the women’s movement at the present stage” (Lun xian jieduan de funü yundong 論現階段的婦女運 動), written in 1947, Lei portrayed democratic society thus: First, the Constitution needs to protect women’s rights and to legitimize equality between men and women in political, economic, and cultural spheres. Second, political democracy means equal rights to freely discuss and participate in the work of government. Third, the realization of economic democracy needs government control over national production to improve productivity and raise people’s living standard. Fourth, compulsory education needs to be established. Museums, libraries, research institutions and vocational schools are required in order to provide people with opportunities to learn. Fifth, hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes must be set up to assure people’s health. Doctors should be hired by society to serve and treat people freely. Last is the necessity of the organization of an insurance system, especially insurance for older people and women.21

Lei regarded a democratic society as the destination of the Chinese revolution. Her democratic society would differ from both Chinese feudal society and Anglo-American fascist society. In the passage above, Lei focuses on two sets of uneven social relations that required solution to this end: the relation between men and women, and the relation between government and the people. Somewhat contradictorily, she also assigned to the government a large role in assuring social equality and people’s rights. Interestingly, Lei did not include among the problems to be resolved a fundamental issue in Marxism: class relations. As a member of the Chinese Association for Promoting Democracy, her cooperation with

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the CCP during the civil war period derived more from her belief in the necessity of a democratic society than in socialism. From another perspective, it is possible that it was the GMD’s fascist governance that inclined Lei to a close relationship with the CCP. Lei’s views on the nature of Chinese society during the Civil War period and after 1949 were in keeping with the Party line on New Democracy. Formulated during the war, New Democracy held that in a pre-capitalist society such as China, the establishment of socialism had to be preceded by a transitional stage during which the forces of production would be further developed. Socially and politically, what characterized New Democracy was a coalition of four classes (proletarian workers, peasants, petty bourgeoisie, and national capitalists) to fight against feudalism and the old ruling order under the leadership of the working class and its communist party. Although Lei paid scant attention to such a class coalition, she held that a new marriage and family system was needed in the establishment of a democratic society. In “The marriage law and the protection of children” (Hunyinfa yu ertong baohu 婚姻法與兒 童保護), written in 1950, Lei argued that the new democratic marriage system needed to protect women’s rights in marriage. She also expressed a belief that socialism was the goal of Chinese social development. In analyzing the draft of the new Constitution in 1954, she argued that exploitation would gradually be eliminated with advances in the socialist component in the national economic system.22 This reorientation brought greater clarity to Lei’s understanding of the nature of Chinese society. Years later, in her 1979 discussion of modern Chinese history in “Some thoughts on sociology” (Youguan shehuixue de jidian yijian 有關社會學的幾點意見), we find Lei confirming her belief that Chinese society after 1840 had been a semi-colonial, semifeudal society,23 which was in keeping with the orthodoxy the CCP had established in the 1940s. It is quite evident that the CCP’s New Democracy line during the civil war period satisfied Lei’s desire to build a “democratic society” in which people were to be endowed with equal rights by the government. That idea itself was ridden with contradictions, but it laid the basis for cooperation between the CCP and the “Third Force” of intellectuals who subscribed neither to the Communist nor the Guomindang ideology. The compromise points to the dilemma Chinese intellectuals faced in modern Chinese history.

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Studies of Chinese Women and Family The most obvious feature of Lei’s scholarship is the close relationship between her academic research and her social activity. As early as her years at Yanjing University in the 1930s, Lei encouraged students to get out of the classroom to investigate concrete social problems. As with other sociologists educated in the US, such as Fei Xiaotong 費孝通 and Wu Jingchao 吳景超, her emphasis on social investigation was most likely inherited from the Chicago School. As noted above, the Chicago School believed in the dynamic interplay of different social elements in the formation of society. Hence, it paid close attention to social investigation from the bottom up. For Chinese sociologists at the time, this tendency was reinforced by the desire to build a Chinese sociology based on the actual circumstances of China. However, unlike academically inclined sociologists, Lei combined academic investigation with revolutionary activity. This was evident in her work in Jiangxi province, where she mobilized rural women she was researching to support the anti-Japanese war. Between 1939 and 1941, Lei published eleven articles about organizing and educating rural women in the magazine Jiangxi Women. Her personal experience as a consultant for the Association for Improving Jiangxi Women’s Living Conditions (Jiangxi funü shenghuo gaijinhui 江 西婦女生活改進會) played an important part in shaping her views on Chinese women and family problems. Before Lei came to Jiangxi province, she had published an article, “Research on the Problem of the Chinese Family” in 1937. This was an instructional piece for the study of the Chinese family. Its main thrust was economic: the number of family members, their economic status, the allocation of consumption, the power to divide family income, and relations within the family. As she put it, “The family system is one part of the social system and has a close relationship to the economic, political, and religious aspects of society.... With intensified contact with Western culture, the traditional forms of the economy, politics, and religion have changed dramatically. Yet the family system has retained its old style. This is the main source of family problems.” 24 Lei basically classified the Chinese family of the late 1930s into two types: the coastal urban family that adopted the western conjugal family system and the inland rural family still ruled by feudal family ideology. But she also suggested that real circumstances were much more complex and proposed questions for further study; for example, the impact on family structure and relationships of women

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working outside the home, and the different practices of allocating family income in different classes.25 Such concerns directed her work in Jiangxi province. In the process of mobilizing and educating women, Lei discovered that feudal power still played an essential role in rural areas. Due to respect for paternal authority, women’s status at home remained inferior to that of men. Indeed, compared to the women in Shanghai, Canton, and Peking who challenged male supremacy and already had assumed new roles as government officials, journalists, and radio announcers, 26 Jiangxi rural women were still restricted within their families. Lei concluded that three kinds of forces obstructed women’s participation in social activity: parents-in-law, husbands, and children. Parents-in-law and husbands tended to think it shameful for women to join social activities. As for children, responsibility for raising them left no time to participate in public affairs.27 Lei offered her own solutions to these problems. One was to protect women’s rights and welfare by establishing a proper legal system and providing them with the same opportunities for work as men. 28 She opposed the leniency toward concubinage of sociologists like Pan Guangdan 潘光旦 29 and advocated equal rights for women. In contrast to the GMD and CCP strategies of mobilizing women to win their own new economic, social, and political interests through participation in social production, the anti-Japanese war effort, and political institutions, 30 Lei held that the goal of mobilizing women should be to improve their lives rather than to save the nation, although she also believed that the women’s movement was an integral part of the revolutionary movement. As she put it, “building up belief in solving women’s problems is the main motivation for organizing women, but we have failed to figure out women’s marriage and family problems and have done nothing to ameliorate their daily lives.... Our approach to women is partial to the nation rather than to the women themselves.” 31 In 1941, she re-emphasized the significance of attention to women’s interests in “An Overview of the Chinese Women’s Movement over the Past Thirty Years.” She wrote there that “if the condition of women’s lives is not improved, it will be impossible to liberate women, or our nation.... Besides, women’s emancipation is a task to be accomplished not only by women but by men as well.” 32 Understanding the condition of women’s lives was a prerequisite to any solution of their problems. In a 1939 article, “Research into Women’s Position in Rural Areas” (Nongcun funü diwei yanjiu 農村婦女地位研究),

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Lei divided rural women’s lives into four phases: the period before marriage, the period after marriage, the period of motherhood, and the period of being a mother-in-law. She considered it essential to understand women’s actual suffering in different phases, their cultural and educational backgrounds, and feelings toward their social positions.33 To this end, she proposed the selection of cadres from among the masses to address women’s issues: “People tend to trust cadres who originally belonged to the masses.... At the same time, these cadres are more familiar with the actual problems of women. Thus we can remove misunderstanding arising from differences of language and custom.”34 To dispel people’s misgivings toward her women’s training class, Lei’s second suggestion was to engage in family visits: “The aim of this process is not only to publicize the general and specific policies of women’s training in order to gain support from both women and their family members, but also to have a better understanding of women’s family background.”35 Also, Lei believed it was necessary to reform current women’s education in order to satisfy the demands of the anti-Japanese war and to encourage female students to join women’s work.36 This call for educational reform was opposite to those put forward by sociologists like Pan Guangdang, who promoted “new mother education” (xin mu jiao 新母教), which distinguished women’s education from men’s and attended only to women’s biological function as mothers.37 From 1941 to 1949, Lei’s research on Chinese women was secondary to her idea of building a democratic society. Only seven of the fourteen articles Lei wrote during this period were related to women’s issues. Her basic position was that women could be liberated and treated equally only within a democratic society. Thus the movement for women’s emancipation needed to work together with the social democratic movement. In her evaluation of the women’s movement from the 1910s to the 1940s “The Women’s Movement in the Past Thirty-six Years” (Sanshiliunian lai de funü yundong 三十六年來的婦女運動), written in 1947, Lei concluded that the movement still had a long way to go in achieving women’s liberation. For instance, in discussing women’s occupational rights, Lei criticized the continued restrictions on women’s freedom to choose a vocation, repeating a similar critique she had made in her article, “On Women’s Vocation During the Anti-Japanese War” (Lun kangzhan zhong funü zhiye wenti 論抗戰中婦女問題) in 1940. Lei observed that the vocations available to women were limited, 38 and their salaries were normally very low. Whereas she had earlier merely observed the problem, now in the late

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1940s she discovered a possible solution in the building of a democratic economic system. The possibility of constructing a new China also offered new possibilities in dealing with women’s issues. In contrast to the extensive work on women and the family Lei had produced during the anti-Japanese and civil war periods, her research after 1949 assumed a more propagandistic tone. She became more a politician than a sociologist. This was partly because of the abolition of sociology in university curricula from 1949 to 1979. In the few sociological works she produced after 1949, Lei no longer concentrated on issues of women’s liberation, turning her attention instead to problems of marriage and the care and protection of children and the elderly. To publicize the new Marriage Law released in 1950, Lei wrote two articles. One was “The marriage law and the protection of children” (Hunyinfa yu ertong baohu 婚姻法與兒童保護), 39 written in 1950; the other, “On early marriage” (Lun zaohun 論早婚),40 written in 1957. Both stressed the importance of protecting children’s legal rights in the family. It is to a large extent because of her emphasis on children’s proper protection and healthy development that Lei opposed early marriage. She argued that young people should consider the responsibility of raising children and sustaining family lives before entering into marriage. Otherwise, early marriage would only result in the collapse of the family and harm to children. During the decade and a half following the beginning of the reform period in 1978, Lei wrote seven articles dealing with the transformation of the Chinese family system after 1949 and the issue of the second Marriage Law, promulgated in 1981. One problem she addressed was the freedom of marriage and divorce.41 Arguing against ideas of “pure love” and “love based on money,” Lei pointed out that socialist marriage should be based on the combination of love and responsibility. At the same time, Lei considered divorce a social problem. Divorce in her eyes reflected the contradiction between feudal ideas and women’s pursuit of equality after 1949. Lei argued that a multiplicity of factors determined the rate of divorce, which made it a poor indicator of the level of a social system. A related problem was the remarriage of the elderly. While Lei recognized the right to remarriage of the elderly, she was critical of such marriages if they were motivated by money.42 Other problems Lei discussed included the proper education of the new generation born under the One Child Policy and the new phenomenon of women who preferred to remain single.43

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Conclusion As a prominent sociologist as well as an important politician, Lei Jieqiong’s career had much in common with that of other well-known intellectuals in modern China. What distinguishes her were her efforts to push the boundaries of academic and political work dominated by men and to foreground issues specific to women. Lei was a third-force politician who cooperated with the CCP. Throughout her life, she viewed herself as a patriotic intellectual who placed the interests of the nation above everything else. Buts she was also a female sociologist concerned with women and family issues, which gave her patriotism its particular coloring. Women and the family were fundamental issues of the Chinese revolution. But from the early concerns with women’s education on the part of progressive intellectuals after the Wuxu Reform (1898)44 to the GMD’s and CCP’s policies toward women’s emancipation during the Republican and Communist periods, women’s issues were subordinated to national salvation and revolution. Lei played an important part as a sociologist and politician in making these issues among the foremost tasks of revolutionary transformation. Her research and work provides us with an outstanding female discourse in the exploration of problems of women and the family in modern China.

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Notes 1 2

3

4

5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19

Su Ping 蘇平, Lei Jieqiong 雷洁琼 (Shenyang: Liaoning renmin chubanshe, 1995). Xiong Shihui was the chairman of Jiangxi province assigned by the Guomindang (GMD). Although the second alliance between the GMD and CCP began in 1937, the CCP’s official institution in Jiangxi was not established until January 1938. The Wannan Incident, also known as the New Fourth Army Incident, occurred in January 1941. It is significant as it marks the end of the cooperation between the GMD and the CCP in resisting the Japanese invasion. The Xiaguan Massacre happened on 23 June 1946. In order to persuade both the CCP and the GMD to end the civil war, eleven patriotic delegates—nine adults and two students—got on the train from Shanghai to Nanjing. But when they arrived at Xiaguan station in Nanjing, they were beaten up by the secret agents of the GMD. Lei was one of the delegates. The New Life Movement was set up by Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石 and his wife Soong May-ling 宋美齡 in February 1934. It mixed Confucianism, nationalism, and authoritarianism together in order to build up morale in a nation that was besieged by corruption, factionalism, and opium addiction. The movement asked women to return home to be virtuous wives and mothers. Auguste Comte, The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, Vol. 1, trans. Harriet Martineau (London: Bell, 1896), pp. 1–4. Gordon Morgan, Toward An American Sociology: Questioning the European Construct (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1997), p. viii. Ibid., pp. 1–3. Ye Suke 葉肅科, Zhijiage xuepai 芝加哥學派 [The Chicago School] (Taibei: Yuanliu chuban shiye gufen youxian gongsi, 1993), pp. 18–19. Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, trans. Kurt H. Wolff (New York: The Free Press, 1950), p. 10. Karl Marx, Selected Writings in Sociology and Social Philosophy, trans. T.B. Bottomore (London: McGraw-Hill, 1964), p. 304. Arif Dirlik, Revolution and History: The Origins of Marxist Historiography in China, 1919–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), pp. 26–29. Ibid., pp. 36–45. Minjin zhongyang xuanchuanbu 民進中央宣傳部, ed., Lei Jieqiong wenji 雷洁 琼文季 [The collected works of Lei Jieqiong], 2 vols. (Beijing: Kaiming chubanshe, 1994), p. 428. Hereafter, Lei Jieqiong wenji. Dirlik, Revolution and History, pp. 36–46. Ibid., p. 2. The four “progressive epochs” in Marx’s analysis of human historical development are the Asiatic, ancient, medieval, and modern bourgeois. Lei Jieqiong wenji, p. 100. Dirlik, Revolution and History, pp. 224–226.

106 · Liang Yue 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41 42 43

44

Lei Jieqiong wenji, p. 148. Ibid., pp. 211–212. Lei Jieqiong wenji, pp. 253–258. Ibid., p. 304. Lei Jieqiong wenji, p. 24. Ibid., pp. 26–37. Olga Lang, Chinese Family and Society (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1968), pp. 103–107. Lei Jieqiong wenji, p. 131. Ibid., pp. 48, 125. “I think that monogamy should be propagated, but that polygamy must be tolerated.... Strict prohibition would have as little effect as the prohibition of alcohol in the United States.” See Lang, Chinese Family and Society, p. 219. Elisabeth Croll, Feminism and Socialism in China (London and Boston: Routledge & K. Paul, 1978), pp. 210–213. Lei Jieqiong wenji, p. 48. Ibid., pp. 161–162. Ibid., p. 66. Ibid., p. 57. Ibid., pp. 53–56. Lei Jieqiong wenji, pp. 120–121. Pan classified the “new mother education” into five phrases in his article “New mother education” (Xin mu jiao 新母教) in 1942: women’s preparation before marriage (ze jiao zhi jiao 擇教之教), women’s selection of husband (ze fu zhi jiao 擇夫之教), embryo education (tai yang zhi jiao 胎養之教), raising children (bao yu zhi jiao 保育之教), and character education of children (pin ge zhi jiao 品格之教). The most important precondition of this “new mother education,” according to Pan, was to distinguish female education from male education in high school. See Yang Yabin 楊雅彬, Jindai Zhongguo shehuixue 近代中國社會學 [Modern Chinese sociology], 2 vols. (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 2001), vol. 2, pp. 757–763. Lei Jieqiong wenji, p. 136. Ibid., pp. 234–238. Ibid., pp. 280–283. See “Divorce is a social problem” (Lihun shi shehui wenti 離婚是社會問題) in Lei Jieqiong wenji, pp. 625–627. See “Exploring remarriage among the elderly” (Laonianren zaihun wenti de tansuo 老年人再婚問題的探索) in Lei Jieqiong wenji, pp. 643–646. See “Response to the problem of only children and young people above the average age for marriage” (Jiu dusheng zinü he daling qingnian wenti da jizhewen 就獨生子女和大齡青年問題答記者問) in Lei Jieqiong wenji, pp. 555–557. The Wuxu Reform was a short-lived political movement in 1898, often called the Hundred Days’ Reform. With the approval of the Guangxu

Searching for a Place beyond Modern Chinese History · 107 emperor 光緒皇帝, Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, and other reformists promoted the necessity of learning from the west. But at last this movement was suppressed by the Empress Dowager Cixi 慈喜皇太后.

Chapter 5

Cultural Policy and Culture under the Guomindang: Huang Wenshan and “Culturology” Guannan Li

Preface In 1921, a young Chinese student from Peking University named Huang Wenshan 黃文山 boarded a cross-Siberian train to Moscow. While the train was winding its way through the Ural Mountains, Huang sighted a stone stele that marked the border between Asia and Europe. Inspired, Huang was suddenly struck by a question—what were the fundamental differences between Eastern and Western cultures? Eager to find the answer, upon getting back to China in the spring of 1922, Huang delivered this question to Liang Shuming 梁漱溟 (1893–1988), a prominent philosopher in the New Culture Movement. Huang left no record of Liang’s answer, but later in bustling uptown Manhattan, Huang read Liang’s newly published book entitled Eastern and Western Cultures and Their Philosophies (Dongxi wenhua jiqi zhexue 東西文化及其哲學). As a graduate student newly admitted into Columbia University, Huang was overjoyed to discover that Liang’s book provided the answers to the question that had puzzled him for a long time. In this book, which was influential among the Chinese intelligentsia, Liang Shuming established a Hegelian type of history of philosophy in order to explain the cultural evolution of three major world civilizations, namely the European, Chinese, and Indian. Liang’s conclusion was that Chinese civilization was at a more culturally advanced stage than its Western counterpart. However, Huang’s state of enlightenment did not last very long. Under the guidance of Franz Boas (1858–1942), a leading German-American anthropologist at Columbia, Huang became fascinated with American anthropology and sociology. Now designating Liang’s philosophy as “metaphysics” (xuanxue 玄學), Huang claimed that he was proceeding from “metaphysical speculation” into scientific research.1

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Huang’s intellectual journey exemplifies a methodological shift that occurred with most Chinese social scientists after the New Culture Movement. In the post-May Fourth era, Chinese social scientists (particularly sociologists) turned away from grand theoretical and historical generalizations to a strikingly uniform tendency toward empirical research. Believing in the value of “applied social sciences,” their goal was to apply social theories to resolve practical problems and formulate policies to achieve social reforms.2 As Huang Wenshan put it, rather than theoretically speculating about the past, they chose to concentrate on scientific research. Through direct inspections and field work, they embraced the Western notion of social engineering and the idea of the conscious direction of social change. The scholarship on the history of the maturation of Chinese social sciences provides some convincing reasons for this methodological redirection. For instance, in his recent examination of the development of social sciences in modern China, Yung-chen Chiang argues that the formation of Chinese sociology at Yanjing University shows a distinctive convergence of ideas and aspirations at two different levels. “First, the convergence of the traditional Chinese ideal of governing society through knowledge and the modern Western notion of social engineering; and second, the convergence of Chinese social scientists’ aspirations as regards social engineering and the Rockefeller Foundation’s ambition to guide China’s modernization.”3 Supported by a very well-formulated research agenda and rich archival evidence, Chiang’s study is extremely informative. However, due to his rather unbalanced emphasis on outside influences, what remains unexplored or blurred in the account are the political and ideological motivations for this methodological shift, particularly the dynamics between disciplinary construction in academia and nation-state building in the political context of 1930s China. This paper deals with the political and ideological implications of the establishment of “culturology” (wenhuaxue 文化學), a new social science discipline that attempted to combine cultural sociology, cultural anthropology, and cultural history into the study of culture. Huang Wenshan was its prophet and practitioner in the 1930s. By exploring Huang’s intellectual involvement with this project, it aims to answer the questions of how the sociological and anthropological definition of culture fulfilled the ideological goals of nation-state building, how and why a group of prominent Chinese social scientists developed an ideologically intimate relationship with the GMD (Guomindang 國民黨) government, and how

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disciplinary construction was often bound up with implied national politics and certain notions of Chinese modernity. By scrutinizing Huang’s intellectual input into the maturation of Chinese social sciences and his vision of Chinese modernity, this paper attempts to bring this unexamined story to the center of the development of Chinese social sciences in the 1930s.

Huang Wenshan and His Intellectual Development Huang Wenshan (1897–1988),4 a prominent Chinese sociologist, was the founder of “culturology” in China. His intellectual development and academic career exemplifies a typical trajectory of a Chinese intellectual in search of the answers to China’s societal change. Also known as Huang Lingshuang 黄凌霜, Huang Wenshan was born in 1901 in Taishan, Guangdong province. At the high tide of the New Culture Movement, he was studying at Peking University. In 1916, with the support of Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培 (1868–1940) and Li Shizeng 李石曾 (1881–1973), the two most influential anarchists at the university, he and other students established a student anarchist society called Shishe 實社 [Society of Reality]. With Li Shizeng, Wu Zhihui 吳稚暉 (1865–1953), and other influential Chinese anarchists, he was one of the major contributors to the journal Shishe, published by the Society of Reality to promote socialism, liberalism, democracy, non-totalitarianism, and utopianism. In 1919, he started to serve as chief-editor of the Beijing daxue xuesheng zhoukan 北京大學學生周刊 [Peking University student weekly] and wrote widely for influential journals such as Xin qingnian 新青年 [New youth], Jinhua 進化 [Evolution], and Minfeng 民風 [Ethos]. 5 As a supporter of some of the most popular Anarchist ideas at the time, such as Peter Kropotkin’s (1842–1921) “mutual aid,” Huang believed in an anarchist way of reconstructing Chinese society and some broad Western values as the foundation to achieve the ultimate goal of “great harmony” (datong 大 同) or utopia. Huang’s major intellectual transformation happened after this brief anarchist period. In 1921, Huang obtained his bachelor degree from Peking University. After a short visit to the Soviet Union, he chose to pursue his graduate studies in the United States. From 1922 to 1927, he stayed in the United States and obtained the Master of Liberal Arts from Columbia University. It was this period of solid graduate training in general social sciences that led him to develop a deep suspicion of his

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former socialist beliefs. In graduate school at Columbia, he studied anthropology with Franz Boas, world cultural history with Lynn Thorndike (1882–1965), and the history of ideas with H. E. Barnes (1889–1968).6 Huang regarded Franz Boas as his life-long mentor, and he must have been fully convinced by the anthropological theories developed by Boas, who is often regarded as the founder of modern American anthropology. Later recalling this important moment, Huang exclaimed that “from the perspective of scientific anthropology, Franz Boas has completely shattered the principles established by Lewis H. Morgan in Ancient Society. Therefore, it is doubtful how much value is still left in the historical principles of Hegel and Marx, who plagiarized them from Morgan.” 7 Huang’s loss of interest in anarchism was not unique. His intellectual shift corresponded to a common tendency among Chinese intellectuals who turned away from anarchism after the May Fourth period.8 In the 1930s, the Marxist economic interpretation of historical change or empirical research became the new tools for Chinese social scientists to understand societal transformations.9 Like many students who finished their study in American universities and went back to China, Huang became a professor. From 1928 on, he held various teaching positions at National Labor University in Nanjing, at Peking University and Peking Normal University in Peking, and at Zhongshan University in Guangzhou. In a relatively stable period from 1932 to 1936, he taught in the department of sociology at National Central University in Nanjing. It was during this time that he fully devoted himself to the advocacy of “culturology.” The concept of “culturology” was first introduced into China by Zhang Songnian 張嵩年 (1893– 1986), a professor of philosophy at Peking University in the 1920s.10 But it was Huang Wenshan who brought it to the university classrooms for the first time. In 1931, at Peking University and Peking Normal University, Huang taught the first course on “culturology” in China. After 1932, he taught courses with the same title twice at Zhongshan University and National Central University.11 A cultural event in 1935 brought Huang Wenshan sudden national recognition. In October of that year, along with other nine professors in Peking, Shanghai, and Nanjing, Huang promulgated a cultural manifesto entitled the “Manifesto of China-grounded Cultural Construction” (Zhongguo benwei de wenhua jianshe xuanyan 中國本位的文化建設宣演). The manifesto immediately threw the Chinese intelligentsia into one of the largest controversies on Chinese culture in Republican China. Huang

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recalled later, “At the emergent moment of a perishing national culture, with Professors He Bingsong 何炳松, Sa Mengwu 薩孟武, and Tao Xisheng 陶希聖, we promulgated the “Manifesto of China-grounded Cultural Construction” to call for a nation-grounded culture in opposition to Chen Xujing’s 陳序經 theory of wholesale Westernization.”12 By using “nation-grounded ” (minzu benwei 民族本位) to explain “Chinagrounded,” Huang demonstrated his nationalistic attachment to Chinese culture. This shared cultural stance among ten professors made their contemporaries quickly identify the manifesto as the declaration of GMD’s official cultural line.13 As I will demonstrate below, Huang’s political and ideological stance within this controversy was fully supported by the cultural theory he developed in “culturology,” a new discipline that was supposed to study the origins, evolution, and transformations of culture in general and Chinese culture in specific. Huang’s ardor for “culturology” continued after the Communists took over China. In 1949, after the GMD government fled to Taiwan, he stayed briefly in Taiwan and subsequently secured a teaching job in Los Angeles. From the 1960s on, he traveled between Taiwan and the United States to advocate “culturology.” In 1968, he went back to Taiwan and gave a series of lectures on “culturology” to the department of anthropology and sociology at National Taiwan University. His lectures were soon compiled into a book entitled Wenhuaxue tixi 文化學體系 [The system of culturology]. From 1969 to 1973, he taught anthropology and sociology in Hong Kong, serving as a visiting professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and as the head of the Literature Institute of Zhuhai Academy (Zhuhai shuyuan 珠海書院). Coming back to the United States in 1973, he took a teaching position in Los Angeles and finished a book in English entitled Culturology and Chinese Culture.14

A Boasian Approach: Universality and Particularity Huang’s persistent efforts to promote “culturology” and his concept of culture must be understood in terms of Franz Boas’ theoretical framework. Ref lecting on Boas’ approach, Huang positioned his study of “culturology” within the transformation of anthropology as a modern discipline. Huang saw his work—like that of Franz Boas, who shattered Lewis H. Morgan’s notion that all human societies must pass through the same stages in the same order—as constituting a direct critique of Hegelian or Marxist unilinear schemes of evolution from primitive to modern,

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which themselves had been borrowed from Morgan. For the same reason, Huang was at odds with some Chinese Marxist historians’ application of such schemes to understanding the evolution of Chinese society.15 The critique of a determinist or teleological process of evolution indeed was one of the greatest accomplishments of Franz Boas. During his ethnographic field trips to the Pacific Northwest, particularly to Baffin Island, Boas developed the idea of “cultural relativism”: a belief that one could only understand another person’s beliefs and behaviors in the context of the culture in which he or she lived. Boas’ historical method led him to examine the indigenous American Indians in their historical specificity and to believe that culture was a local context for human action.16 This historical approach was a fundamental departure from “the comparative method,” the mid- and late-nineteenth-century anthropological approach that treated indigenous peoples as ancient remains who still lived in earlier stages of human evolution. This parallelism scheme presumed the existence of fundamental natural laws that defined the uniformity of human societies without acknowledging the plurality and specificity of human evolution.17 George W. Stocking, Jr. succinctly summarizes some basic assumptions of this evolutionist approach predominant in the nineteenth-century: Classical evolutionism embraced ... [the idea] that sociocultural phenomena ... are governed by laws that science can discover; that these laws operate uniformly in the distant past as well as in the present; that the present grows out of the past by continuous processes without any sharp breaks; that this growth is naturally from simplicity to complexity .... human groups can be objectively ordered in a hierarchical fashion; that certain contemporary societies therefore approximate the various earlier stages of human development; ... That the results of this ‘comparative method’ can be confirmed by ‘survivals’ in more advanced societies of the forms characteristic of lower stages.18

Douglas Cole, in his biography of the early Franz Boas, points out that, in the intellectual milieu of American anthropology in the last years of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, “the practitioners whom he (Franz Boas) targeted were not so much Tylor, Morgan, Spencer, and Bachofen, the great remembered names of evolutionary theory, but his immediate Americanist predecessors, particularly Brinton.” 19 In “The Limitations of the Comparative Method,” written in 1896, Boas questioned the grand scheme of ethnographic parallels and

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attacked its conclusions of the uniformity of the human mind, which obeyed the same laws everywhere.20 In contrast with Daniel G. Brinton’s (1837–1899) evolutionist method, Boas developed a contextualist approach to culture that aimed to confirm cultural plurality as a fundamental feature of humankind. Boas explained the tasks of anthropology in his 1907 lecture, “Anthropology”: We do not discuss the anatomical, physiological, and mental characteristics of man considered as an individual; but we are interested in the diversity of these traits in groups of men found in different geographical areas and in different social classes. It is our task to inquire into the causes that have brought about the observed differentiation, and to investigate the sequences of events that have led to the establishment of the multifarious forms of human life. In other words, we are interested in the anatomical and mental characteristics of men living under the same biological, geographical, and social environment, and as determined by their past.21

According to Boas, anthropologists should appreciate human diversity by accepting a basic anthropological norm that all societies have a history and all societies are the proper objects of anthropological study. By this means, Boas intended to confirm that all humans had the same intellectual capacity and all cultures were based on the same basic mental principles. Boas outlined two major tasks for anthropologists. First, anthropologists should treat the human species as a totality and discover the universal principles of men “living under the same biological, geographical, and social environment.” Second, the first focus should not lead anthropologists to seek to categorize hierarchal forms of humanity and human activity. Rather, anthropologists should take multiple approaches to understand the tremendous variations in human form and activity. Specifically, local histories were necessary experiences in the formation of specific cultural traits. This appreciation of and interest in the tension between the local (particular cultures) and the universal (human nature) developed by Franz Boas became fundamentals of modern anthropology. More importantly, as Douglas Cole suggests, by 1904, Franz Boas had come to have a clear understanding of the modern concept of “culture,” which he still referred to by various terms such as “social environment,” “social life of people,” etc.22 George Stocking records that, prior to about 1900, anthropological “culture” had not emerged from the usages in the Anglo-American tradition. “Culture” was used synonymously with

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“civilization.” “It was associated with the progressive accumulation of the characteristic manifestations of human creativity: art, science, knowledge, refinement—those things that freed man from control by nature, by environment, by reflex, by instinct, by habit, or by custom.” “‘Culture’ was not associated with tradition.... In general, these connotations were given to the ideas of custom, instinct, or temperament, and they were often associated with a lower evolutionary status, frequently argued in racial terms.”23 The evolutionist usages by Tylor and Spencer were the typical representatives of the older meaning of “culture.” As Stocking convincingly argues, Franz Boas played a prominent role in transforming the term from the singular, determinist, evolutionist, absolutistic, and humanist “culture” to the plural, relativistic, historical, and anthropological “cultures.” Stocking finds not a single use of “culture” in the plural in Tylor’s writings. Nor are there plural usages of the term in American social science by writers other than Boas before 1895. Only in the 1910s did the plural form become regularly used by the first generation of Boas’ students.24 In this way, Boas focused not on “‘the features common to all human thought,’ but on its ‘differences,’ of recognizing that ‘before we seek what is common to all culture, we must analyze each culture,’ that the singular ‘culture’ of the evolutionists became the plural cultures of modern anthropology.” 25 Obviously, Boas’ idea of “cultural relativism” greatly empowered sociologists and anthropologists like Huang, who were from the non-western world, to conceive a different historical and cultural trajectory for indigenous societies and reject a single universal pattern of human evolution. By focusing on plurality and historicity, Boas did not intend to discard structure totally. Boas’ thinking indeed was a type of duality. On the one hand, culture(s) referred to distinctive social conditions and unique traditions. On the other hand, as suggested by Stocking, culture was “at the same time an integrated spiritual totality which somehow conditioned the form of its elements.” 26 The duality in Boas’ anthropological theory left meaningful space for the interpretations of his Chinese disciple. As I discuss below, in his definition of culture, Huang first confirmed universality and normality to culture. This Boasian approach tended to treat human experience as a totality and effectively rejected qualitative distinctions between different kinds of societies. Moreover, by describing the dynamics through which culture reproduced itself in a distinctive local context, Huang believed that all societies were valid derivations from a universal type. Among his

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usages of culture, Huang both displaced and incorporated “civilization” into the culture concept. In other words, for Huang, culture was not only a civilizational system, but also indicated a distinctive social environment that was conditioned by tradition. Within Huang’s “culturology,” culture was both plural and singular.

“Culturology” and Culture As a lifelong advocate of “culturology,” Huang Wenshan’s immediate concern when he established “culturology” in the 1930s was the pressing need to understand what kind of role culture could play in initiating social transformations. This goal was not unique among Chinese social scientists, who typically believed in the value of “applied social sciences” and using their knowledge for the formulation of social policy. But what was unique about Huang was his claim of the supremacy of “culturology” in guiding China’s modernization and cultural reconstruction. According to Huang, “culturology” could fulfill this mission due to its three interconnected goals. “First, to study the origin, evolution, and changes of culture in order to establish the general principles [of culture] and predict its future change; second, to study the interconnections between cultural phenomena; third, to study the particularity, similarity, and commonality of the cultures of respective nations.”27 In other words, “culturology” studied culture as a subject matter and privileged culture as the key to the understanding of historical, social, and cultural evolution. More importantly, because “culturology” provided an explanation of the homogeneity and heterogeneity of the cultures of different nations, “culturology” would provide theoretical guidance for China’s future transformation as well as justify China’s current cultural status in the world. Franz Boas’ theoretical concerns loomed large in Huang’s theory. Within Huang’s theoretical framework, the concept of culture was crucial to conceptualizing the dynamics between plurality and singularity, the local and the universal, heterogeneity and homogeneity, individuality and collectivity, past and present. According to Huang, the first characteristic of culture was “boundedness” (zhoubianxing 周遍性).28 On the surface, the culture of a tribe or a nation often formed a collective unity, appearing as an “organic morphology.”29 However, the content of different cultures was always the same, confirming the fact that culture was universal and “hyper-national” (chao guoji 超國際的). 30 Second,

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culture was cumulative. More than one individual or group contributed to cultural development. Therefore, culture represented the achievements of the majority of the community. In this sense, culture was not individual, but “collective” or “super-individual” (chao geren 超個人).31 Moreover, culture also manifested its “continuity” (cengxuxing 層續性)32 in the course of its development. From a historical perspective, modern culture was built upon previous cultural achievements. Culture also relocated itself (yidongxing 移動性). In the modern world, no culture was isolated. Intercommunication between two cultures would only function for their mutual enhancement. However, culture did not migrate in a wholesale fashion. Due to the influence of the environment, when some cultural elements moved to a new location, they tended to transform themselves into a new cultural form. By this means, culture had the ability to generate a new genus (leihuaxing 類化性). Furthermore, culture was a “functioning dynamic unit” (gongyongxing 功用性).33 Its formative parts always interacted with each other and maintained the dynamics of the totality. Finally, cultural change was driven by the material transformation of society (wuguanxing 物觀性). When humankind transformed the means of production, its material life was transformed accordingly, which further drove cultural change. By explaining the origins, transformation, and the internal and external motives of cultural evolution, Huang Wenshan was suggesting a correct approach to understanding some of the fundamental contradictions of the modern world—the contradictions between the local and the universal, between heterogeneity and homogeneity, authenticity and reproduction. More critically, by elaborating how and why universal cultural forms could produce local variations, and how the local variations could achieve universality at the same time, this approach defined a unique notion of Chinese modernity in response to Franz Boas’ cultural relativism. For Huang, Chinese culture in its modern form should be universal in content, based on the accumulative achievements from the past. It was a new genus, different from Western culture, and it always functioned as a totality. As I illustrate later in this paper, Huang’s notion largely resembles the cultural thinking of Chen Lifu 陳立夫 (1900–2001), the major spokesman of GMD party ideology in the 1930s. Both of them believed that Chinese modernity grew out of tradition, functioned as a “dynamic unity,” and maintained a unique identity. According to Huang, the primary job of a “culturologist” (wenhuaxuezhe 文化學者) was to study the basic nature(s) of (Chinese) culture(s).

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“Culturology” as a “Generalizing Science” Due to these distinctive natures of culture, even the discipline that studies culture should contain a higher form of universality and normality than established social sciences. In this sense, Huang Wenshan defined “culturology” as a “generalizing science” (gaikuo de kexue 概括的 科學) like physics, chemistry, and general biology. Unlike “individualizing sciences” (geti de kexue 個體的科學) such as history that explained individual, self-sufficient, and non-repeating phenomena, generalizing sciences focused on repeating phenomena and sought to generate general principles to explain the repetition.34 Because culture was the synthesis of all the economic, political, and religious products of human society, “culturology” required a synthetic and generalizing approach. Therefore, sustained by “an abstract approach,” “culturology” dealt with the commonalities of all cultural phenomena and left the study of particular cultural areas to particular social sciences. In other words, while particular social sciences such as economics, politics, and sociology studied individual fields within culture and generated the raw materials for “culturologists,” “culturology” used these to synthesize and generalize the principles of the origins, evolution, and invention of culture. 35 As Huang noted, Culturology studies commonalities and the relationships of all cultural phenomena. But cultural sciences (or social sciences) only study one particular aspect of cultural phenomena. Its discussions are deep but narrow. For instance, in their respective specialties, economics studies economic lives; sociology studies social relations, social formality, social evolution, or social interaction; political science studies political change. If we think of all cultural phenomena as a unity, economic and political phenomena are not separate but interconnected and mutually influencing. Of course, the economy influences political organization and initiates political transformation, and vice versa. Because economics only studies economic phenomena and political science only studies political phenomena, the two disciplines are not prepared to study inter-disciplinary questions (xueji wenti 學際問題), such as the relationship between economy and culture, climate and cultural evolution, interaction between environment and civilization, etc. In the past, these questions belonged to sociology. Right now because sociology has become a particular and independent discipline, these phenomena belong to the field of culturology.36

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In this important paragraph, Huang Wenshan attempted to define a new discipline by describing the relationship between “culturology” and social sciences. If economics, sociology, and political science studied particular cultural phenomena, it was “culturology” that provided a structural understanding of culture as a totality. By illuminating the interdisciplinary blind spots, “culturology” would help to reconfirm the interconnections between various particular social sciences. As Huang stated, “The foundation of culturology is built upon social sciences or cultural sciences. Social sciences need culturology to understand the relationships between the various social sciences, while culturology defines the research materials for the social sciences.”37 In other words, without understanding culture as a structure and totality, a particular social science would lose sight of and fail to find solutions to interdisciplinary questions. This confirmed the theoretical imperative to establish “culturology” as a new discipline.

“Culturology” and “Cultural Construction” In terms of a general understanding of (Chinese) culture—and the urgent need and possible means to reconstruct it—Huang Wenshan held an ideologically intimate relationship with Chen Lifu, the head of the GMD central party headquarters, one of the major figures of Chiang Kai-shek’s think tank, and the primary spokesman for the GMD official ideology. Chen’s cultural thinking can be primarily understood from his most influential book entitled Vitalism (Weishenglun 唯生論), which literally means “the principle of life.” The book was a compilation of Chen’s lectures to the students at the Central Political Institute (Zhongyang zhengzhi xuexiao 中央政治學校) in Nanjing in 1933.38 In the book, Chen took “the principle of life” as the vehicle to philosophically define the modernizing program that China needed in its time of crisis. By designating his program as “cultural construction” (wenhua jianshe 文化建設), Chen took culture as the hinge to achieve Chinese modernization and the GMD-announced political goals: party and national consolidation. Chen Lifu opened his philosophical system by defining the monistic noumenon (yiyuan benti 一元本體) of the universe: the atom (yuanzi 元子). The atom was “the smallest and the most basic unit” of the universe to form the subsistence.39 Containing matter and spirit, the atom occupied a certain space and demonstrated the duration of temporality through its

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movement.40 Motivated by the interaction between the centripetal force which Chen called “the power of love” (aili 愛力) and the centrifugal “power of pulling” (sheli 攝力), atoms were always in the process of breaking up their old balanced condition (junheng zhuangtai 均衡狀態) and developing into new manifestations of equilibrium.41 Regulated by this universal principle of mechanics, “everything on earth” (wanwu 萬物) was constituted by different combinations of atoms. These various combinations of atoms defined the percentage of matter and spirit within a subsistence, which further granted a distinctive nature to minerals (kuangwu 礦物), plants, animals, and human beings. Moreover, different social and physical environments and a unique history/time were two other factors that could produce more variations of combined atoms. For Chen Lifu, these multiple variables explained the multiplicity of our world. But at the same time, Chen insisted that the world was unitary (yiyuan 一元). 42 He claimed that “the origin (benyuan 本元) of the universe is the same.... The entire universe is structured by the various combinations of the identical atom.”43 Implied within Chen’s theory were his efforts, on the one hand, to identify the fundamental element of the universe that could grant universality and uniformity to “everything on earth,” and, on the other hand, to explain the specificity and diversity of our world. When applied in the sociological analysis of Chinese and Western civilizations, Chen’s cosmological and ontological opening in the Vitalism was particularly meaningful in that it addressed some basic questions of modernity: how universality could be achieved globally and grounded locally, and how specificity and diversity could be justified in relation to universality. Chen’s theoretical springboard was quite similar to that of Huang Wenshan. Having concluded that the universe was the harmonious combination of matter and spirit, Chen turned to define some fundamental features of Chinese and Western civilizations. Understanding the relationship between past and present was crucial for a program that aimed to reconstruct the cultural foundation of a civilization with a long history, as it was in the work of Huang Wenshan. Chen argued that, in the past, Chinese civilization had produced great spiritual achievements that made Chinese culture splendid. However, by emphasizing “spiritual sciences” (jingshen kexue 精神科學), China had neglected its material existence. In contrast, the West had developed material sciences while neglecting the spiritual aspects of life. In violation of the basic principle of Vitalism, which emphasized the harmonious coexistence of matter and

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spirit, both societies could only “maintain one-sided achievements for a short period and would ultimately fail and be destroyed.”44 Chen suggested that China should learn the latest scientific and technological advances in the West while preserving pride in Chinese ethnic identity. For Chen, Vitalism would be the best philosophy to guide such cultural amalgamation because it avoided the biases of both Western materialism and Eastern idealism.45 Chen also questioned the Darwinist belief that ruthless struggle and competition motivated human evolution.46 Chen shared with Huang Wenshan a critical view of the evolutionist scheme. According to Chen, life (sheng 生), “the core of the universe,” was achieved through human beings’ collective struggles against the environment.47 The “Great Way” (da dao 大道) of life was for the majority of people to achieve “co-living, coexistence, and co-evolution” (gongsheng gongcun gong jinhua 共生共存 共進化).48 This was the “prime mover” (genben yuan dongli 根本原動力) of human history.49 Implicit within Chen’s theory was the belief that the principle force in human evolution was harmonious cooperation, not class conflict. In a similar fashion, culture was the collective achievement of a society. For this reason, cultural construction should enhance a nation’s collective existence. In another piece on cultural construction, Chen Lifu categorized culture into three stages. In the past, culture entailed the collective achievements of a nation. In the present, culture was a mode of living adopted by a nation in response to a changing environment. For the future, culture provided the required preparation for a nation’s development. 50 Chen demanded a careful examination of a nation’s full temporal spectrum (past, present, and future) because this correct cultural approach would let nation-makers take full advantage of their nation’s useful past. For this reason, Chen Lifu fiercely criticized May Fourth iconoclasm in regard to China’s heritage. In his eyes, failure to recognize the past could only result in national pathologies that would endanger the nation.51 Therefore, Chen proposed to constructively mobilize the past, the present, and the future to create a modern Chinese culture: We should preserve and develop the advantages inherited from the past. We should also be aware of current global trends and systematically plan for China’s future direction.... The Premier always instructs us that, to save China, on the one hand, we should save China’s inherent culture from

Cultural Policy and Culture under the Guomindang · 123 the roots up; yet on the other hand, we must also catch up with Western civilization. In other words, the former is a question of time; the latter is a question of space. The simultaneous enrichment of material and spiritual conditions will realize the “essence of life” (sheng zhi ti 生之體). The simultaneous emphasis on time and space will accomplish the “function of life” (sheng zhi yong 生之用). The realization of both essence and function will revitalize life.52

According to Chen, the essence of life contained the material and spiritual aspects of culture, while the function of life—to regenerate China— must answer China’s temporal and spatial needs. By simultaneously incorporating East and West, space and time, past and present into this essence-function structure, Chen’s cultural system defined a distinctive GMD vision of modernity. On the one hand, Chinese modernity was universal, comprehensive, inclusive, contemporary, and up-to-date; on the other hand, it was also particular, local, and unique because it exclusively addressed Chinese problems for the Chinese people in the Chinese locality. In praise of this cultural approach, Chen named it the golden mean (zhongyong 中庸). Addressing both temporality and spatiality, zhong (in-between-ness) literally meant “spatial correctness” (kongjian zhi zheng 空間之正); yong (principle) indicated “temporal duration” (shijian zhi jiu 時間之久). Therefore, the application of the Doctrine of the Mean—the Chinese terminology for an appropriate amalgamation—would guarantee “life’s rationalization” (shengming de helihua 生命的合理化).53 Due to the significance of this cultural construction, Chen Lifu proclaimed in his Vitalism that it was the GMD version of the New Culture Movement.54 Fundamentally speaking, GMD theorists like Chen believed that political, social, and cultural changes/construction should facilitate rationalization, social cooperation, and national solidarity. In other words, construction (a word that was often associated with their call for revolution) should produce a sense of national togetherness rather than chaos, destruction, and irrationality. As Chen Lifu stated, “Of course, revolution is destructive. But this type of [destructive] work is indeed the means, not the ends. We have to understand that we destroy not for the purpose of destruction, but for the goal of construction.”55 This political, social, and cultural stance made the GMD view of history a serious contender against a Marxist interpretation of history and Chinese modernity.

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Huang Wenshan’s active efforts to celebrate culture’s “dynamic unity” were inspired by Chen Lifu’s Vitalism. In a brief account of his intellectual development, Huang stated that when he was developing his theory of “culturology,” he read Chen’s Vitalism and came under its influence. 56 Similar to Chen Lifu’s idea of life/culture, Huang Wenshan’s “culturology” regarded culture as a social complex that was formed in humankind’s continuous struggles against the natural environment. According to Huang, “Driven by living motives from humankind, in the interaction [between nature and humankind], culture is the great social complex produced by [people’s] actions and spirit in accordance with the existing material environment.”57 Quoting Sun Yat-sen’s Doctrine of the People’s Livelihood as his supporting authority, Huang explained that humans work for their survival. This effort necessitates emotional and rational interactions with nature, producing culture. Because of this, people rely upon “interconnected action” (xianghu guanlian de xingdong 相互關聯的行動) and “inter-individual behavior” (gerenji de xingwei 個人 際的行為) to create culture. 58 Therefore, “culture is not the product of individuals, but a collective outcome. The preservation and continuity of culture is not the business of the individual, but a collective enterprise of a community.”59 For both Huang and Chen, nationalism became the decisive ideolog y for def ining a culture that was collective and anti-individualistic. Moreover, “culturology” explained how individual activities together comprised a cultural unity. According to Huang, a collective unity was formed when every individual accepted “regularity and coordination” (guizexing yu tiaozhengxing 規則性與調整性) of his/her psychological activities. 60 Huang Wenshan quoted the noted American sociologist, Charles A. Ellwood (1873–1946), as follows: The term “social coordination” has been used to express the connections between the activities of a mass of individuals living together and carrying on, through interstimulation and response, a common life process, because it is a colorless term, not implying the high degree of consciousness which sometimes attaches to the phrase social cooperation. Manifestly, as has already been said, all social organization is an outcome of social coordination and social coordination can, therefore, be regarded as synonymous with social cooperation only in the sense that all social organization implies cooperation.61

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When regularity was defined as a common objective for the members of the collective, “social coordination” (shehui tiaozheng 社會調整) functioned to produce a collective unity among its members.62 More importantly, when social coordination developed further into social custom, a permanent “social collective” (shehui jituan 社會集團) came into being.63 In this way, by calling for social cooperation, “culturology” clearly functioned to promote a unique GMD vision of social evolution.

“Culturology” and “China-grounded Cultural Construction” On 10 January 1935, ten distinguished professors and writers from Nanjing, Shanghai, and Beijing promulgated a cultural manifesto, calling for “China-grounded Cultural Construction.”64 Huang Wenshan was one of them. The biographical information indicated that six major contributors of the manifesto were intimately involved with the CC Clique, a major political faction with the GMD that was headed by Chen Lifu and his elder brother Chen Guofu 陳果夫 (1892–1951).65 The strong official connections of the group suggest the likelihood that the manifesto resulted from the direct order from the CC Clique. A close analysis of the manifesto demonstrates a cultural stance almost identical to that promoted by Chen Lifu. Using the ten professors to voice this official statement of the GMD cultural line conveyed intellectual legitimacy, suggesting that the ideas were an independent expression of the Chinese intelligentsia. Due to its importance, the manifesto is quoted at some length below: 1, A lost China In the cultural area, we have lost the sight of [the needs of] contemporary China.... China has culturally vanished because China has lost the [traditional] characteristics of her political system, social organization, and intellectual substance. The people, who are nurtured by this characterless politics, society, and spirit, are gradually becoming non-Chinese. We can ascertain that, from a cultural perspective, there is no position for China in the modern world. Within China’s territory, there are almost no [true] Chinese people. To make China raise her head in the cultural arena, to produce a politics, society, and spirit with Chinese characteristics, we must conduct a China-grounded cultural construction. Japanese painters always say, “The Westerners often dislike the vivid color in Japanese painting. But without

126 · Guannan Li this glaringly vivid color, how can the paintings remain Japanese?” We need the same idea in the process of [Chinese] cultural construction. To undertake a China-grounded cultural construction, we must employ a critical attitude and a scientific method to investigate China’s past, seize the current opportunity, and construct China’s future. We need to make our greatest efforts in these three areas....

3, What shall we do? We need a China-grounded cultural construction. During this process of cultural construction, we should have the following understanding. First, China is China. It is not any other territory. It has its own features. Meanwhile, China is contemporary China, not the China of the past. It contains a unique temporality (shidaixing 時世代性). Therefore, we need to pay special attention to China’s needs at this time and in this location. Second, it is pointless to blindly praise ancient China’s institutions and philosophy. It is equally useless to unrelentingly denounce ancient China’s institutions and philosophy. We must investigate everything in the past. We must preserve the things that need to be preserved and eliminate the things that need to be eliminated. We must make every effort to promote [China’s ancient] excellent institutions and great philosophy in order to make contributions to the whole world. We should eliminate the abominable diseased institutions and evil philosophy, being certain to eliminate all of them without any mercy. Third, we should and must absorb Euro-American culture, absorbing what we should absorb. We should not maintain an attitude of wholesale Westernization, which even absorbs the dregs from the West. The criteria for absorption must be determined by modern China’s needs. Fourth, [the objective of] a China-grounded cultural construction is to create. Creation will help us catch up [with the West]. The purpose of creation is for China and the Chinese people, who have lost their cultural characteristics, to equal other countries and peoples and make valuable contributions to global culture. Fifth, to culturally construct China is not to abandon our dream of Great Harmony. Our first step is to construct China into a united whole, through which China will have sufficient strength to contribute to Great Harmony. In general, China needs to know herself, but also needs to have a global perspective. She needs a certain openness and tolerance [of other cultures and] not to close herself off, but China also needs the confidence not to blindly imitate [other countries]. These are our thoughtful concerns. With this attitude, the cultural construction should not follow the old, and not blindly imitate. From a China-grounded perspective, we must take a

Cultural Policy and Culture under the Guomindang · 127 critical approach and use scientific methods to investigate the past, seize the current opportunity, and create the future.66

The manifesto exhibits a strong nationalistic stance in defining the ethnicity, nationality, sovereignty, and identity of the culture to which the Chinese nation was presumed to be attached. The manifesto expressed a deep anxiety and concern about the loss of Chineseness in the areas of politics, social organization, and spirit. According to the ten professors, the serious consequences of the loss of national character were on the one hand that there was “no position for China in the modern world,” and on the other hand, there were no real Chinese people living in the territory that was called China. To regain this lost Chineseness, they suggested a China-grounded approach to reconstruct Chinese culture. Specifically, this “scientific” approach called for attention to culture’s temporal comprehensiveness in investigating the past, mobilizing the present, and creating the future. The temporality of culture explained by Chen Lifu’s cultural theory loomed large in the manifesto. The manifesto exhibited a deep consciousness of crisis sustained by a view of the historical degradation of Chinese culture. According to the ten professors, from antiquity to the Qin dynasty (221–206 B.C.), Chinese culture was on the ascent. It peaked during the Spring and Autumn (722–481 B.C.) and the Warring States (475–221 B.C.) periods. After that, Chinese culture stagnated and declined to the point where Western “fast warships and solid guns” (jianchuan lipao 監船利炮) awakened China from her reveries of self-esteem.67 The late Qing reformers failed in their experiments to modernize the country due to their blind “imitation of techniques” (the Self-strengthening movement) or their “political plagiarism” from Japan’s Meiji Restoration (the One Hundreds Days’ Reform).68 Although the 1911 Revolution opened a new historical phase, contemporary China still needed a new culture to regenerate the nation. In this way, the ten professors identified degraded traditional culture as the fundamental reason for China’s repeated experiences of unequal treatment in its encounters with the Western powers. Implicit within their theory was the belief that cultural reconstruction would enable sovereignty and equality with the Western powers. The manifesto suggested five guidelines for cultural construction. China’s culture was not closed but should be open. The openness would ensure the absorption of any useful elements from either the Chinese past or the West. Moreover, cultural contest was situational. It should answer

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“China’s needs at this time and in this location” (cishi cidi de xuyao 此時 此地的需要). In other words, it was “China’s needs at this time and in this location” that distinguished this new culture from both Western materialism and Eastern idealism. The manifesto thus defined what the ten professors meant by Chineseness. A reconstructed Chinese culture must be simultaneously scientific and spiritual for the purpose of overcoming the limitations of the two civilizations. “Science” ensures that China would have the industrial modernity to develop its material base for its internal development and external anti-colonialism. “Spirit” ensures that China would have the morality (not necessarily a Confucian one) to cure the materialistic problems of global capitalism. In this sense, the ten professors used the designation “China-grounded” not only to identify the content of Chineseness as the highest standard to constitute this new culture, but also to declare its territorial claim against any outside intrusion into this imagined cultural community. As for Chen Lifu, the temporality and spatiality of Chineseness converged to make a strong appeal to nationalism. In all of these respects, the manifesto appears to have served as a declaration of the official party position as expressed through a statement by Chinese intellectuals. More interestingly, the manifesto intentionally differentiated “Chinese” (Zhongguode 中國的) from “traditional” (chuantongde 傳統的). “Chinese” was employed by the ten professors as an adjective to describe the features, uniqueness, and characteristics of a cultural unity. This cultural unity would function like a human body, with the ability to transform any alien “nutrition” into food that could be turned into cell and muscle. In a similar fashion, this cultural unity was imagined to be able to absorb either “traditional” or “Western” elements and turn them into constructive parts of a new Chinese cultural unity. In other words, what was “Chinese” was contemporary, territorial, sovereign, and ethnic, but what was “traditional” was timeless, essential, and historical. “Tradition” often awaited its employment by the present. By assigning different spatial and temporal meanings and values to “Chinese” and “traditional,” the manifesto created a theoretical space to critically examine and employ both “tradition” and the West to construct a new culture. For the ten professors, “tradition” and the West could be used as useful raw materials to construct a culture with Chinese characteristics that would ultimately contribute not simply to national development, but to “global harmony.” The promulgation of the manifesto aroused one of the major intellectual controversies of the 1930s.69 The GMD view of Chinese modernity

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promptly propelled the liberals and the radicals to denounce the GMD view of the Chinese past and the Western world. After the promulgation of the manifesto, Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962), a professor of philosophy at Peking University and the spokesman of Chinese liberals, claimed that “China-grounded” culture was a new version of “Chinese learning for substance and Western learning for practical function” (Zhongxue weiti, xixue weiyong 中學為體，西學為用), an intellectual approach deployed by late Qing scholars to preserve Chinese learning in the face of Western military and cultural challenges. Hu Shi and many other Chinese liberals from the so-called “Wholesale Westernization School” (Quanpan xihua pai 全盤西化派), who rejected the notion that the past could play a constructive role in China’s search for modernity, argued that the eclecticism contained in the manifesto was in reality a new round of conservatism that aimed to maintain the old and outdated Chinese past.70 In a similar fashion, Chinese radicals, who were preoccupied with the Marxist presumption that the economic base determines the superstructure, emphasized the colonial nature of the Chinese economy and contended that the more advanced capitalist elements were unfit for the development of (semi-) feudal and (semi-) colonial Chinese society. Chinese radicals ridiculed the manifesto as exhibiting an obsession with the “foreign life” (yanghua shenghuo 洋化生活).71 The condemnation from liberals and radicals demarcated a distinctive GMD adaptation to modernity in its conception of China’s relationship with tradition and the West. Huang Wenshan loudly applauded the China-grounded cultural approach. He claimed that it fully accorded with the true spirit of “culturology” and was necessary to launch China’s future cultural transformation. To explain the meaning of China-grounded culture, Huang quoted the ten professors’ response to criticism of their cultural manifesto. In our manifesto, we have clearly shown that China-grounded culture neither blindly inherits [tradition] nor uncritically copies [the West]. This culture is not a makeshift combination of Chinese and Western things, but meets an entire nation’s needs at this time and in this location.... If we admit the fact that every nation at different times and locations has its own needs, we should be assured that China must have her own special needs.... Therefore, the China-grounded culture we advocate should be based on our nation’s needs at this time and in this location.72

As Huang demonstrated, in the process of cultural construction, the China-grounded approach would carefully analyze its cultural materials,

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consider China’s unique social and geographical environment, and maintain an open and critical attitude to both old and foreign cultural forms. In this way, “culturology” provided a strong theoretical base in enabling Huang to fully embrace the GMD official cultural line. Huang further noted that an essay written by Cong Yangcai 叢養才 in Qiantu 前途 [The future]73 gave the best explanation of the true meaning of “China-grounded culture.” Huang quoted, I think “China-grounded” means “We must not forget ourselves, we must understand ourselves, and we must act for ourselves.” We must carry out the undertakings that are beneficial to China. “China-grounded culture” means that, in the name of China’s interests, Chinese won’t forget their own nation, they will understand their own status, and they will undertake those activities that are beneficial to the life of the Chinese people.74

Because this cultural approach promoted a culture that was beneficial to the entire Chinese nation, and because a national culture must be collective, “super-individual,” total, and singular, Huang Wenshan saw no obstacles to employing the terminology of modern nationalism to define the most prominent features of culture. In taking this step, Huang Wenshan largely transformed Franz Boas’ focus on cultural heterogeneity into his own strong emphasis on a national culture and his enthusiastic celebration of a cultural nationalism sponsored by the nation-state. For the same reason, in the preface to his essay collection on “culturology,” Huang claimed that the promotion of “culturology” would serve “the nation-state’s future” (minzuguojia zhi qiantu 民族國家之前途).75 In the process of cultural reconstruction, Huang argued that “culturology” would function to reassess the value of culture and address how to establish the foundation of a scientific culture and how to expand the new life of the national culture. In essence, our serious concern with the current national revolution is how to establish a cultural system embodying the Three Principles of the People. Without the establishment of systematic culturology, this mission would remain unaccomplished.76

By employing the Three Principles of the People to define this cultural system, Huang showed no hesitation in asserting the role “culturology” could play in promoting the GMD version of a national culture.

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Conclusion Huang Wenshan’s efforts to establish “culturology” provide a powerful case to examine the ideological intimacy between Chinese social scientists and the Nationalist government. This intimacy was grounded in a common perception of China’s past, current problems, and future directions. Advocating a project of “cultural construction,” Huang and other pro-GMD social scientists demarcated an intellectual stance that was significantly different from the notions of Chinese modernity advocated by Chinese liberals or radicals. Academic construction was deeply entwined with politics and ideology. The establishment of “culturology” belonged to a grandiose scheme of nation-state building in twentieth-century China. “Culturology” is essentially a theory of culture, stressing the totality of a civilizational system. We have seen how easily social scientists like Huang expanded the reference of culture to the nation-state. What Hang pursued was a cultural program that was sponsored by the GMD state and simultaneously worked for the collective interests of the Chinese nation in its struggle for survival. The stress on universality as a significant feature of culture had certain theoretical and political implications. Unlike his American mentor, who tried to preserve indigeneity, Huang incorporated “civilization” into the sociological and anthropological concept of culture. For Huang, the culture concept could be plural and singular at the same time. This cultural mission to advance China’s global status perfectly corresponded to the GMD regime’s urgent call for national salvation in a period of political, social, and cultural crisis created by the new round of colonialism and imperialism in the 1930s. Herein lies the fundamental difference between the Anglo-American advisors and their Chinese disciples. What these Chinese students aimed for was not preserving/appreciating but transforming/remaking the native cultures in response to the external and internal challenges. By emphasizing the significance of culture’s accumulative nature, Huang Wenshan opposed China’s wholesale Westernization. We have seen how Huang questioned the teleological scheme of Hegel or Marx, criticizing a unilinear trajectory of human evolution. If culture was to be adaptive to social environment and respond to tradition, China then needed a culture that answered its own needs “at this time and in this location.” In contrast with a radical rejection of the past, this approach

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suggests a more cautious cultural stance that recognizes the constructive role of old elements. In addressing the motive force of history, Huang’s theory posed an effective theoretical alternative to the Marxist understanding of historical and societal transformation. It is important to keep in mind that Huang’s rhetoric of culture, which embodied the promise of identity representation, social harmony, and national consolidation, held the potential to develop into new modes of oppression. In the 1930s, this type of cultural rhetoric often celebrated the various versions of state hegemony in the name of the Chinese nation. The awareness of the roles played by Huang and other pro-GMD Chinese social scientists in this process is crucial for us to reflect on our own contemporary academic practices, which often intersect with ideology and politics.

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Notes 1 2

3 4

5 6 7 8

9

10

Huang Wenshan 黄文山, Wenhuaxue lunwenji 文化學論文集 [Selected papers on culturology] (Guangzhou: Zhengzhong shuju, 1938), p. 1. For a general discussion of the development of social sciences, particularly sociology in China, see Han Minghan 韓明汉, Zhongguo shehuixueshi 中國社 會學史 [A history of Chinese sociology] (Tianjin: Tianjin renmin chubanshe, 1987); Yang Yabin 楊雅彬, Zhongguo shehuixueshi 中國社會學史 [A history of Chinese sociology] (Ji’nan: Shandong renmin chubanshe, 1987); Sun Chungsing, “The Development of the Social Sciences in China before 1949” (PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1987). Wong Siu-lun devotes a whole chapter to the history of sociology in China before 1949 in Society and Socialism in Contemporary China (London, Boston and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd., 1979), pp. 1–36. Fei Xiaotong’s 費孝通 intellectual development in the late 1920s and the early 1930s is a very illuminating case of this methodological change. See R. David Arkush, Fei Xiaotong and Sociology in Revolutionary China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 23–36. The transformation of the department of sociology at Yanjing University demonstrates the same trend. See Yung-chen Chiang, Social Engineering and the Social Sciences in China, 1919–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 23–77. Chiang, Social Engineering and the Social Sciences in China, pp. 6–7. Sources list the year of Huang’s birth differently. This article follows the year given by Zhonghua Minguoshi dacidian 中華民國史大辭典 [A dictionary of the history of the Republic of China], edited by Zhang Xianwen 張憲文, Fang Qingqiu 方慶秋 , and Huang Meizhen 黄美真 (Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 2002), p. 1588. Huang Wenshan, Huang Wenshan wenji 黄文山文集 [Collected works of Huang Wenshan] (Taipei: Shangwu chubanshe, 1983), p. 2. Ibid., p. 3. Ibid., p. 4. For a general discussion of the origin and the development of anarchism in China, see Robert A. Scalapino and George T. Yu, The Chinese Anarchist Movement (Berkeley: Center for Chinese Studies, 1961); Peter Zarrow, Anarchism and Chinese Political Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990); Arif Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). In his book, Arif Dirlik provides a convincing explanation for why anarchism lost its hold on Chinese intelligentsia in the post-May-Fourth era. Arif Dirlik gives the first full account of the so-called “social controversies” launched by Chinese Marxist historians in the 1930s. See Arif Dirlik, Revolution and History: The Origins of Marxist Historiography in China, 1919– 1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978). Huang, Wenhuaxue lunwenji, p. 3.

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14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Ibid. Also see Huang, Huang Wenshan wenji, p. 5. Huang, Huang Wenshan wenji, pp. 2–3. The close connection between the manifesto and the Cultural Construction movement sponsored by the GMD government was an open secret. Many newspaper editorials pointed out the official background of the manifesto. See Song Xiaoqing 宋小慶 and Liang Liping 梁麗萍, Guanyu Zhongguo benwei wenhua wenti de taolun 關於中國本位文化問題的討論 [A study of the controversy over China-grounded culture] (Nanchang: Baihuazhou wenyi chubanshe, 2004), pp. 61–121. Ibid., pp. 1–2. Huang, Huang Wenshan wenji, p. 4. Douglas Cole, Franz Boas, The Early Years, 1858–1906 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999), p. 264. Ibid., pp. 262–263. George W. Stocking, Jr., Victorian Anthropology (New York: The Free Press, 1987), pp. 169–170. Cole, Franz Boas, p. 263. Ibid., p. 264. George W. Stocking, Jr., ed., The Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883– 1911: A Franz Boas Reader (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1974), pp. 267–268. Cole, Franz Boas, pp. 273–274. George W. Stocking, Jr., Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology (New York: The Free Press, 1968), pp. 201–202. Ibid., p. 203. Ibid., p. 212. Ibid., p. 214. Huang, Wenhuaxue lunwenji, p. 4. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid. Ibid., p. 10. Ibid., pp. 35–36. Ibid., pp. 38–40. Ibid., pp. 48–49. Ibid., p. 49. According to Terry Bodenhorn’s study of Weishenglun, Chen’s book was a best-seller within the genre of political propaganda. From its publication in 1934, the text went through seven editions within just two years. According to Time, the text had sold 250,000 copies by 1947. See Terry Bodenhorn, “Chen Lifu’s Vitalism: A Guomindang Version of Modernity Circa 1934,” in Defining Modernity: Guomindang Rhetorics of a New China, 1920–1970,

Cultural Policy and Culture under the Guomindang · 135 edited by Terry Bodenhorn (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), p. 92. 39 Chen Lifu 陳立夫, “Weishenglun” 唯生論 [Vitalism], in Minguo congshu 民國 叢書 [Collectanea of Republican books], series 3, vol. 6, edited by the Compilation Committee of the Republican Book Series (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1991), p. 16. 40 Ibid., p. 25. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid., p. 20. 43 Ibid., p. 37. 44 Ibid., p. 45. 45 For a discussion of Chen’s view of Chinese and Western civilizations, see also Bodenhorn, “Chen Lifu’s Vitalism,” pp. 99–100. 46 Chen, “Wenshenglun,” pp. 49–50. See also ; Bodenhorn, “Chen Lifu’s Vitalism,” p. 97. 47 According to Terry Bodenhorn, Chen’s Vitalism was indebted to Henry Bergson’s Creative Evolution. On the inf luence of Bergson on Chen’s thinking, see Bodenhorn, “Chen Lifu’s Vitalism,” pp. 96–99. 48 Chen, “Weishenglun,” p. 53. 49 Chen Lifu, “Sheng zhi yuanli” 生之原理 [The principle of life], in Minguo congshu, series 3, vol. 6, p. 198. 50 Chen Lifu, “Wenhua jianshe zhi qianye” 文化建設之前夜 [On the eve of cultural construction], in Chen Lifu xiansheng yanlun ji 陳立夫先生言論集 [Mr. Chen Lifu’s collected speeches and talks], Vol. 1 (n.p.: 1935), p. 81. 51 Ibid., pp. 81–82. 52 Ibid., pp. 82, 84. 53 Ibid., pp. 85–86. 54 Chen, “Weishenglun,” p. 195. 55 Chen, “Wenhua jianshe zhi qianye,” p. 82. 56 Huang, Huang Wenshan wenji, p. 3. 57 Huang, Wenhuaxue lunwenji, p. 12. 58 Ibid., p. 13. 59 Ibid. 60 Ibid., pp. 160–161. 61 Ibid., pp. 160–161. Huang quoted from Charles A. Ellwood, Sociology in its Psychological Aspects (New York, London: D. Appleton and Company, 1912), pp. 148–190. 62 Ibid., p. 161. 63 Ibid. 64 Following the original sequence, the ten authors were Wang Xinming 王新命 (an editor from the Shanghai Commercial Press), Huang Wenshan, Fan Zhongyun 樊仲雲 (a political scientist at Ji’nan University), Sun Hanbing 孫 寒冰 (a political scientist at Fudan University), Chen Gaoyong 陳高傭 (a historian at Ji’nan University), Wu Yugan 武堉幹 (a professor of business at

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65

66

67 68 69

70

Nanjing Central University), Zhang Yi 章益 (a professor of education at Fudan University), He Bingsong 何炳松 (a historian at Ji’nan University), Tao Xisheng 陶希聖 (a historian at Peking University), and Sa Mengwu 薩孟武 (a political scientist at Central Political Institute). Another contributor was Ye Qing 葉青, a well-known pro-GMD writer. His name did not appear on the manifesto for the purpose of covering up its official background. The six major contributors were Wang, Sun, Fan, Chen, Zhang, and He, who participated in all or part of the preparation meetings for the promulgation of the manifesto. All of them were members of the China Cultural Construction Association (Zhongguo wenhua jianshe xiehui 中國文化建设協會), a cultural front organization of the CC Clique. Huang, Wu, Tao, and Sa neither attended the meetings nor were affiliated with the CC Clique. Nevertheless, all ten authors were pro-GMD writers. Wang Xinming 王新命, Huang Wenshan, et al., “Zhongguo benwei de wenhua jianshe xuanyan” 中國本位的文化建設宣言 [A manifesto for Chinagrounded cultural construction], Zhongguo wenhua jianshe xiehui huibao 中 國文化建設協會會報 [Journal of the China Cultural Construction Association] 1.6 (Jan. 1935), pp. 1–4. Ibid., p. 2. Ibid. After its promulgation, the manifesto aroused heated discussion among the intelligentsia, who published essays in newspapers and journals to express their different opinions regarding “China-grounded Culture.” In June 1935, Ma Fangruo 馬芳若 compiled many of these essays into a collection, entitled Zhongguo wenhua lunzhan 中國文化論戰 [The controversy over Chinese culture]. At He Bingsong’s suggestion, the title was later changed to Zhongguo wenhua jianshe taolun ji 中國文化建設討論集 [Collected essays on Chinese culture], published by Shanghai Longwen Bookstore the following year. The collection contained 157 essays and three appendixes. In August, Fan Zhongyun, the chief-editor of Wenhua jianshe 文化建設 [Cultural construction], collected the 55 essays published in his journal and produced a second essay collection, entitled Zhongguo benwei wenhua jianshe taolun ji 中國本位文化建設討論集 [Collected essays on China-grounded culture]. In the preface to the collection, Fan remarked that the promulgation of the manifesto “attracted wide attention from people inside and outside China. In the Wenhua jianshe alone, the essays contained more than ten-million words...” In 1980, Pamir Bookstore republished it as Zhongguo benwei wenhua taolun ji 中國文化討論集. See Song and Liang, Guanyu Zhongguo benwei wenhua wenti de taolun, pp. 1–2. Hu Shi 胡适, “Shiping suowei ‘Zhongguo benwei de wenhua jianshe’” 識評所 謂「中國本位的文化建設」[My tentative comments on the so-called “Chinagrounded cultural construction”], Tianjin da gong bao 天津大公報 (31 March 1935). A critique of this type of “conservatism” argument is beyond the scope of this paper. My general position is that it too easily conf lates

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71

72 73

74 75 76

“Chinese” and “traditional” without recognizing efforts by the GMD theorists to redefine, appropriate, transform, produce, and essentialize “tradition” and the West in their own ways. In other words, by simply taking the rhetoric of “cultural construction” as a purely essentialist reflection of the Chinese tradition, this conservatism argument downplays Chinese intellectuals’ ability to reinvent tradition. Zhuang Xinzai 莊心在, “Benwei jingji yu benwei wenhua” 本位經濟與本位文 化 [China-grounded economy and China-grounded culture], in Zhongguo wenhua jianshe taolun ji 中國文化建設討論集, edited by Ma Fangruo 馬芳若 (Shanghai: Guoyin shuju, 1936), p. 216. Huang, Wenhuaxue lunwenji, p. 155. Qiantu was the official journal of the Society for the Vigorous Practice [of the Three People’s Principles] (Lixingshe 力行社), a secret political faction within the GMD consisting mainly of Whampoa military graduates. It is noteworthy that the Lixingshe and the CC Clique were the two most important pro-Chiang Kai-shek factions within the GMD. In this sense, it is not surprising to find that Huang Wenshan agreed with ideas from Qiantu. Huang, Wenhuaxue lunwenji, pp. 154–155. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid.

Chapter 6

Li Anzhai and Frontier Anthropology: Tibet, Discourse of the Frontier, and Applied Anthropology during World War II, 1937–1945 Hsiao-pei Yen

Introduction The eight-year-long War of Resistance against Japan caused tremendous dislocation, disintegration, and depopulation in Chinese society. With the outbreak of the Marco Polo Incident in July 1937 and the sweeping invasion of north, central, and south coastal areas by the Japanese army, the Guomindang (GMD) government retreated to Chongqing in 1938. Once Chongqing was announced as the wartime provisionary capital, major universities and institutions also moved to the southwestern region. Despite the chaos and disorder, the development of sociology and anthropology thrived. A great amount of research focusing on the minority groups of the frontier was produced since the geographical proximity made the minorities of Yunnan, Guizou, Sichuan, Tibet, and Xikang the most convenient and available “specimen” for social scientific investigation. Unprecedented effort and energy was devoted to the understanding and development of the frontier societies by both scholars and the Guomindang government, as if the frontier had become an arena for China’s national redemption and survival. Applied anthropology, a relatively new branch of anthropology advocated by British and American social anthropologists since the 1920s, was employed by Chinese frontier anthropologists as the most suitable tool for aiding the frontier enterprise. Applied anthropology was primarily developed as a means to assist the indirect rule of native populations in the British colonies or to deal with the native Amerindians in the American West; it was utilized by Chinese anthropologists to achieve similar pragmatic goals such as modernizing the frontier minority societies in

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order to reform and integrate them into the dominant Han society. Li Anzhai 李安宅, the central figure of this paper, was a prominent anthropologist and a pioneer in Tibetology who devoted much of his time in the 1940s to the study of the religious and cultural practices of the Tibetan communities in Amdo and Kham. During wartime, he worked as the head of the sociology department at the West China Union University (Huaxi xiehe daxue 華西協和大學) in Chengdu. Like many other sociologists and anthropologists who moved to the southwest, Li found the frontier not only a paradise for field research, which was urgently needed for the indigenization/nationalization of anthropology (or making anthropology Chinese)1 through appropriating Western theoretical models, but also an opportunity for the construction of a new China founded on the ideology of multi-ethnic nationalism. His firm belief in the relevance of anthropology to social reform in the frontier areas made him an enthusiastic educational advisor for the Guomindang and an advocate for the implementation of the “frontier social work” (bianjiang shehui gongzuo 邊 疆社會工作) that combined academic research with administrative training and social service. In 1950, he was one of the first Tibetan specialists to enter Lhasa with the 18th division of the PLA, and he later participated in establishing and running the first elementary school in Qamdo (Changdu) and Lhasa. By bringing to light Li Anzhai’s passionate endeavor in frontier anthropology and social work, this chapter first draws attention to the process of the spatial and cultural reconceptualization of China through the discourse of the frontier. Although the intellectual imagination of the frontier had a long history, the war had brought the intellectuals unprecedentedly close to the frontier. The “terra incognita” was no longer an imagined periphery, and the flourishing of frontier studies, especially in the field of anthropology and ethnography, demonstrated a more pressing intellectual desire to conquer the new “hinterland” or “China Proper.” Secondly, this chapter argues that the reconceptualization of the frontier and the rising multi-ethnic nationalism during the wartime period facilitated the process of the indigenization/nationalization of anthropology and the making of Chinese applied anthropology. The migrating Han anthropologists made the frontier the “field” where they could test Western theories against Chinese reality. They were also strongly motivated by a nationalistic commitment to integrate the frontier societies into the broader Chinese national community. Chinese applied anthropology was developed under the rubric of appropriating Western

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methodology to fit China’s wartime needs. This paper attempts to put the question of Han internal colonization of the frontier in the context of the global anti-colonial intellectual movement and to historicize the controversial role Han intellectuals played in ethnopolitics. Li Anzhai serves as an example of how the frontier discourse intertwined with wartime nationalism and the intellectual desire for the indigenization/nationalization of an imported knowledge system.

Li Anzhai’s Intellectual Genealogy Li Anzhai was born in 1900 in Hebei Province. He studied in the program of sociology and social work at Yanjing University in 1924. After his graduation, he worked as a teaching assistant in the department of sociology and the department of philosophy at Yanjing. He joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1926 and later became a Guomindang member as an infiltrator in the wake of the First United Front. However, his relationship with the Communist Party soon came to a halt because of the Guomindang’s suppression of Communist activities.2 He continued to be affiliated with the Guomindang until 1949. While working at Yanjing, Li Anzhai was influenced by Wu Wenzao 吳文藻, who received his PhD degree in sociology from Columbia University and began his teaching career in Yanjing’s sociology and social work department (often referred to as the sociology department) in 1929. Wu was a firm believer in empirical research. He and his advisees, including Lin Yaohua 林耀華, Huang Di 黃迪, and Fei Xiaotong 費孝通, formed the theoretically-oriented faction in the department, promoting a methodology of detached objectivity and a more scientific approach to obtaining data. Although Li Anzhai was not Wu’s advisee, he was one of his allies in the department and was deeply influenced by cultural functionalism and community studies,3 the two theoretical perspectives Wu enthusiastically promoted. In Wu Wenzao’s scheme for cultivating a new generation of professionals in sociology, sending outstanding students to study with leading scholars overseas was as important as inviting scholars to China. Fei Xiaotong was sent to study with Bronislaw Malinowski at the London School of Economics; Lin Yaohua to Harvard to study anthropology; Huang Di to the University of Chicago. Not a protégé of Wu Wenzao, Li Anzhai secured himself a Rockefeller Fellowship to study anthropology with Alfred L. Kroeber and Robert Lowie at the University of California

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at Berkeley, and later went to Yale University to learn from Edward Sapir.4 The training in cultural anthropology under the guidance of Kroeber, Lowie, and Sapir, who were leading scholars in the study of Native American societies, equipped Li Anzhai with rich field experience. While at Berkeley, Li spent three months living with a native Zuni family in New Mexico and completed an ethnological survey focusing on the structural development of the Zuni matrilineal system. 5 Li followed a cultural functionalist approach to analyze religion, leadership, and gender relationships in Zuni society. Although still a neophyte in the field, Li did not hesitate to point out flaws he found in the prevailing views on Zuni religion put forth by established anthropologists Ruth Benedict and Ruth Bunzel, who characterized it as formalistic, mechanical, and lacking personal reference.6 Li criticized such notions as partial and prejudiced by the researchers’ own Eurocentric view of religion. He argued that anthropologists tended to forget the intricacies of cultural forms and thus made reductionist assumptions about the observed society. Christian church services could be repetitive and highly formalistic, Li contended, but no Western anthropologist would conclude that Christian practices lacked “the spontaneous outpouring of the heart.” 7 He further cautioned against researchers using their own cultural criteria to evaluate others. Li Anzhai was the first Chinese anthropologist to conduct field research on a society outside of China. Not only was his study published in the prestigious American Anthropologist, but it also became one of the standard pieces in Zuni studies. As we will see later, Li’s experience with the Zuni played an important role in his future commitment to a more “indigenous-centered” approach of anthropology when he encountered the frontier society of his own country. In 1936, Wu Wenzao interviewed Bronislaw Malinowski in Britain and informed him that he was about to establish a “School of Chinese Sociology.” 8 Wu’s ambitious scheme for “making sociology Chinese” (shehuixue Zhongguo hua 社會學中國化) comprised three aspects: first, to seek an effective theoretical framework; second, to apply this framework to the Chinese situation; and third, to promote independent Chinese researchers to follow such an approach.9 Functionalism was deemed to be the most promising theoretical model for research into Chinese village communities. After completing his degrees in America, Li returned to China in late 1936 and joined Wu in promoting the indigenization/ nationalization of sociology. He taught in the sociology department at Yanjing University and served as the editor of Shehui yanjiu 社會研究

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[Journal of social research], the publication of Yanjing’s Society of Social Research. Wu’s own returning students were also enthusiastically involved in various kinds of community field research. The outbreak of the war in 1937 pushed the indigenization/nationalization movement to yet another stage and created a more favorable environment for the integration of anthropology and sociology. Wartime nationalism further complicated the encounter between the Han anthropologist and his frontier subject. With the move of the central government to Sichuan, the southwestern and northwestern frontier regions no longer remained an insignificant political and geographical periphery. The frontier became the home front of the nation at war, and its development had a direct impact on the future of the nation. The Han Chinese who had moved from the hinterland were now in a new symbiotic relationship with the frontier minority societies. For the functionalist anthropologists, the frontier and its diverse non-Han cultures provided the most desirable laboratory to ground their theoretical framework in concrete field research. Their research was further imbued with a nationalistic spirit which aimed to bring material improvement and social justice to their fellow non-Han citizens. Under such a rubric, frontier social work (bianjiang shehui gongzuo) was developed alongside the study of frontier governance (bianzheng xue 邊政學) as a distinct sub-category of applied anthropology and deemed to fulfill the most urgent national need in the development of the frontier.

The Discourse of the Frontier during the War With the move of the capital to Chongqing in 1938, the center of intellectual environment also shifted to southwestern China. The Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica first moved to Kunming in 1938, and then settled in Lizhuang, Sichuan in 1940. Tsinghua, Beida, and Nankai formed the National Southwest Associated University in Kunming.10 Zhongyang University moved to Chongqing. The campus of Chengdu’s West China Union University was shared by four ot her missionary schools: Yanjing, Jinling, Jinling Women’s College, and Qilu. Li Anzhai was hired bye West China Union as the head of the sociology department in 1941. He founded the Huaxi bianjiang yanjiu suo 華西邊疆 研究所 Institute of West China Frontier Researh in 1942 and received support from the Viking Fund.11 Famous Tibetanists Ren Naiqiang 任乃 強 and Paul Sherap were invited to work as researchers. They later

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organized the Kang Zang yanjiu she 康藏研究社 (Society of Xikang and Tibet) Because of the vibrancy of Chinese frontier studies the modest Huaxiba section of Chengdu, where West China Union was located, was called by contemporaries “the center of Chinese ethnology.”12 Before he moved to Chengdu, Li Anzhai was invited by Gu Jiegang 顧 頡剛 and Tao Menghe 陶孟和 (who was then the head of the Institute of Social Sciences of the Academia Sinica) in 1938 to conduct research on the local Tibetan community of Labrang in Xiahe County, Gansu. It was part of a project in which Yanjing cooperated with the Center for Science Education (Kexue jiaoyu guan 科學教育館) in Gansu to promote Tibetan culture, as well as social anthropological field work Li’s research focused on Tibetan Buddhism and what functions religion assumed in Tibetan society. This was his first major field research after he came back to China. He applied what he had learnt about ethnographic methodology from Kroeber, Lowie, and Sapir to the study of Chinese minority society He obtained data fn Tibetan cultural performances and daily practices through living with local Tibetans and directly participating in their religious events. Li and his wife, Yu Shiyu 于式玉, adopted Tibetan names, dressed in Tibetan costumes, and mastered the Tibetan language.13 Yu became Li’s assistant and even established a girls’ elementary school in Labrang to promote local education.14 They stayed in Labrang for three years. 15 Li’s research in Labrang was the longest ethnographic fieldwork that contemporary Chinese scholars had ever achieved.16 The research data was compiled into a report of 200,000 words entitled The Research Report of the Labrang Monastery (or Zangzu zongjiaoshi zhi shidi kaocha 藏族宗教 史之實地考 [History of Tibetan Religion: A Study in the Field]).17 It was the first detailed observation of the social and cultural practice of Tibetan Buddhism in the Labrang Monastery, one of six great monasteries of the Geluk School (huangjiao 黃教) and the largest Tibetan temple outside of Tibet Lamaism was a religion that dominated every aspect of Tibetan society, and Li treated Labrang Monastery as a community, a public space, and the center of Tibetan local life. He suggested that the temple, as the political, economic, and cultural institution of local life, should be studied and re-evaluated in order to understand its power in manipulating local politics. He also described lucidly how the Buddhist educational system functioned within the temple and how knowledge was disseminated in Tibetan society as a whole. His report was, however, also marked by a nationalistic commitment to study the frontier for national

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construction and frontier development during wartime. True socioanthropological appreciation of Tibetan monasticism as a multi-functional social system, instead of only a religious belief system, Li argued, was crucial to establishing frontier studies and would be of enormous benefit to frontier social reform.18 Despite scarce funding, in 1944 Li Anzhai and Ren Naiqiang managed to conduct another period of field research on Tibetan Buddhism in North Xikang with their students. The research lasted for 6 months and they visited all Buddhist temples in the area as well as interviewind local villagers and administrators (tusi 土司). At the end of the trip, they brought back rare Tibetan sutras from the famous Derge Parkhang sutra-printing house (Dege jingyuan 德格經院). Li published several important articles on Xikang local history and population distributio, and analysis of Tibetan Buddhist sects.19 Owen Lattimore once praised Li Anzhai and Yu Shiyu as the leading pioneers in frontier studies and in the analysis of monasticism as the central institution of Tibetan communities.20 Li’s research on Tibetan Buddhism aroused international scholarly interest. They were also of great value for administrators in policy making and frontier governance for they often provided detailed demographic data about a frontier community and the interaction between local Han and minority residents. After the geographical dislocation of the hinterland and the frontier, scholars who migrated to the southwest redefined the word “frontier” with cultural meanings. It was no longer only the geographical borderlands between China and its neighboring countries; it also referred to the culturally marginal zones which distinguished themselves from the dominant Han culture.21 For Li Anzhai, the term frontier also had two connotations: the natural and the cultural. However, Li’s understanding of the natural frontier was not determined by geographical location, but by topographical features. For example, rivers, plains, and basins were not frontier ; only highlands, deserts, steppes, and forests could be called frontiers. His definition of the cultural frontier referred to communities relying on nomadism. Therefore, for Li, the natural frontier and the cultural frontier were not separate concepts; the natural frontier formed the foundation for the cultural frontier, and they often did not refer to different regions. This definition of the frontier was undoubtedly a working definition derived from his own field work in the Tibetan communities in the southwes; however, it automatically excluded the non-Han peoples of the south and southwest whose livelihoods were

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primarily agricultural, such as the Miao, from the demarcation of the frontier community. His idea of the frontier in relation to the hinterland was also influenced by Owen Lattimore, who published his landmark study Inner Asian Frontiers of China in 1940,22 in which he argued that the Chinese frontier included yet another buffer area, the marginal zone, where semi-nomadic, semi-agricultural civilizations took shape. Interactions between the hinterland and the frontier occurred within the marginal zones, and the frontier influenced the hinterland as much as the hinterland influenced the frontier. There was no permanent domination of one area over the other. 23 Li’s topographic/cultural-centered view of the frontier departed from that of Lattimore in the contemporary relationship between the hinterland and the frontier, and it is at this juncture that nationalism came into play. According to Li, Lattimore’s model was only useful in explaining the historical relationship between the agricultural hinterland and the nomadic frontier. At present, imperialism had invaded the hinterland and endangered its agricultural pattern of life. At the same time, imperialist scientists and missionaries had penetrated deeper into the frontier A new relationship between the hinterland and the frontier was needed for the survival of both regions. Instead of competing with each other for dominance, Li suggested that the hinterland and the frontier should be unified under the banner of multi-ethnic nationalism, multi-culturalism, and modernization. Citizenship would be granted to all people, and industrial development would improve the livelihood of the frontier societies. Li asserted: Everybody enjoys the same rights and obligations as a citizen in the era of Sanmin zhuyi 三民主義 [Three Principles of the People]. We will have both a unified national language and different local dialects; we will bolster a central ideology (zhongxin sixiang 中心思想) while still believing in different religions; we will be all Chinese (Zhonghua minzu 中華民族), only different in origin; we will have unified institutions and laws while practicing different customs.24

Li’s proposal for the unification of the hinterland and the frontier chose a middle way between chauvinistic Han assimilationist nationalism and frontier autonomy.25 It is more like the model of a federalist republic. Instead of sinicization of the frontier by the hinterland, Li preferred a “cultural dialogue” (wenhua goutong 文化溝通) between the two. 26 Although the traditional Tibetan way of life needed to be modernized,

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the solution was not to impose a Han tradition from the hinterland. Instead, Li argued, the Han society had much to learn from Tibetan culture, and vice versa. A synthesis was necessary, and it could be drawn from objective and penetrating research of the frontier society from the angle of modern anthropology.27 Li’s belief that multi-ethnic nationalism, instead of ethnic separatism, best served China’s wartime situation must have also been reinforced by his encounter with famous minority “nationalists.” During their stay in Labrang, the Lis became good friends with Huang Zhengqing 黃正清, the Guomindang-appointed military commander of Xiahe County and his brother, the fifth Jamyang Zhepa, the highest religious authority at the Labrang Monastery. The Huang brothers, of Tibetan ethnicity, maintained a close relationship with the Guomindang and were promoters of Chinese nationalism.28 In 1943, the Jamyang Zhepa donated thirty airplanes to the Guomindang to support the war effort.29 To the scholars from the hinterland, the war and the frontier represented an array of intellectual opportunities. Fei Xiaotong argued that it was the war that forced the relocation of scholars from their ivory towers to the villages and countryside. The destruction of books and the disconnection from foreign scholarly networks further compelled them to put theory into contestation with social reality. Therefore, it was at this moment of national crisis that the theoretical model of community studies should be implemented in concrete field research. 30 Li Anzhai could not have agreed more with Fei. For him, the frontier was a “paradise for field research.” 31 The precipitous mountains or the burning deserts that shaped unique frontier cultures were no longer seen as obstacles keeping people away from it. On the contrary, Li contended, the geographical difficulties could be turned into advantageous ways of training field researchers. Furthermore, being in an unfamiliar cultural environment would stimulate them to discover more problems. This could not be achieved if the researchers conducted their research in hinterland communities. The frontier had also become the redemption of the hinterland Chinese. For Li, the romantic anthropologist, it was only through the challenge of the precarious and changeful nature of the frontier that one’s soul could be purified and transcended. He further compared the frontier to a passionate, vivacious girl: “When she is happy, you can go crazy with her and be intoxicated by the power of love … When she is angry, you are tortured and suffer ordeals.” 32 He described his own

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experience traveling in the Amdo Tibetan region where he came across drizzle, downfall, gale, hail, graupel, and a beautiful sunset during one single day.33 The ways in which Li feminized the frontier but also asserted her active role as the conductor in the relationship with the male anthropologist are most revealing.

Frontier Anthropology Hsiao-ting Lin’s study of the GMD frontier policy toward Tibet suggests that, contrary to the notion that the GMD aggressively asserted authority over Tibet, its attitude was quite laissez-faire and that it was only during the war against Japan that the GMD demonstrated a real intention to incorporate Tibet into its nation-building project. 34 Indeed, frontier governance and development was at the forefront of GMD wartime policy making. In its “Outline for the frontier administration,” the Central Committee called for collaboration between the government and scholars on frontier development: “We will launch institutions to study frontier governance and invite academic specialists to collect data and make proposals for the construction of the frontier (bianjiang jianshe 邊疆建設). The products of their research will be incorporated into our policymaking considerations, as well as promoting interest in frontier construction.” 35 To promote sinicization of the frontier population, in 1941 the Office of Frontier Party Affairs of the Central Organization Bureau established the Frontier Languages Compilation and Translation Committee in Chongqing. Its mission was to translate and introduce important works of Chinese literature and official policy announcements into the frontier languages, such as Mongolian and Tibetan. “It is to make our fellow citizens on the frontier understand the considerations of the central government and to familiarize them with our traditional culture and the modern world; it will also translate works by frontier writers into Chinese and introduce frontier culture to the people in the hinterland.” 36 Zhu Jiahua 朱家驊, the head of the Central Organization Bureau, invited Gu Jiegang to be the provisional vice-director of the Committee.37 In 1941 the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission established the Society for the Study of Chinese Frontier Governance (Zhongguo bianjiang xuehui 中國邊疆學會). Wu Zhongxin 吳忠信, the head of the Commission, was elected as the director and Wu Wenzao was the vicedirector. Many anthropologists and sociologists joined the Society, and Li Anzhai was elected as one of the trustees. The launching of the Society

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promoted the institutionalization of the new discipline, the study of frontier governance (bianzhengxue 邊政學). Wu Wenzao defined bianzhengxue as “the science of studying the political thought, facts, institutions, and administration of the frontier peoples.”38 The Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission also published a journal, Bianzheng gonglun 邊政公 論 [Frontier Affairs, literally “Public forum on frontier governance”], which included academic articles on frontier research, discussions of how to conduct frontier fieldwork and solve frontier social problems, and reports on the general situation of the frontier. Many universities followed up by establishing departments of bianzhengxue or offering classes in it.39 Even the more scholarly oriented Academia Sinica admitted that the frontier reports gathered by its researchers could offer much insight for governance.40 The need to implement proper governance of the frontier pushed anthropological research of the frontier in a more pragmatic direction. The approach of applied anthropology answered such a need. Wu Wenzao suggested, “Applied anthropology is mainly used in the West today to aid colonial administration, colonial education, colonial social welfare, and colonial cultural transformation. In China, from a different perspective, applied anthropology will help our frontier governance, frontier education, frontier social welfare, and frontier cultural transformation.” 41 Although the adoption of applied anthropology to aid Chinese frontier governance was mainly for pragmatic reasons, the very applicability of Western colonial applied anthropology to China’s frontier affair shows the asymmetrical power relation between the Han center and the non-Han frontier. However, the deeper the applied anthropologist penetrated into the frontier local society, the more sympathetic he might become to the people he studied.42 His practical advice to the state might contradict the official frontier policy. As we will see later, this was exactly what happened with Li Anzhai and the GMD. Li became the perfect candidate for the GMDs’ recruitment to the frontier development effort. In the early 1940s, he worked for the Ministry of Education as a commissioner to examine the conditions of education in the frontier regions of Sichuan, Xikang, and Gansu. He looked at the administration of frontier education, school education, social education, monastery education, and other related cultural practices and made several suggestions for frontier educational reform: improving local short-term elementary schools; raising the salaries of teachers; promoting Mandarin and the phonetic system; and increasing

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the enrollment of ethnic minority students. 43 However, few of Li’s proposals were ever realized. This was not only because the wartime GMD government was unable to allocate resources for carrying out its grandiose frontier policy, but ultimately, perhaps, because Chiang Kaishek considered Tibet, as well as other frontier peripheries, more as a buffer zone than an integral part of China’s territory.44 After years as a frontier social worker, Li Anzhai was asked by the Social Department to write a handbook of guidelines for frontier social work. Bianjiang shehui gongzuo 邊疆社會工作 [Frontier social work], published in 1944 and including articles Li had published in major journals dedicated to the study of the frontier, provides an important summary for our understanding of the theory and practice of Li’s frontier social work, as well as his engagement in applied anthropology. For Li, frontier social work should follow the methods of applied anthropology and procedures of social work. He criticized traditional frontier policies for discriminating against frontier people and being ignorant of their ways of life. Now, under the rule of Three People’s Principles and the rhetoric of multi-ethnic harmony, the frontier people were equal to other citizens of the nation only in theory while in reality they were at a disadvantage due to geographical barriers and cultural backwardness. Therefore, the frontier urgently needed the implementation of social work. The best way to improve frontier livelihoods was, according to Li, to bring in modern industrial technology. However, Li disagreed with the “migration and cultivation” (tunken 屯墾) project that the GMD proposed. In a speech about instruction on frontier issues and frontier work, Zhu Jiahua reiterated the importance of tunken, especially land cultivation, for frontier development. He claimed that the pastoral economy was the cause of the frontier’s backwardness and promoted intensive agriculture to replace grazing.45 On the contrary, instead of transforming the frontier into arable land, Li asserted that a plan to industrialize the local pastoral economy would be more suitable to local development.46 The key issue in frontier reform for Li was to modernize the frontier without making drastic changes to its unique cultural heritage. This was in line with his multi-ethnic, multi-cultural scheme for the New China. At the core of Li Anzhai’s model of frontier social work was his vision to combine scientific scholarly research with social reform and local

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administrative needs. Therefore, his frontier social work included aspects of research, social service, and personnel training, which he called the “three-in-one method.” Li was inspired by the experiment carried out in Tanganyika in 1928 by the British colonial administrator A. M. Hutt and the anthropologist Gordon Brown, who set out to find the most feasible way for the collaboration between colonial administration and anthropology.47 Their Anthropology in Action was one of the pioneer works in applied anthropology. Perhaps Gordon Brown himself, who was a student of Malinowski and worked as the superintendent of education in Tanganyika while conducting ethnological research on the Hehe,48 also became a role model for Li Anzhai, who considered himself as an anthropologisteducator. Li’s faith in the practicality of applied anthropology in frontier construction is revealed in his own assertion, “The three-in-one method of research, service, and training is derived from sociology and anthropology; it is applied science. Only applied science can relieve people’s sufferings and train multidisciplinary specialists.” 49 As to the training of social workers, Li suggested that the government should assign the task to universities with a frontier studies program. In fact, the sociology department at West China Union, under Li’s own guidance, collaborated with the Chinese Society of Rural Construction in establishing the “Shiyangchang social work training station” in the rural outskirts of Chengdu. The station provided students from the cities an environment similar to that of the frontier in order to familiarize them with the various difficulties they might confront there. The sociology department and the Institute of West China Frontier Research took the lead in coordinating with other academic, governmental, and civic institutions to form a network that actively promoted frontier social work.50 Li’s three-in-one model was also inspired by the famous “cultural missions” project of Mexican nation-building during the post-revolutionary era. The cultural mission was an ambitious educational experiment which aimed at bringing civilization and progress to the rural areas and indigenous communities in order to integrate them into the Mexican nation. The mission groups were formed of six to eight people, including a group leader, an agricultural worker, a carpenter, a nurse, a social worker, a recreational director, a teacher, an artisan, and sometimes other professionals. These units traveled from one school and community to another. 51 The priority of the mission was to achieve national unity through teaching the Spanish language and to introduce the villagers to

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modern knowledge and skills to improve their lives. Since its implementation in the 1920s, the cultural missions had made tremendous achievements in building up communities.52 Borrowing the framework of the Mexican cultural mission, Li proposed the formation of a “frontier cultural mission” which would include professional academic specialists, such as sociologists, anthropologists, geologists, biologists, industrial chemists, and philologists. 53 Qualified scholars could be recruited either from the Academia Sinica and universities, or directly from local frontier communities. These specialists would familiarize the frontier population with modern technology and science so they could manage to help themselves; at the same time, those researchers could continue their own scholarly work in the frontier, familiarize themselves with local culture and customs, and help train local youth to be the future social workers serving their own communities. Li proposed that the frontier cultural mission groups be the core institution of frontier development. The specialists should carry out an educational reform program by utilizing local temple or mosque resources. They should also form frontier local community centers, as well as mobile work teams, to bring civilization to the frontier in the way most relevant to the frontier life style. 54 Compared to the original Mexican cultural missions, Li’s frontier cultural mission groups consisted of highly elite intellectual personnel. This might be out of a practical concern to most efficiently employ the numerous numbers of intellectuals available at the frontier during the war. But it perhaps reveals more of Li’s personal commitment to frontier advancement. Ultimately, like the Mexican cultural missions, Li’s frontier counterparts did not intend to be a top-down penetrating project that imposed national ideology on the local; rather, they attempted to integrate the frontier local into the Chinese national through a civilizing program, namely industrialism and civic principles, that most likely would benefit local development without hampering the growth of local culture.

Li Anzhai and Tibet By the end of the war, the GMD and the Han Chinese had achieved the greatest inf luence in Tibet since 1911. However, as Hsiao-ting Lin suggests, the GMD never came up with a clear and reasonable strategy toward Tibet: “Inconsistency and contradiction had ultimately prevented

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wartime China from bringing the territory into a closer political and administrative orbit.” 55 Most of Li Anzhai’s proposals for frontier social work remained ignored and unfulfilled. Owen Lattimore suggests that it was because Li’s non-Marxist liberal view for promoting better relations between the Chinese and non-Chinese frontier minorities was restrained by the authoritarian thought control of the GMD.56 However, in light of Hsiao-ting Lin’s study of GMD frontier policy, I think the failure of the GMD to implement Li’s frontier proposals was because Li’s vision, which was centered on multi-culturalism and mutual interactions between the hinterland and the frontier, was unimaginable for the GMD, which had neither the commitment nor resources to carry out a “frontier-centered” policy during wartime. Li Anzhai and his wife Yu Shiyu left China for America in 1947. Li was invited to offer classes on Tibetology at Yale as a visiting professor. In 1948 he went to the University of London as a visiting researcher. This was a great opportunity for Li to interact with leading Western anthropologists, as well as Tibetologists, and to share his own research findings on Tibetan communities. Soon after he returned to China in 1949, the new Communist regime began. Much more ambitious than the GMD, the CCP was determined to take over Tibet as early as 1950. Li Anzhai and Yu Shiyu were among several Tibetan specialists whom the Party recruited into its think tank for Tibetan policy. They entered the Tibetan border with the PLA 18th division in 1950.57 Within two months, these specialists were conducting field research and gathering information about Tibetan society. Their reports became the foundation for the making of the Ten-point policy for the advance into Tibet (Jinjun Xizang shida zhengce 進軍西藏十大政策) that guided negotiations with local Tibetan governments. Li Anzhai served as the head of the education division in the People’s Liberation Committee in Qamdo. He and his wife participated in the establishment of the Qamdo School, the first modern elementary school in Tibet. In 1951, they entered Lhasa with the army to aid the signing of the 17-Article agreement for the peaceful liberation of Tibet. During the five years of their stay in Tibet, they participated in the founding of the Tibetan language training program and the Mandarin program, as well as the Lhasa First Elementary School. Li’s engagement in frontier work, to a great extent, helped the CCP secure the takeover of Tibet. Ironically, the non-Marxist, liberal-oriented Li, whose efforts were ignored by the GMD,

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could never have anticipated that his name would be forever attached to the history of the CCP’s colonization of Tibet. It was, eventually, the CCP’s determination to insert Chinese sovereignty over Tibet that fulfilled Li’s dream of being an anthropologist-educator and serving the frontier community. In 1956, Li and Yu moved back to Sichuan and worked as administrators for the newly established Southwest College for Nationalities (Xi’nan minzu xueyuan 西南民族學院). After both sociology and anthropology were denounced as bourgeois disciplines that served capitalist needs and all related research could only continue under the rubric of Soviet-influenced ethnography, the liberal, non-compromising Li had to stop all his projects. In 1962, Li began to teach English in Sichuan Normal College (now Sichuan University), and until his death in 1985 he was never able to resume his anthropological career or to conduct field research.

Conclusion The wartime period in the 1940s presents a fascinating episode in Chinese intellectual development, especially in the field of social anthropology. Migration to the southwest brought the frontier close to home and facilitated field research on frontier minority communities. Scholars who collaborated with the GMD in the effort to implement frontier reform and development, which was deemed to be closely intertwined with the survival of China, turned social sciences to more pragmatic ends. New disciplines in the social sciences, such as bianzhengxue and frontier social work, emerged and developed along with the indigenous situation and served unique nationalist needs. Although, as both Gray Tuttle and Hsiao-ting Lin have successfully claimed, the Guomindang state was eventually too weak to assert political sovereignty over Tibet, the second Sino-Japanese war nonetheless facilitated the process of successful intellectual penetration into Tibetan culture and society.58 The popular imagination of the frontier as national space that played a crucial role in the construction of Chinese nationalism during the 1930s, as reflected in numerous pieces of popular frontier travel writing, journals on frontier affairs, and intellectual societies devoted to the study of frontier geography and history, was transformed into a concrete experience of the frontier as a living place during wartime. This re-territorialization process urged the consolidation of a national

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consciousness that the frontier was an inseparable and indispensable part of geographical China, and the frontier minorities were an integral part of a multi-ethnic cultural China.59 With the hindsight of postcolonialism, especially when taking into consideration ethnic conflicts between the Han and Tibetans in Tibet and the PRC government’s suppression of the Tibetan independence movement at the present time, the indigenization/sinicization of social anthropology through the study of the frontier was ironically achieved through a Han colonial position. However, it would be reductionist to claim that the Chinese anthropologists during the 1940s were simply imperialists in assisting and reinforcing the colonial rule of the regime over the frontier and non-Han peoples. Notwithstanding the fact that the disciplinary methodology and practical applications which they adopted relied on, and in many ways perpetuated, the unequal colonial encounters between the core and the frontier, their effort in developing frontier anthropology revealed a commitment to the indigenization/nationalization of social anthropology, which was itself an attempt to resist and overcome the very unequal power relations between China and the West. Han intellectuals like Li Anzhai, who was attracted to the idea that scientific research could be applied to improving the rule of the native, would never have imagined themselves to be the Han “colonizer,” regardless of how greatly their activities and attitudes impacted the fate of the frontier. Li Anzhai’s effort to understand the Tibetan community, to conduct field research, and to ultimately transform the society for its own benefit went beyond a simple colonial enthusiasm for civilizing the frontier. The frontier was Li Anzhai’s intellectual and personal crusade. Lastly, I argue that the wartime effort of the frontier anthropologists to understand non-Han societies and the suggestions they offered for frontier governance were mostly ignored by the GMD, which was immediately drawn into civil war after 1945. It was the Communist Party that successfully incorporated these scholars into their frontier service and that utilized their research conclusions for the making of minority policy. Much of the wartime legacy remains crucial to our understanding of ethnopolitics in today’s China. Li Anzhai’s involvement in frontier anthropology and Tibetan affairs also highlights the controversial role the Han intellectuals played in determining the fate of Tibet in modern Chinese history.

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Notes 1

2

3

4

5 6

Instead of choosing between either “indigenization” or “nationalization” to describe the movement of “making social sciences Chinese” in the 1930s and 1940s, I decide to reveal both at the same time in order to preserve the irony of the reality between the Chinese/Han anthropologist and his “indigenous” subject. The combination renders well the problem inherent when the subject is the non-Han frontier minorities and the very “colonialistic” inquiry of the Han anthropologist is legitimized under the banner of his own anti-colonial indigenization movement against Western colonial anthropology. For a more elaborate discussion of the politics involved in different translations of “making social sciences Chinese,” see Arif Dirik’s introduction to this volume. Ren Yimin 任一民, ed., Sichuan jindai renwu zhuan 四川近代人物傳 [Biographies of famous people in modern Sichuan] (Sichuan: Shehui kexue chubanshe, 1985), p. 321. As early as in 1932, Wu invited Robert E. Park, the founder of the Chicago School of urban sociology and a pioneer in community studies, to be a visiting professor. During the three months of his stay, Park offered classes on special topics such as collective behaviors and sociological research and introduced the method of community field research to his Chinese students. In the 1920s and 1930s cultural functionalism in anthropology intended to provide a solution to the question of whether anthropologists could interpret culture objectively. Functionalism studies parts of culture (such as ritual, food, etc.) through direct observation and attempts to determine how each part connected to the others and what functions each carried in larger contexts. Wu Wenzao praised functionalism as the most powerful tool in the field of social anthropology. See Wu Wenzao, “Gongnengpai shehuirenleixue de youlai yu xianzhuang” 功能派社會人類學的由來與現狀 [The origin and the state of the field of functionalist social anthropology], in Wu Wenzao: Renleixue shehuixue yanjiu wenji 吳文藻：人類學社會學研究文集 [Wu Wenzao: Collected works on sociology and anthropology] (Beijing: Minzu chubanshe, 1990), p. 122. Wu invited the famous British functionalist anthropologist Alfred Radcliffe-Brown to visit Yanjing in 1935. Wang Jianmin 王建民, Zhongguo minzuxue shi 中國民族學史 [The History of Ethnology in China], 2 Vols. (Kunming: Yunnan jiaoyu chubanshe, 1997), Vol. 1, p. 201. It is not surprising that Li chose to study the Zuni: His advisor Kroeber was a Zuni expert. Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1934), pp. 61–63 and Ruth L. Bunzel, “Introduction to Zuni Ceremonialism; Zuni Origin Myths; Zuni Ritual Poetry; Zuni Katcinas,” in the Forty-seventh Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, 1929–1930 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1932), pp. 467–1086.

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8

9 10

11

12 13

14 15

16 17

18

Li Anzhai, “Zuni: Some Observations and Queries,” American Anthropologist 39.1 (1937), p. 64. “Not a spontaneous outpouring of the heart” was the comment Ruth Bunzel made on Zuni prayer. See Ruth L. Bunzel, “Introduction to Zuni Ceremonialism; Zuni Origin Myths; Zuni Ritual Poetry; Zuni Katcinas” in Forty-seventh Annual Report, p. 493. Wang Mingming 王銘銘, Shehui renleixue yu Zhongguo yanjiu 社會人類學與 中國研究 [Social anthropology and the study of China] (Guangxi: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 2005), pp. 26–27. Huang Shuping, “Sinicizing Anthropology: Theory, Practice, and Human Talent,” Chinese Sociology and Anthropology 33.4 (Summer 2001), p. 8. For the activities of sociologists and anthropologists in Yunnan, see Pan Naigu 潘乃谷, “Kangzhan shiqi Yunnan de sheng xiao hezuo yu shehui renleixue yanjiu” [The collaboration between the colleges and the research of social anthropology in wartime Yunnan], Yunnan minzu xueyuan bao 雲 南民族學院報 18.5 (2001), pp. 78–82. Ren Yimin, ed., Sichuan renwu zhuan, p. 323. The Viking Fund was established in 1941 by Axel Leonard Wenner-Gren, the wealthy Swedish entrepreneur, to promote and support anthropological research worldwide. It was later renamed the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Wang Jianmin, Zhongguo minzuxue shi, vol. 1, p. 218. Wang Xianmei 王先梅 , “Wushi shuxing chu bianguan, he ju zhenganlu sanqian—yi Li Anzhai, Yu Shiyu jiaoshou” 五十書行出邊關，何懼征鞍路三千 ─ 憶于式玉教授 [Intellectuals who were not intimidated by the 3,000-mile journey on horseback to the frontier—in memory of Professors Li Anzhai and Yu Shiyu] Zhongguo Zangxue 中國藏學 [China Tibetology], no.4 (2001), p. 129. Yu published several articles on Tibetan religious symbols and the life of Tibetan women. Li also received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation for his research in Xiahe. However, Wu Wenzao, who was in charge of the Foundation’s allocation in China, cancelled Li’s funding in 1941 and gave it to his own protégé Lin Yaohua. For episodes on how personal connections determined funding and research opportunities, see Yung-chen Chiang, Social Engineering and the Social Sciences in China, 1919–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 236–242. Wang Jianmin, Zhongguo minzuxue shi, vol. 1, p. 225. Li Anzhai, Zangzu zongjiaoshi zhi shidi yanjiu 藏族宗教史之實地研究 [History of Tibetan Religion: A Study in the Field] (Beijing: Zhongguo Zangxue chubanshe, 1989). Li published several articles drawn from his research in major journals dedicated to frontier studies in the 1940s. His research report, as a whole, was not published until the 1980s. Li Anzhai, Li Anzhai Zangxuewenlun xuan 李安宅藏學文論選 [Selections of Li Anzahi’s works on Tibetology] (Beijing: Zhongguo Zangxue chubanshe, 1990), p. 202.

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20 21

22

23 24 25

26 27 28

29

Luo Runcang 羅潤蒼, “Kangzhan qijian Sichuan Zangxue yanjiu gaishu” 抗 戰期間四川藏學研究概述 [A general account of Tibetan studies in Sichuan province during the period of “resistance against Japanese aggression”], Zhongguo Zangxue 中國藏學, no. 3 (1996), p. 19. Owen Lattimore, “Some Recent Inner Asian Studies,” Pacific Affairs 20.3 (Sept. 1947), p. 319. It is not surprising that functional anthropologists who worked in the frontier would find the cultural connotation more apt to their methodological orientation. However, it also shows the anxiety these scholars experienced with the migration and the war. No one could predict how long the “hinterland” would have to stay in the “frontier.” One way to maintain a “hinterland” identity was to make the “frontier” the ultimate “cultural frontier” so that the frontier remained frontier because it was not Han. A translation was published in China in 1941. See Lai Demao 賴德懋 (Owen Lattimore), Zhongguo de bianjiang 中國的邊疆, trans. Zhao Minqiu 趙敏求 (Shanghai: Zhengzhong shuju, 1941). Li Anzhai, Bianjiang shehui gongzuo 邊疆社會工作 [Frontier social work] (Chongqing: Zhonghua shuju, 1944), pp. 2–3. Ibid., p. 6. For a discussion among contemporary scholars on whether the frontier should be autonomous or remain in the status quo, see “Bianjiang zizhi yu wenhua zuota n hui ” 邊疆自治與文化座談會 [Sy mposium on f ront ier autonomy and culture], Bianzheng gonglun 邊政公論 [Frontier Affairs] 6.2 (1947), pp. 1–8. Li Anzhai, Li Anzhai Zangxuewenlun xuan, p. 108. Ibid., p. 184. The father of the Huang brothers, Gonpo Dondrup, served as the local baozheng 保正長 (headman of the baojia 保甲 system) of Liang, Sichuan, in the early Republican period and adopted Huang as his surname. Huang Zhengqing’s Tibetan name was Apa Alo. In 1920, he accompanied his younger brother, who was found as the fifth Jamyang Zhepa in 1916, to Labrang. Huang Zhengqing assumed the head of the Labrang Tibetan militia in 1928 and maintained the joint rule of Labrang with his brother until the latter died in 1947. Despite his relationship with the GMD, Huang decided to change camp and rallied his army to welcome the arrival of the PLA at the Communist takeover. After 1949, Huang received high positions in the Gansu government, such as the vice-governorship of Gansu and the vicechairmanship of the Gansu Committee of the CPPCC (Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference). He is regarded by the Communist histories as a model ethnic minority. Wang Guoxin 王國新, “Zangzu renmin dui kang Ri zhanzheng de gongxian” 藏族人民對抗日戰爭的貢獻 [The contribution of the Tibetan people to the War of Resistance), Xizang ribao 西藏日報 [The Tibet daily], 20 Aug. 2005.

Li Anzhai and Frontier Anthropology · 159 30

31 32 33 34

35 36

37

38

39

40 41 42

43 44 45 46 47 48 49

Fei Xiaotong, “Zhongguo shehuixue de chengzhang” 中國社會學的成長 [The progress of Chinese sociology], in Fei Xiaotong, Fei Xiaotong ji 費孝通集 [Works of Fei Xiaotong] (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 2005), pp. 58–59. Li Anzhai, Bianjiang shehui gongzuo, p. 8. Ibid., p. 8. Ibid, p. 9. Hsiao-ting Lin, Tibet and Nationalist China’s Frontier: Intrigues and Ethnopolitics, 1928–1949 (Vancouver and Toronto: University of British Columbia Press, 2006). Wang Jianmin, Zhongguo minzuxue shi, Vol. 1, p. 221. Zhu Jiahua 朱家驊, Bianjiang wenti yu bianjiang gongzuo 邊疆問題與邊疆工作 [Frontier issues and frontier work] (China: Zhongyang zuzhi bu bianjiang yuwen bianyi weiyuanhui, 1942), p. 1. Zhao Xia 趙夏, “Gu Jiegang xiansheng dui bianjiang wenti de shijian he yanjiu” 顧頡剛先生對邊疆問題的實踐和研究 [Gu Jiegang’s research and practice on the frontier question], Beijing shehui kexue 北京社會科學, no. 4 (2002), p. 122. Wu Wenzao, “Bianzhengxue fafan” 邊政學發凡 [Introduction to the study of frontier politics], Bianzheng gonglun 邊政公論 [Frontier Affairs], no. 5 & 6 (1942), p. 6. These included the Zhongyang zhengzhi xuexiao 中央政治學校 [Central Political School], Xibei daxue 西北大學 [Northwest University], and Zhongyang daxue 中央大學 [National Central University]. Wang Jianmin, Zhongguo minzuxue shi, vol. 1, p. 269. Wu Wenzao, “Bianzhengxue fafan,” p. 2. This was the case with Malinowski. He was an enthusiastic promoter of applied anthropology in the governance of the British colonies in Africa. However, after years of field research in Africa, he became more sympathetic to the growing African nationalism and became a defender of the rights and desires of the natives. See Wendy James, “The Anthropologist as Reluctant Imperialist,” in Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter, ed. Talal Asad (London: Ithaca Press; Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1973), pp. 41–70. Wang Jianmin, Zhongguo minzuxue shi, Vol. 1, p. 273. Lin Hsiao-ting, Tibet and Nationalist China’s Frontier, p. 155. Zhu Jiahua, Bianjiang wenti yu bianjiang gongzuo, p. 8. Li Anzhai, Bianjiang shehui gongzuo, pp. 4–5. George M. Foster, Applied Anthropology (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1969), p. 192. T. F. McIlwraith, “G. Gordon Brown, 1896–1955,” American Anthropologist, new series, 60.3 (June 1958), pp. 571–573. Li Anzhai, Bianjiang shehui gongzuo, p. 54.

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51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

“Zai Sichuan tan bianjiang shegong” 在四川談邊疆社工 [Frontier social work in Sichuan], Huaxi shegong 華西社工 7 (30 Nov. 1946), p. 25. These institutions included the Society for the Study of Chinese Frontier Governance, the Sichuan and Xikang Provincial Civil Service Training Regiments, the Border Service Department under the Church of Christ in China, etc. Wallace Woolsey, “Cultural Mission No. 53, San Pablo Huixtepec, Oaxaca,” The Modern Language Journal 48.1 (Jan. 1964), pp. 35–39. Devere Allen, “Cultural Missions Bringing Light to Mexican Masses,” Hispania 27.1 (Feb. 1944), pp. 69–70. Li Anzhai, Bianjiang shehui gongzuo, p. 73. Ibid,, pp. 74–78. Lin Hsiao-ting, Tibet and Nationalist China’s Frontier, p. 152. Owen Lattimore, Inner Asian Frontiers of China (Boston: Beacon Press, 1962), p. xxiv. For a detailed description of the life of Li Anzhai and Yu Shiyu in Tibet, see Wang Xianmei, “Wushi shuxing chu bianguan,” pp. 125–137. Gray Tuttle, Tibetan Buddhists in the Making of Modern China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005). This idea was later articulated by Fei Xiaotong’s model of “pluralistic unity,” which is developed along lines similar to Li Anzhai’s multi-ethnic pluralism. See Fei Xiaotong, Zhonghua minzu duoyuan yiti geju 中華民族多元一體格局 [The pattern of pluralistic unity of the Chinese nation] (Beijing: Zhongyang minzu xueyuan chubanshe, 1989).

Chapter 7

Southeast and Southwest: Searching for the Link between “Research Regions” Wang Mingming

The rethinking of anthropology beginning in the 1970s offered insightful ideas in individualizing and globalizing the local ethnographic method. Yet anthropologists have overdone this “rethinking” by erasing a crucial fact—any ethnographic research is carried out in regional circumstances, and many anthropological theories are regional in nature. Just as Richard Fardon has pointed out: “The inscription of locality has been one of the more complex results of the history of ethnography ... regional specialism is a practical consideration which pervades our attempts to research and to write about researching.” 1 Therefore, “[t]rying to discuss ethnography without specific attention to place and time is indeed tantamount to cutting away the ground on which the fieldwork took place.” 2 Fardon and others define “locality” not only as a geo-political unit, but also as a geographical unit for academic research. Certainly, this is part of the “postcolonial” geo-political division, but it mainly refers to the hunter-gatherer societies in Africa, Melanesia, and South Asia that have had a strong inf luence on important streams of anthropological thought. In my opinion, the re-regionalization of anthropology depicted by Fardon has great potential yet to be recognized: it will help us more accurately grasp the epistemic characteristics of anthropology and re-conceive new possibilities in the anthropological discipline based on research within the realm of locality. Fardon’s assertion is also important to the carrying-on and rethinking of Chinese anthropology. In Chinese anthropology, the “southeast,” which covers Fujian, Guangdong, and Zhejiang, and the “southwest,” which includes Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan, have gradually become what I call the “research regions” through purposeful or coincidental effort by local or foreign scholars since the nineteenth

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century. The “research regions” refer to areas that have been studied by local, non-local, or foreign anthropologists and have thus become part of a certain research legacy and research style. The social study of the Han in the southeast and the ethnological study in the southwest have developed independently into separate fields. Like those world anthropological regions listed by Fardon, the southeast and southwest of China have also produced important research results that shaped Chinese anthropology. These results need to be further recognized. As with the hunter-gatherer societies in Africa, Melanesia, and South Asia, reviewing and rethinking the development of the research on Southeast and Southwest China will help us re-conceive anthropology on a larger scale, but first of all, Chinese anthropology. For this reason, I have run a series of anthropology workshops since 2007. In January 2007, I organized a workshop on “Han Popular Religion” in Quanzhou in the coastal area of Southeast China. In August of the same year, I organized another workshop for “southwestern anthropology” in the ancient city between the Cang Mountain and the Er Lake in Southwest China. Why cross from the southeast to the southwest? What makes me, a researcher of the southeast, be interested in the southwest? Why should an anthropologist of the southeast engage in questions concerning the southwest? I have attempted to define the study of the Han as the “core” and that of other ethnic groups as the “intermediary” in Chinese anthropology. 3 Why should researchers of the two circles, separated by such a distance, engage in dialogue with each other? The reason why I tried my best to forge a tie between the southeast and the southwest is because I believe, on the one hand, that the dividing of the “research regions” by local studies could reveal how regional typifications have affected the discourse of anthropology, and, on the other hand, that only through transcending “localism” can we solve problems within the “research regions” and widen our perspectives to discover innovative ideas for the discipline. The “ethnological locality” depicted by Fardon and others contains different sizes and China, one of the “anthropological regions,” could not be included on the map of the “small regions” (although anthropological research on China has never been conspicuous on the atlas of world anthropology). To a large degree, South Asia can be compared to China, in what sinologists called the “world order.” 4 That means, when we divide “research regions” into something like the “southeast” and the “southwest” we should also keep in mind that such “locality” is but a part of the

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larger “world order.” The whole of East Asia could be seen as a “locality” by the above definition. How should we situate the ethnographical “small regions” within the “larger system”? How might it be possible to investigate the uniqueness and the limits of the “domestic research regions,” such as Southeast and Southwest China, in a broader territory?

The “Two Paths” in the Southeast Let us first discuss the studies of Southeast China. I think the best and the most influential studies of the southeast have mostly been done by foreign anthropologists. Foreign anthropological research on China’s southeast has a long history, going back to the study of the Dutch scholar J. J. M. de Groot in the late nineteenth century. It has often been included in the field of sinology, beginning with de Groot’s study of the practice of li 禮 [ritual] among common people. De Groot lived in southern Fujian around Xiamen for many years. He was interested in religious practice in this area and familiarized himself with Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. Theoretically, he adopted the perspectives of evolutionary ethnology, but he was also inspired by how Chinese classical texts interpreted local ritual practices.5 During the late Qing and the early Republic, a number of intellectuals with a new-style education, who were influenced by both the Tongmenghui 同盟會 [Revolutionary Alliance] and ethnology, began to conduct research into local customs in southeastern areas. For example, Wu Zaoting 藻汀 of Fujian is representative. He was the first graduate of the Quanzhou Prefectural Middle School after the Qing abolished the civil examination system. His book, Quanzhou minjian chuanshuo 泉州民 間傳說 [Folk tales of Quanzhou], edited by Rong Zhaozu 容肇祖 and introduced by Gu Jiegang 顧頡剛, was selected in the folk study series by Zhongshan University in Guangzhou and published in 1929 (it was reprinted twice between the 1950s and 1980s). The content of his study is similar to that of de Groot; however, he laid special emphasis on “folk tales.” Why “folk”? And why “tales”? Perhaps intellectuals at the time were disappointed in the authority, the elite, as well as the official history. Later, some scholars under Western influence turned to studying the function of “social organization.” They were particularly interested in lineage in Southeast China as the major “folk social organization.” For example, Lin Yaohua’s study of lineage in the Fuzhou vicinity 6 continued to inf luence sinological anthropology and was highly endorsed by

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Maurice Freedman, a pioneering sinological anthropologist who became famous in the 1950s. Freedman’s work on lineage organization in Southeast China7 has almost made Southeast China one of the loci of anthropological paradigms (this, unfortunately, resulted from his untimely death and the pursuit of more trendy topics by China scholars in the West).8 Since the 1980s, the image of anthropological and social research on Southeast China has been tied to three terms: religion (of de Groot), folkways (of local intellectuals), and lineage (of Lin Yaohua and Freedman). In the last three decades, the new generation of scholars has been interested in connecting their work to international concerns; therefore many studies were related to the development of sinological anthropology outside China. Although studies on folkways were relatively more “local” in nature, they could not be entirely isolated from the influence of foreign scholarship channeled through Taiwan, Hong Kong, and even Beijing. Under such circumstances, anthropologists have forgotten the recent past: when Freedman was constructing his “lineage theory” about Southeast China on the foundation of the pioneering works by Lin Yaohua and others, another group of researchers was producing important findings, although not under the disciplinary label of “anthropology,” that have equally contributed to the formation of the scholarship since the 1980s. This branch has a long history. Back in the 1930s and 40s, Lin Huixiang 林惠祥, one of the leading anthropologists of the “southern school,” became interested in “ethnic study.” Generally speaking, Chinese anthropology at the time was divided into two schools of thought. Scholars of the southern school, mostly affiliated with the Academia Sinica, were influenced by German and American scholarship and were interested in the cultural history of ethnic groups. Scholars of the northern school, centered around Yanjing University, paid more attention to social organization and methodological reform.9 What I call the “intermediary” could refer to the “Huaxia borders” studied by the southern school; and the “core” would indicate the Han community that was the center of the northern school research. Being one of the leading southern school scholars, Lin Huixiang was particularly interested in the “cultural sphere.” He studied the relations between the Austronesian family and people of South China from the perspectives of linguistics and culture. His work set up the foundation for the study of Baiyue ethnohistory. Lin did not limit his scope to Southeast China; rather, he had a broader interest in the historical understanding of Chinese ethnology. His book,

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Zhongguo minzu shi 中國民族史 [Ethnohistory of China] (1936),10 contributed much to the study of ethnology in ancient China. The use of the term “anthropology” was abandoned in the 1950s, and anthropological research was absorbed into studies of ethnic classification and of minority social typification. Lin Huixiang’s disciples (they were also my teachers) participated in the research of the She and the Gaoshan ethnic classification and social typification. They also continued Lin’s work on Baiyue ethnohistory and promoted ethnohistory to become one of the most popular research programs in the universities on the southeast coast. Better known is the research on the custom of changzhu niangjia 長住娘家 (a married woman stays with her parents) in Hui’an by southeastern scholars beginning in the 1950s. The custom of buluo fujia 不落夫家 (not settling in the husband’s home) was practiced in eastern Hui’an county of Quanzhou, and the Hui’an women had a costume, lifestyle, and mode of production distinct from their Han neighbors. In the 1950s, scholars of ethnology in China were particularly interested in matriarchy and regarded this “social typification” either as primitive or as being part of the transition from primitivity to civilization. They believed that studying this “typification” would lead to the discovery of “grand theory.” Encouraged by such expectations, Lin Huixiang and other southeastern scholars started to focus on “Huidong ren” 惠東人 (people of eastern Hui’an).11 But are “Huidong ren” an ethnic minority? This has been a controversial question. After the restoration of anthropology as a discipline in the 1980s, field research was promoted and Huidong, the region that is almost a “minority nationality region,” again attracted the attention of southeastern scholars, as well as scholars from Hong Kong and Taiwan. The paths from de Groot to researchers of the “core,” including me, and from the older generation of the “southern school” anthropologists, such as Lin Huixiang, to today’s researchers of southeastern minority nationalities, form two main branches of the anthropology of Southeast China. The former is considered to be more “international,” while the latter used to be radical but is now seen as “conservative” because of its special historical experience in the 1950s.

The Pair of Relations in the Southwest Sinological anthropology, a “local paradigm” that first took shape in the 1950s, had long been interested in religion and lineage in southeast China

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and knew little about the legacy of the Chinese ethnologists of the 1930s. Perhaps sinological anthropology, as it developed in the West, had more dialogue with the “northern school.” Even if the “southern school” was recognized by sinological anthropology, it was more or less ignored because it did not fall into any of the “standards” established by social anthropology in the 1920s. Therefore, sinological anthropology was closely tied to Chinese historiography and sociology outside China and developed no interest in ethnology in China. This had both academic and political causes. In the view of sinological anthropologists outside China, only Han regions could be called “China.” Ethnologists in China only study “minority nationalities” for political purposes. That evolutionary theory, which was abandoned by Western anthropology, was revived in China was further seen as incomprehensible. This situation changed in the late 1980s. Before then, sinological anthropologists believed that it was enough to verify or to criticize existing theories by experience. For instance, the leading sinological anthropologists, such as Maurice Freedman, William Skinner, and Arthur Wolf, sent their students to Hong Kong and Taiwan to test theories of lineage and religion. This new generation of anthropologists was much influenced by their mentors, yet they did not completely agree with them. Their relationship developed along the lines of a dialogue, which was exactly what the mentors expected. However, they had one thing in common: when I studied in London in 1987, my advisor warned me that the study of minority nationalities did not represent research about China; I had to study the majority Han instead. History is full of accidents. It was also around the late 1980s that a “traitor” appeared in the field of sinological anthropology. Stevan Harrell, who had intellectually travelled with the leading sinological anthropologists, now set off on his own “journey to the west.” Harrell had done social surveys among Han in Taiwan which had contributed to the study of the Han family and xiedou 械鬪 (group fighting with weapons) in the southeastern areas (in my view, he is good at analyzing social mentality by combining the methodologies of social anthropology and social psychology). According to Harrell himself, he visited the southwest for the first time in 1986. He was hosted by the Southwest College for Nationalities in Chengdu (now the Southwest University for Nationalities) and later the Yunnan College of Nationalities in Kunming (now the Yunnan University of Nationalities). In 1987, he went back to Chengdu and met anthropologist Tong Enzheng 童恩正.

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Although Tong specialized in archaeology and nationalities history and had a different research approach from that of Harrell, they regretted not having met earlier. Harrell became particularly happy when he learned that Tong had written an essay criticizing the “Morgan Theory.” At the time, Harrell had already thought of “expanding my research scope from Taiwan to Mainland China, especially to the minority nationality areas.” 12 He planned to go to either the northwest or the southwest, but because he could not ride a horse, he eventually chose to go to the southwest. In 1988, he began to conduct research in the Yi nationality area. He lamented that the minority nationalities were “too sinicized,” and so he focused his research on “ethnic identification” in the southwest.13 Harrell became an expert on the Yi nationality and published many works on ethnic identification of the southwest. He also trained a group of graduate students specializing in the study of Chinese minority nationalities. Harrell was a pioneer in turning the direction of sinological anthropology to the research of the southwest during the late 1980s and the early 1990s. Because of his work, “ethnicity” also became a new research paradigm in Chinese anthropology outside China. However, Harrell’s “journey to the west” was not the only pattern that established the southwest as a “research region” of Chinese anthropology outside China. The other was the “advance to the north” by Nicholas Tapp, who received his PhD in anthropology from the SOAS in 1986. Tapp specialized in the Miao peoples of Thailand and Laos. In the late 1980s, he moved the center of his research north to southwest China. He edited the book Ethnicity and Ethnic Groups in China with Qiao Jian during the period when he was teaching at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.14 Both Harrell and Tapp, one specializing in the Li nationality and the other in the Miao nationality, obtained a rich historical and factual understanding of these nationalities in the southwest. However, they posed different questions for their different subjects. Harrell was more interested in the relationship between the Han and the Yi, while Tapp focused on ethnic migration. Yet, “ethnicity” was still the shared keyword in their works. From the perspective of sinological anthropology, the introduction of “ethnicity” brought forth a new era, that is, minority nationalities which were not considered as the core components of China have now replaced community, lineage, and religion to become the new linchpin in sinological anthropology.

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Whether he is traveling from Southeast China, or advancing from Southeast Asia, the anthropologist who enters Southwest China, a place that is endowed with specific scholarly significance, will confront the problem of “civilizing projects.” As Harrell points out, ever since the gaitu guiliu 改土歸流 policy (the incorporation of native chieftains as part of the imperial administration) implemented during the early Qing, there had been a succession of civilizing projects: imperial, Christian, Communist modernization. But what shocked Westerners most was the Communist civilizing project beginning in the 1950s that critically challenged the tradition and cultural identity of minority nationalities.15 Therefore, it is impossible to carry out anthropological research in Southwest China without the agenda of “ethnicity.” Unlike Harrell, Tapp is not “shocked” by the degree of cultural encounter and assimilation. But he also admits that this process is mostly worth pursuing by anthropologists. In any case, the concept of “ethnicity” was formed in response to “nation” (minzu 民族)—an “indigenized Western idea.” According to scholarship in the 1980s, the term “nation” did not appear until the late 18th century in Europe. Karl Marx attempted to criticize “nation” with “class” by contending that it was an ideology created to conceal class conflict by claiming national culture to be an organic and shared whole. However, the Marxist attack on “nation” changed with Lenin. Marx emphasized class and regarded nation as a capitalist invention aiming at channeling conflict out of the nation-state. But Lenin was different; he defined revolution as international. According to Lenin, during the early stage of world revolution, “national consciousness” was necessary to the movement of anti-imperialism. The “awakening” of non-Western nationalities was the prelude to the victory of the international proletariat class. In other words, only the mobilization of the oppressed nationalities to revolt against imperialist nations could lead to the victory of communist revolution. Stalin continued Lenin’s connotation of “nation” but also added his own interpretation. After the formation of the Soviet polity, while still considered as an aid to world revolution, “nation” became a part of the “national morphology.” It was a conceptual tool to manage ethnic relations under the trans-ethnic “federation.” 16 The term “nation” became the key concept that dominated the research of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in the 1950s. On the one hand, “nation” was used to identify “the other” within the territory of China in order to provide the so-called minority nationalities equal legal status with the Han; on the other hand, it was related to the “civilizing project,” as

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described by Harrell, and closely tied to the concept of “social formation” to become an important component in the policy of China’s total transformation. Western anthropologists who entered Southwest China had to be aware of the historical process of the sinicization of “nation,” but their caution inevitably resulted from Western theoretical criticism of ethnic nationalism since the early 1980s. To my understanding, most Western thinkers who vehemently attacked ethnic nationalism were Jewish leftists. Since the Jews had no state, they were sensitive to ethnic nationalism that was closely connected to sovereignty and state. It is easier for them to point out the conflict between “one nation, one state” claimed by the concept of “sovereignty” and their own experience. Therefore, they realized that every concept had its own history.17 Their research shows that the concept “nation” is a modern product. It was imposed on ancient history by people such as the early anthropologists to explain the transition from tribal to civilized society. Before the 1950s, Chinese scholars used minzu to refer to “nation,” and zu or ren to refer to those nationalities identified after the 1950s. After the 1950s, the use of minzu was more generalized. This has confused Western anthropologists who in turn became interested in clarifying the “etymological history” of this key term. What sinological anthropologists had done in Southeast China was to choose between the “two paths” and distinguish themselves from Chinese scholars specialized in the studies of Austronesian linguistics, the ethnohistory of the Baiyue, and the Huidong people. As a consequence, a generation of scholars interested in religion and lineage was created. On the contrary, Western anthropologists who entered the southwest had to enter into dialogue with the local political discourse and scholarly legacy. However, because great differences existed between Western and local scholarly traditions, the former had to adopt a more discreet and sometimes even opposing attitude in their dialogue with the latter. And yet, Western anthropologists who entered Southwest China undertook the mission to introduce the “sinicized anthropology”—a body of research on the “ethnic problem” in this area—into Western sinological anthropology. This “sinicized anthropology” includes the work produced in the 1950s, which was critized by Western scholars for being “Morganish,” and the large quantity of ethnological studies from the earlier period. From the late 19th century to the 1920s, foreign missionaries, explorers, botanists, and geologists carried out most

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anthropological studies of Southwest China. Chinese who participated in these activities were merely coolies, translators, or assistants. Not until the late 1920s, with the establishment of the Research Institute of Language and History at Sun Yat-sen University and the Institute of History and Philology at the Academia Sinica, did a group of Chinese anthropologists trained in the West begin to conduct their own research in Southwest China. They produced outstanding work by integrating historical materials with field research. During the period of the second Sino-Japanese War, many universities moved to the southwest and settled in Yunnan and Sichuan. Scholars, whether they were from missionary colleges or national universities, whether they belonged to the “southern school” or the “northern school,” made great achievements. They had to devote themselves considerably to ethnological studies because the nation was confronted with serious “frontier problems.” We can even call this period an “era for the study of frontier governance” (bianzhengxue shidai 邊政學時代). Even the “northern school” scholars, who were originally not interested in ethnological issues, participated in the discussion of frontier governance. It was also during this time that extensive research on those minority groups which later became the focus of Western anthropologists was done. A special feature of this research is that most of its reports were written in Chinese and largely relied on ancient Chinese documents (by the Han people), yet it also initiated the linguistic study of minority languages.18 How do contemporary anthropologists deal with the various ethnological studies of Southwest China produced through time? Scholars such as Harrell began their own research of the southwest when studies of ethnology and frontier in the region had already been carried out for decades. Although they disputed the approaches of these studies (especially the diffusionism that was popular in “southern school” anthropology in the 1920s and 30s), they had to acknowledge that these studies nonetheless belonged to the realm of anthropology. What they have not thought through is the relationship between their own anthropology and the “southern school” anthropology that has continued to impact ethnological research in China today.

“Habitation” (ju 居) and “Migration” (you 遊) I have attempted elsewhere to synthesize the “community” approach of the northern school with the “mobility” (or diffusion) approach of the

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southern school as regards overseas lineages of the southeast coast. I contend that it is necessary for Chinese anthropology to form a new paradigm based on the synthesis of “habitation and migration” (ju yu you 居 與遊).19 My suggestion results from my realization that it is important to rethink but also inherit social science traditions developed during the Republican period (I believe this will help the formation of “anthropology with Chinese characteristics”). I think this synthesis is also key to the integration of research in East and West China. Before the 1950s, there existed two paths—habitation and migration—in the research region of Southeast China. One emphasized the study of Han religion, customs, lineage, and the “local mode” of living, while the other focused on the study of ethnological history, population migration, and regional ethnic relations. Between the 1950s and 1970s, the first path was suspended, and the second path developed into research on ethnic identification and social formation in Mainland China. This transformation created an enormous conflict. Nation (minzu) became the major subject of research, which opened up a vast space for the study of ethnological history. Ethnologists inherited the previous research tools of population migration and used it to trace national roots. However, the purpose of this search was to find “habitation,” or in other words, to endow a certain coordination for the identified nationalities (for example, to connect one nationality with a certain location and to claim that it was the ancestor of the Chinese people [huaxia 華夏]). After the 1980s, the history of this discipline stepped onto a new stage. Ethnological history lost its leading position and gave way to Western sinological anthropology. British and American sinological anthropologists, after decades of effort, gained access to Southeast China and took the lead in the research of this region. The approach of sinological anthropology became the norm of new anthropological research. Yet, unfortunately, it has also encouraged the fellow anthropologists of Southeast China to treat tradition as “habitation” and modernity as “migration,” and thus to repeatedly reiterate the “narrative of social transformation” as one “from habitation to migration.” They ignore the fact that “habitation” and “migration” are two fundamentals of social life. Southwest China is different, compared to Southeast China: the main character of this research region is the “ethnological study” that was once ignored by sinological anthropologists. It is not to say that historically there was no study of religion, custom, and lineage similar to that of the southeast. The “leisure economy” of the Lu Village in Yunnan

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described by Fei Xiaotong 費孝通 is similar to the “public life” practiced in folk religion in Southeast China.20 And the Dali culture described by Xu Langguang 許烺光 (Francis L. K. Hsu) practiced almost the same kind of ancestor worship as the one found in the southeast. Yet the experience of ethnic identification in the 1950s has made this research region more “ethnicized.” 21 Therefore, when Harrell and Tapp entered Southwest China through different routes in the late 1980s, “ethnicity” was an unavoidable topic. Although the southwest research region became a hot spot for foreign scholarly research in the 1990s, studies of religion, custom, and lineage did not become fashionable. The major focus was still the debates on “ethnicity” (centered in Sichuan). Chinese ethnologists used to look for ethnic origin to prove the theory of the “big family of nationalities” (minzu dajiating 民族大家庭). This method has been criticized by the new generation of scholars inf luenced by the idea of “ethnicity.” But their “over-correction” has also abandoned the “migration” perspective that was deemed as a “discourse.” And at the same time, there have appeared numerous global anthropological studies that see globalization as “migration” in a “post-national era.” The Han represent the image of Southeast China, and minority nationalities stand out for Southwest China. But image does not equate to reality. Although we often divide China into east and west, from a historical perspective both southeast and southwest were frontiers surrounding the center.22 In Southeast China, the Han migrated from the central plain (zhongyuan 中原), and before their arrival the Baiyue were the local aborigines. After the Han settled and became the majority, the Baiyue gradually disappeared. The Han in the southeast maintained ancestral connections with the central plain, but in the long run assimilated with other groups. During the Song and Yuan periods, the sinicized “Semu” caste controlled the local government for a long time and maintained close economic and cultural networks with India and the Arab world. This situation only changed during the Ming. Southwest China was once the frontier of the Qin and Han empires, but it developed along a rather autonomous path during the one thousand years before the conquest by the Yuan and the Ming. Therefore the southwest was less a frontier of the “central plain” than a plate in between several civilizations. Because of its geographical remoteness from the center, extensive cultural exchange took place. The Han traveling southward and the peoples from South and Southeast Asia moving northward encountered the local “aborigines” and shared a kind of “joint-cultural” experience. However, the conquest by

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the Yuan and the Ming introduced massive “non-local culture” that was in conflict with “local culture.” Therefore, Southwest China was not only a region of minority nationalities, but also one of copious “imperial culture.” The southeast coastal area belonged to the “core” during the Southern Song and the early Ming. It continues to be regarded as the “core” in today’s east-west division. However, from a historical perspective, both southeast and southwest regions were “intermediaries.” Fei Xiaotong’s work forms the basis of the “intermediary” concept. He defines the mountains, highlands, and steppes in the minority nationality region in between central China and foreign territories as an integrated field for research. 23 His exclusion of the southeast is probably because this area was not labeled as a “minority nationality region” by the ethnic identification project (for the project was mainly carried out in mountains, highlands, and steppes). Moreover, the establishment of the treaty ports on the east coast in the 1840s has made modern Chinese intellectuals forget the fact that the east coast used to be a “frontier” of imperial China. The two intermediaries, southeast and southwest, share a common culture; that is, they both were located in the geographical “middle” that became a terrain for frequent cultural encounters between “the barbarian” (yi 夷) and “the Chinese” (xia 夏). On this terrain, Chinese, foreign, and local (or the so-called minority nationality cultures after the 1950s) cultures encountered, distinguished between, and integrated with each other. Southeast China’s “intermediary position” between China and the rest of the world seems to be easily grasped. On the contrary, the double demonstration of ethnology and ethnic anthropology has added a layer of “remoteness” to Southwest China. The recurring images of “mountain,” “snowfield,” and “steppe,” as well as arguments of “ethnicity” have made Southwest China ever linked with a sigh of “difficult to reach.”

Records of the Grand Historian (Shiji 史記) and the Commonality between East and West How should we understand the intermediary position of Southwest China? I suggest that the concept of “habitation and migration” borrowed from the study of Southeast China is still useful. Moreover, let me use “The

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account of the southeastern barbarians” from Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian of China to exemplify my point. The most cited material in the study of southwestern nationalities could be the opening paragraph of “The account of the southwestern barbarians”: There are dozens of chiefs ruling among the southwestern barbarians, but the most important is the ruler of Yeh-lang. To the west of Yeh-lang live the chiefs of the Mi-mo, of which the most important is the ruler of Tien. North of Tien live numerous other chiefs, the most important being the ruler of Ch’iung-tu. All of the tribes ruled by these chiefs wear their hair in the mallet-shaped fashion, work the fields, and live in settlements. Beyond them to the west, in the region from T’ung-shih east to Yeh-yü, are the tribes called Sui and K’unming, whose people all braid their hair and move from place to place with their herds of domestic animals, having no fixed homes and no chieftains. Their lands measure several thousand li square. Northeast of the Sui live twenty or thirty chiefs, the most important being those of Hsi and Tso-tu. Among the numerous chiefs northeast of Tso, those of Jan and Mang are most important. Some of their people live a settled life on the land, while others move about from place to place. Their territory is west of the province of Shu. Northeast of Jan and Mang are numerous other chiefs, the most important being the ruler of Po-ma. All of them belong to the Ti tribe. These are all the barbarian groups living in the area southwest of Pa and Shu.24

Sima Qian’s southwest does not overlap with today’s southwest. It seems to be much larger and covers roughly the territory west, northwest, and south of the Ba and Shu prefectures. Ethnologists who have cited this paragraph particularly emphasize how “minority nationalities” in the southwest were classified. As to the component of the “southwestern barbarians,” ethnologists regard the “western barbarians” in Shiji as belonging to the Diqiang and the “southern barbarians” as belonging to the Baiyue. The geographical center of their habitation was “in the Liangshan area encompassing the Yun-Gui highland and Sichuan.” 25 The culture of this area was a product of the extension, collision, and integration of the “three cultural zones”— the midstream of the Yellow River, the northern and northwestern steppes, and the Yangzi River—beginning in the Neolithic period. Since this area was an “intermediary zone” of cultural encounters, its culture bore multi-ethnic characteristics. Shiji does not only provide a way to understand the types of “minority nationalities” in the mind of the ancient Han, it also carries a message:

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besides ethnic customs and costumes, Sima Qian’s classification emphasizes the status of the “chief” (junzhang 君長). Who was the chief? He was the headman of the tribe. In Shiji, one of the features that distinguished the southwestern barbarians is the multiple and uneven centers of political power scattered all over the southwestern frontier. This feature, observed by the ancient Han, continued to exist in this area. In the late 1970s, Fei Xiaotong mentioned in his work, “Zang-Yi zoulang” 藏彝走廊 [The Zang-Yi Corridor], that “this corridor was exactly the border between Han and Zang, and between Yi and Zang, and there appeared several political stalemates during different historical periods. This was also the region where activities of the Qiang, Di, and Rong were found historically. There were also various local political powers of different scale and duration. Now the eastern side of the corridor has become a Han habitation and the western side a Tibetan region. But it is in the Tibetan region that many dialects used by the local ‘Tibetans’ are found distinct from the modern Tibetan practiced in Tibet.” 26 In the second and third paragraphs of the “The account of the southwestern barbarians,” Sima Qian talks about the relations between the southwestern barbarians, the Chu state, and the Yue state. He first describes the relationship between the southwestern barbarians and the state of Chu. During the reign of King Wei of Chu, general Zhuang Qiao was sent to lead an army along the Yangzi River to invade Ba, Shu, and the west of Qianzhong. He subdued the region and intended to head back to Chu to report his victory. However, the Qin army attacked Chu and seized Ba and Qianzhong. Unable to get through, he returned his army to Lake Dian and made himself the ruler of Dian. Sima Qian has also provided an interesting account of the relationship between the southwestern barbarians and the state of Yue. In the sixth year of the era Jianyuan (135 B.C.) in the Han dynasty, the grand messenger Wang Hui attacked Eastern Yue and the men of Eastern Yue killed their king, Ying, to prove their willingness to submit to Han rule. Wang Hui dispatched Tang Meng to persuade the king of Southern Yue to be loyal to the Han. After learning that Southern Yue had extended its power with the aid of Yelang, Tang Meng suggested that the throne open up communications with Yelang and establish officials in the region. The emperor approved Tang Meng’s plan and appointed him as a general of palace attendants. Tang Meng led an army into Yelang. He presented the marquis of Yelang with generous gifts while intimidating him with the might of the Han. The small towns in the neighborhood of Yelang all coveted silk from the

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Han. The marquis considered that the road between Yelang and China was too perilous to be invaded by the Han, so he agreed with Tang Meng’s demand to send Han officials to Yelang. Tang Meng returned to the capital to report to the emperor on his success. Thus the emperor established the province of Jianwei in the area and sent troops from Ba and Shu to build the road. The system of prefectures and counties was introduced. Sima Qian emphasizes the trade networks between the southwest and outside world. He mentions that the people of Ba and Shu often crossed the frontier defenses set up by the Han along the border of Shu to bring back horses from the state of Zuo and slaves and yaks from the state of Bo. These unofficial trading activities brought great wealth to Ba and Shu. As to the relation between the southwestern barbarians and Southern Yue, Sima Qian says that the court of Southern Yue treated Tang Meng with ju berry sauce brought from Shu. When Tang Meng inquired how it came through, he was told, “It was brought down the Zangke River from the northwest. The Zangke River is several li wide and flows past Fanyu, the capital of Southern Yue.” 27 Tang Meng questioned a merchant of Shu after he returned to Chang’an, and the merchant told him that “Shu is the only place that makes ju berry sauce. Large quantities of it are exported in secret to the markets of Yelang.” 28 To concentrate its force against the Xiongnu, the Han dynasty was lax about the management of the southwest. But the area surrounding Dian aroused much attention. Because it was within the trading network of a prosperous economy, people in the area were proud and the rulers of Dian and Yelang had little regard for the Han. Sima Qian mentions that in the first year of yuanshou (122 B.C.) during the reign of Emperor Wu, Zhang Qian returned from his mission to the state of Daxia and reported that while he was there he had seen cloth from Shu and bamboo canes from Qiong. He inquired of the local people how theses products had gotten to Daxia and was told, “They come from the land of Shendu [India], which lies some several thousand li southeast of here. We buy them in the shops of the Shu merchants there.” 29 What strategy and policy should the Han take toward the southwestern barbarians who controlled extensive areas? Some officials suggested abandoning the plan for developing the southwest in order to defend the northwest with full resources; others argued for pacifying the southwest by opening a new route and setting up administrative systems, because the northwest would be easy to curb if the southwest was stabilized. In the end, the expanding territory and might of the southwestern

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states alerted Emperor Wu, who therefore raised an army from Ba and Shu to wipe out Southern Yue, forcing the marquis of Yelang to pay respect to him and to accept the title of king of Yelang bestowed by him. He set up counties in Qiong, Zuo, Mang, and Baima, and compelled the king of Dian to surrender to the Han by accepting the title of king of Dian and adopting the Han administrative system. Sima Qian, who stresses the importance of imperial governance, remarks on Han’s strategy of “divide and conquer” (fen er zhizhi 分而治之). His remarks also provide useful information for ethnologists: “At the founding of the Zhou dynasty, one of them [the ancestors of Chu] served as a general under King Wen and his descendants were enfeoffed in Chu. Even when the glory of the Zhou had waned, the state of Chu still boasted an area of five thousand li. The Qin dynasty wiped out all of the other feudal families; only the descendants of Chu continued to rule as kings of Dian.” 30 In other words, the “frontier problem” of the southwest during the Han was in fact rooted in Zhou “feudalism.” And Sima Qian’s chapter shows that the Han did not apply an “extermination policy” towards the southwestern barbarians, but a combination of feudalism and imperial centralization. When modern ethnologists studied the southwest, they only paid attention to the classification of the “barbarians” and ignored the complicated political relationship between the empire and its “periphery.” Sima Qian’s “The account of the southwestern barbarians” is useful for our understanding of the “intermediary.” He talks about the ludicrous pride of the southwestern barbarians, but also shows that such mentality was well grounded in reality. On the one hand, the large number of “chiefs” among the southwestern barbarians proves that imperial sovereignty was greatly hindered in this area. On the other hand, the system of chiefdoms does not mean that the area was isolated from the outside world. Quite the contrary, the southwestern barbarians maintained close political, economic, and cultural ties with Chu and Yue in the east, and with Shendu in the south. From the Han perspective, the “chiefs” were scattered within an “intermediary region,” in between the “inner” and the “outer.” The “southwest situation” that Sima Qian describes in “The account of the southwestern barbarians” is similar to the history that British anthropologist Edmund Leach mentions in his book, Political Systems of Highland Burma. Leach talks about the historical relations between highland Burma and the larger region:

178 · Wang Mingming One of the facts that can be taken as established for certain is that the Chinese were familiar with various routes from Yunnan to India as early as the first century A.D. We can not be quite certain what these routes were, but, since there are only a very limited number of passes through the main mountain ranges, routes cannot have differed very greatly from those we know of today. It is not unreasonable to see the original Shan colonisation of the river valleys as a process associated with the maintenance of these trade routes. There is evidence that communications were maintained by establishing a series of small military garrisons at suitable staging posts along the route. These garrisons would have had to maintain themselves and would therefore need to be sited in a terrain suitable for rice cultivation. The settlement thus formed would provide the nucleus of an area of sophisticated culture which would develop in time into a Shan type petty state.31

According to Leach, most groups settled in highland Burma were tribesmen, and the existence of the routes from China to India resulted in the complexity of local culture (political organization). “The extent to which any particular state would develop would be conditioned by local circumstances,” and the scale of polity and the establishment of state did not guarantee to transform the society from tribal to a more sophisticated form. 32 The Kachin-type social system remained highly unstable, compared to the Shan type that was relatively stable, and this contrast continued for a long period.33 The ethnological accounts from Sima Qian to Leach make clear that the so-called southwestern barbarians are a component belonging to the larger zone of contact between the Chinese and the Indian civilizations that have existed for two thousand years. This zone has two features: habitation, which involves a history of how the indigenous people maintained the “prototype” of their settlement pattern against the tides of civilization; and migration, which refers to the process of how local society became more sophisticated by the flow of people and materials along the ancient trading routes. Leach has insightfully observed the paradox within the “habitation-migration” pattern: the settling society of the Kachin type became highly unstable because of the external impact of the migrating type of Shan (due to the opening and the maintaining of the ancient routes); on the contrary, the political organizations of different scales developed in migration could be relatively stable because of the emergence of judicial systems. There are also accounts in Shiji about the “Yue region” (Yue di 越地) in the southeast. Even if we ignore these historical accounts from the Han

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dynasty and only focus on the “history of the development in the southeast” (dongnan kaifa shi 東南開發史) in later periods, we will still be able to find commonalities with the “Account.” For example, Quanzhou belonged to the Yue region in ancient times; even after it was included in the imperial landscape of the “central plain” it was only subject to the old Yangzhou area. Independent political powers, like those among the southwestern barbarians, existed along the southeastern coast, the islands (including Taiwan), and mountains where administrative systems were still undeveloped.34 Likely, under these decentralized circumstances, the Yue people had close connections with the “Austronesian groups.” This connection established the foundation for the maritime system after the Tang. During the period of the Five Dynasties and Ten States, when Han elites migrated to the south in large numbers for the first time, the state of Min grabbed the opportunity to recruit talented persons to serve the state. At the same time, it also adopted an open door policy to the neighboring “states” and foreign “barbarians.” These efforts brought unprecedented prosperity to the economy of Quanzhou. In the Song dynasty, to enrich the national treasury, the imperial court created the Maritime Trade Superintendency (Shibo si 市舶司) to encourage overseas trade. Thereafter, different “nationalities” from the world gathered in Quanzhou and made it “a city that accommodates peoples from ten states” (shijing shizhou ren 市井十洲人). 35 The “division” resulting from the aboriginal cultural practices and the “integration” engendered by the implementation of a local administrative system imposed by the state formed the double feature of the political and cultural dynamics in the southeastern coastal area. Its legacy can still be found in ritual representations today. This feature never limited the development of the southeast into a component of the “intermediaries”; instead, it contributed much to cross-border trade and cultural exchange. There were a so-called “southern silk route” in the southwest,36 and a “maritime silk route” in the southeast.37 These two routes, one in the west and one in the east, together marked the “exteriorization” of the intermediaries. To sum up, history shows that the southeast and the southwest both belonged to the “intermediaries” and their “aborigines” were the “minority nationalities” classified in the 1950s. Ever since the Qin and the Han, these two areas had been under the influence of the “Chinese entity” that was never a completely unified body itself. They were controlled by local political powers while at the same time penetrated by the “civilization” imposed by the state. What further complicated the

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scenario was the long-term commercial and cultural links between the “primordial base” of these areas and what was considered “the barbarian” (yi fan 夷番) from the perspective of the center. The links covered a space much larger than the territories governed by these political powers.

From the East-West Divide to the East-West Link If done only for pragmatic considerations of the professionalization of regional studies, the marking of “research regions” in anthropology is an insipid task. Studies of the southeast and of the southwest offer insight to one another, and they demonstrate that these two areas belong to a “world order” that is trans-local. The idea of “research regions” should be applied to the understanding of how local studies contribute to the mapping of such a “world order.” Since the late 1990s, I have witnessed the development of the anthropology of Southwest China but also recognized the drawbacks resulting from the ethnicization of this research region. The beginning of my research of the southwest was tightly bound up with the “era of Kuige” achieved by Fei Xiaotong, Zhang Zhiyi, Xu Langguang, Tian Rukang, and other Chinese anthropologists. I took my doctoral students to “re-study” the Lu Village, Xizhou, and the Mang City researched by the Kuige researchers.38 One of our conclusions was that Fei Xiaotong and the Kuige anthropologists, focusing on the modernization of the village and being influenced by the British ethnological methodology, studied any community as if dissecting a sparrow. Therefore, their research was rich in details of the community organization but lacked the dimension of how social life within the community was connected to outside world. As a result, their research did not provide promising data about local public life that links the community with other places, the heterogeneity of local ethnic identification, and the “trans-local” aspect of religion. Re-reading the work of Fei Xiaotong, I now realize that he had new insight into these questions after he participated in the ethnic surveys of the 1950s. After he acquired his “second academic life” in the late 1970s, Fei began to ponder the “pattern of pluralistic unity” (duoyuan yiti geju 多元一體格局). This concept, which emerged from his study of Chinese ethnological history, offers us the possibility to conduct research on multiple ethnic nationalities in multiple localities.39 Unlike Fei Xiaotong, other anthropologists were interested in the “divide between east and west.” Research on the eastern society was tied

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to cultural study and the san nong 三農 problems (agriculture, rural village, and peasant), while the western ethnic study was inseparable from issues of “ethnicity” and “globalization.” This divide had consequences for anthropological research: Two distinct concepts are applied to the understanding of these areas. In the southeast the “sense of place” is used to describe group consciousness of locality, and in the southwest “ethnicity” is used to express identification with the “we group.” The term “ethnicity” is often associated with the “we group consciousness” of the identified nationality. The “sense of place” toward a particular locale by its members exists under the “nation” (minzu), which is to say that “ethnicity” is a larger entity than “sense of place.” This leads to the conclusion that “sense of place” is entirely different from “ethnicity.” In reality, there is no “sense of place” outside “ethnicity” and no “ethnicity” without “sense of place.” Besides, we should not exaggerate the uniqueness of the southwestern ethnicity. It is true that the number of southwestern minority nationalities is far larger, but there also exists a “place identity” in the southeast. The “place identity” is in opposition to the state, and it could be attached to a place as broad as a dialect area and as small as a village. Issues concerning the “place identity” can be compared with those of the “ethnic problem.” Unfortunately, there has been no synthesis of the southeastern “place identity” and the southwestern “ethnic problem.” Where does the “divide between east and west” in Chinese social sciences come from? Society, as the foundation for Western social theories, is formed on prototypes similar to modern national aggregations and cultures. Social scientists have to rely on “integration” if they attempt to establish a social theory that is based on a positivist model. Excluding western China from mainstream Chinese society has been the model constructed by Chinese social scientists. Foreign social scientists, including anthropologists, who are interested in finding a voice for China in social scientific theories need to apply the method of “integration.” Paradoxically, it is exactly for the reason of integration that both foreign and Chinese social scientists seem to exclude those societies outside the mainstream society to meet the standard of “one nation, one state.” The separation of the southwestern “nationalities” (minzu) from the southeastern community, lineage, and popular religion originated from the “integrative revolution” of social science.40 Ethnology and anthropology are members of social science, yet they are often seen as “outcasts.” These two disciplines, whose principle

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subject is the “pre-modern” or “non-modern” society, have made enormous efforts in China to grasp the “other” that latently challenges the “integrative revolution.” These disciplines have to integrate the other in order to develop themselves; however, for pragmatic reasons such as disciplinary territorial maintenance, they unavoidably also help the other divide themselves into small ethnic units. This is not to say that Chinese anthropology or other social scientific disciplines should abandon the idea of the “whole.” It is necessary to link the “local” with the “whole” in order to understand connection and network. But the “whole” is different from the “integration” used in the “integrative revolution.” The former is more historical and distinct from “modernism”; it pays great attention to the “intermediary” linkage, while the latter stubbornly holds “nationalism” as the principle and asserts the dichotomy of “center-periphery.” To rethink the dichotomy of “center-periphery” exemplified in the southwestern and southeastern “research regions” is the first step if we attempt to solve the problem of the “divide between east and west” in the study of China and to understand the scholarly legacy of these two places. Focusing on the “periphery” in representation, Wang Mingke describes the center-periphery dichotomy as a historical memory of the “story of heroic exile” and interprets it as the “idea of the periphery by the we-group” constructed by the Chinese intellectual elites in the Han and the Jin. He contends: The basic narrative of the “story of heroic exile” is: A hero from China proper is exiled to the periphery due to failure and defeat. He gains the trust of local aborigines and becomes the king that civilizes the place. The story “King Zhuangqiao of Dian” represents such a historical memory. Whether or not it was based on historical fact, the story was recorded and widely shared and became evidence that the Chinese regarded the dominant center of the “southwestern barbarians,” the royal family of the Dian kingdom, as the descendants of Chinese who were exiled to the periphery. Moreover, various historical narratives generated from the basis of the “story of heroic exile” during the Wei-Jin period describe the “prince” of Shang as fleeing to Korea (Jizi ben Chaoxian 萁子奔朝鮮), the “prince” of Zhou to the south of the Yangzi River (Taibo ben Wu 太伯奔吳), and a runaway “slave” of Qin fled to the Qiang region in the northwest (Wuyi Yuanjian 無弋爰 ). The symbols (prince, general, runaway slave, Shang, Zhou, Qin, Chu, etc.) constructed by these exile narratives demonstrate the peripheral degree of “Dian” or the “southwestern barbarians” in comparison to the Chinese center: The

Southeast and Southwest: Searching for the Link between “Research Regions” · 183 fact that Zhuangqiao, who fled to Dian, was considered a “general” of Chu shows that Dian in the southwest was evaluated by the Chinese during the Han and the Jin as a civilized place at the periphery of China (huaxia 華 夏), but Dian was apparently less sinicized than the northeastern and the northeastern peripheries (Korea and Eastern Wu) and more sinicized than the northwestern periphery (Western Qian).41

Wang Mingke’s argument obviously comes from a criticism of the “center-periphery” dichotomy of the nationalist narrative, but unfortunately it could not escape the “bridle” of such a dichotomy. Unlike Wang’s “post-modern historiography,” I think the centerperiphery relation is not only “representational.” The story of “King Zhuangqiao of Dian” might be an “ethnic biography” invented by Chinese intellectuals; nonetheless, it reflects a “fact of structural history” of a larger scope. In the politics of the Warring States, dukes expanded their power by annexing other groups within their territories and in the peripheries.42 This political pattern was reiterated again and again during times of division in Chinese history. Zhuge Liang’s “ethnic policy” during the Three Kingdoms is such an example. After Liu Bei settled in Shu, Zhuge Liang put into effect a pacification policy toward neighboring groups. He first dispatched Ma Chao to the northwest to establish friendly relations with the Rong, Qiang, and Di. Then, to prepare for the northern expedition to Wei of Cao, he appeased the “barbarian Yue” in the south to make Nanzhong, a vast area with abundant resources inhabited by numerous ethnic groups, a rear area of the Shu.43 The creation of the “bronze column” at Xizhou during the period of Five Dynasties is another example. The third king of Chu built a bronze column at Xizhou in A.D. 940 and inscribed on it the story of how Peng, one chieftain of the “barbarians” at Xizhou, was intimidated by the military might of Chu and led other five chieftains to pledge for truce. The chieftains practiced the blood-drinking ritual with the king of Chu to become subordinated vassals.44 After the “order of ritual and law” is established, substantial relations must be established between the “periphery” and the “center”; representation is only one part of such relations. Another part involves the formation of a local administrative system. The system of “rotating officials” might have better consolidated the horizontal, as well as vertical, relations within the body of the empire.45 The tusi 土司 system implemented in the southwest during the Yuan dynasty46 did not exist in the southeast where the system of rotating officials had been normalized much earlier.

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However, such a difference does not imply that it is useless to compare and contrast the local political systems of these areas. Indeed, the system of rotating officials represents a kind of “direct rule,” while the tusi system formed a sort of “indirect control.” Yet, both systems are tools for linking the center with the local, and thus their difference is relative, not absolute. The study of the political and cultural influence of the system of rotating officials in the southeast and the study of the tusi system in the southwest could undoubtedly inspire each other. Moreover, there exist lineage and “territorial cults” 47 of popular religion in both southeast and southwest, which makes the communication between the studies of both areas more promising. Many Western scholars deemed lineage and territorial cults as features of “peripheral society,” but further historical study of these types of social relations showed that the wide spread of lineage and territorial cults in local society was tightly connected to top-down civilizing projects, such as the imposition of rites on commoners (li xia shuren 禮下庶人) and the implementation of the lishe 里社 system during the Song and Ming dynasties.48 Lineage and territorial cults have also existed in place like Dali, only they have been named differently by scholars. What is called “lineage” in the southeastern area is identified as “ancestor worship” in the southwestern area; and what are considered “territorial cults” in the southeast become “Benzhu 本主 beliefs” in the southwest.49 No matter if it is lineage or ancestor worship, they have been related to the attempt of the Chinese to Confucianize the southwest since the Ming. Territorial cults have a more complicated origin, but it is undoubtedly a consequence of village control during the Yuan and the Ming. In my opinion, Lin Yaohua’s research on the lineage at Yixu50 and Xu Langguang’s research on ancestor worship at Xizhou in Dali 51 reflect different local consequences of the same civilizing process. In the southeast, religion played the key role in the gentrification of the commoner and the plebianization of the gentry, and a similar mechanism was applied in the southwest to assimilate the “minority nationalities.” A comparative study of the “civilization” and “local response” in the southeast and southwest will provide further understanding of the civilizing process since the Song and its “social consequences.” What I have been arguing cannot be seen as a “materialization” of the “postmodern representation.” Why did I assert that postmodern historiography has not escaped the bridle of the national narrative? Because this kind of study still has to borrow geopolitical ideas in the

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context of the “nation-state” to define the relation between center and periphery. In my opinion, the “center-periphery” relation within the territory is only a component of a larger relational composite. Once we return to the idea of “modern pre-history,” we will realize that the “intermediary area” forms exactly the core area of the larger composite. Although the southeast and the southwest were dominated by different chieftain systems for a long period, they also had made connections with one or more larger civilizations. The insight of Sima Qian’s “Account of the southwestern barbarians” is that the southwestern barbarian chieftains and the kingdoms not only had to maintain relationships with the Chu and Yue states, but they also had to deal with the imperial civilization from the “central plain.” Moreover, they needed to protect their own interests as the “intermediaries” between the “central plain,” Southeast Asia, South Asia, and the maritime world. The “centralism of we-group” in local society was the crucial content that formed local cultural identity. However, even during periods of disunity such as the Five Dynasties and Ten States, the local society still had to compete with neighboring or remote powers, and instead of isolating itself from the other powers, it often formed a close relationship with them through war, trade, or formal diplomatic means. Likewise, the local society of the southeast always stressed its “intermediary” status. How do we understand this “intermediary” position of the southeast and the southwest and apply that in the relationship between both areas? The research on Han religion, customs, lineage, and ethnohistory in the southeast and that of ethnohistory and ethnicity in the southwest provide an important foundation for our understanding of the society and culture of these two areas. Yet the special experiences and the formation of the “image of the Han” and the “image of minority nationalities” during the era of nationalism in the 20th century have created an “exaggerated” history that erases the multiplicity and richness of their real experience. As a result, the history of “minority nationalities” in the southeast and the history of the “non-minority nationalities” in the southwest have faded. Therefore, foreign anthropology of the southeast has simply repeated the study of the Han cultural pattern, and the anthropology of the southwest has merely reiterated the “autonomy” of “ethnicity” of the minority nationalities. They have both ignored the crucial elements of the “intermediary”: the miscegenation of “the barbarian” with “the Chinese” and the openness to the external world. This implies that a re-thinking of the “relational structure” between the local worlds of the southeast and

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the southwest based on the maritime history of the southeast and the history of ethnic relations of the southwest will help us clarify the “relationship between the barbarian and the Chinese” (yi xia guanxi 夷夏關係). Although maritime history and history of ethnic relations have achieved much in the study of the southeast and that of the southwest, still history of ethnic relations has been ignored in the southeast and maritime history deemed insignificant in the southwest. Filling the gap will deepen our understanding of the “intermediaries” as a whole. Any “modern ethnological study” that skips historical context will be challenged by history. If the ethnologist does not take into consideration the multiple layers of relation in history to widen his/her perspective, then the “modern” will be anachronistic and meaningless. I think this applies to both studies of the southeast and the southwest. They both are two “directional” representations of the same problem. If we want to “reflectively” inherit the legacy of the two large anthropological “research regions,” we have to search for the origin of the problem and imagine a broader method to solve it. Unlike other “research regions” in world anthropology, Chinese anthropology itself as a research region offers a research field that integrates studies of history, civilization, politics, culture, and the imperial world order. A synthetic study of the southeast and the southwest will contribute enormously to this field. The key is for the anthropologists of these two areas to carry on their historical legacy, inspire each other, and develop concrete historical thinking about a more general “relational structure.” Translated by Hsiao-pei Yen

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Notes 1

2 3

4 5 6 7 8

9

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Richard Fardon, “General Introduction,” in Localizing Strategies: Regional Traditions of Ethnographic Writing, ed. Richard Fardon (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press and Smithsonian Institute Press, 1990), p. 29. Ibid. Wang Mingming 王銘銘, “Zhongjian quan” 中間圈 [The Intermediaries] in Jingyan yu xintai: lishi, shijie xiangxiang yu shehui 經驗與心態：歷史，世界想像 與社會 [Experience and Mentality: History, World Imagination and Society] (Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 2007), pp. 203–326. The English title of the book is Experience and Mentality: History, Cosmology and Social Theory. John King Fairbank, “China’s World Order: The Tradition of Chinese Foreign Relations,” Encounter (December 1966), pp. 14–20. Maurice Freedman, The Study of Chinese Society (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1979), pp. 231–272. Lin Yaohua 林耀華, Yixu de zongzu yanjiu 義序的宗族研究 [Study of the Yixu Lineage] (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2000). Maurice Freedman, Lineage Organisation in Southeast China (London: Athlone, 1958); Chinese Lineage and Society (London: Athlone, 1966). I discuss Freedman’s contribution in my review of sinological anthropology. See Wang Mingming, Shehui renleixue yu Zhongguo yanjiu 社會人類學與中國 研究 [Sociology and the study of China] (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1997; Guilin: Guangxi Normal College Press, 2005). Hu Hongbao 胡鴻保, ed., Zhongguo renleixue shi 中國人類學史 [History of Chinese anthropology] (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2006), pp. 68–77. Lin Huixiang, Zhongguo minzu shi [History of Chinese ethnology], 2 vols. (Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1983). Qiao Jian 喬建 and Chen Guoqiang 陳國強, eds., Huidong ren yanjiu 惠東人研 究 [Studies on the people of eastern Hui’an] (Fuzhou: Fujian jiaoyu chubanshe, 1992). Peng Wenbin 彭文斌 and Stevan Harrell, “Tianye, tonghang yu Zhongguo renleixue Xi’nan yanjiu—Meiguo zhuming renleixuejia Sidiwen Haorui jiaoshou zhuanfang” 田野、同行與中國人類學西南研究─美國著名人類學家斯 蒂文．郝瑞教授專訪 [Fieldwork, colleagues and anthropology in Southwest China—an interview with the well-known American anthropologist, Professor Stevan Harrell], in Renleixue de Xi’nan tianye yu wenben shijian— Haineiwai xuezhe fangtanlu 人類學的西南田野與文本實踐─海內外學者訪談 錄 [Anthropological Fieldwork and Textual Practices in Southwest China—A Collection of Interviews with Overseas and Chinese Scholars], ed. Peng Wenbin (Beijing: Minzu chubanshe, 2009), pp. 4–5. Ibid.

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Peng Wenbin et al., “Kuayue bianji yu ziwo de zuji-fang Aodaliya zhuming renleixuejia Wang Fuwen jiaoshou” 跨越邊際與自我的足跡─訪澳大利亞著 名人類學家王富文教授 [Footsteps that crossed boundaries and the self: Interview with the famous Australian anthropologist Nicholas Tapp], Xi’nan minzu daxue xuebao 西南民族大學學報, no. 12 (2007), pp. 14–27. Stevan Harrell, “Introduction,” in Cultural Encounters on China’s Ethnic Frontiers, ed. Stevan Harrell (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), pp. 3–36. For the genealogy of Marxist ethnic theory, see Yang Kun 堃, Minzuxue gailun 民族學概論 [Introduction to ethnology] (Beijing: Zhongguo shehuikexueyuan chubanshe, 1984), pp. 103–172. Wang Mingming, Piaobo de dongcha 漂泊的洞察 [Insights of drifting] (Shanghai: Sanlian shudian, 2003). Hu Hongbao, ed., Zhongguo renleixue shi [History of Chinese anthropology], pp. 78–113; Wang Jianmin 王建民, “Zhongguo renleixue Xi’nan tianye gongzuo yu zhushu de zaoqi shijian” 中國人類學西南田野工作與著述的早期實 踐 [The earlier fieldwork and writings of Chinese anthropology in Southwest China], Xi’nan minzu daxue xuebao 西南民族大學學報, no. 12 (2007), pp. 1–13. Wang Mingming, “Ju yu you: Qiaoxiang renleixue dui ‘Xiangtu Zhongguo’ renleixue de tiaozhan” 居與遊：僑鄉人類學對「鄉土中國」人類學的挑戰 [Habitation and migration: The challenge of overseas Chinese anthropology to the anthropology of Rural China], in Xixue “Zhongguohua” de lishi kunjing 西學 「中國化」的歷史困境 [The historical dilemma of “sinicizing” Western scholarship] (Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 2005), pp. 174–213. Wang Mingming, “Cong Jiang Cun dao Lu Cun” 從江村到 村 [From Jiang village to Lu village], in Jingyan yu xintai: Lishi, shijie xiangxiang yu shehui, pp. 194–200. Liang Yongjia 梁永佳, “Zuying zhixia de ‘minzu cuoshi’ yu Minguo Dali shehui”《祖蔭之下》的「民族措施」與民國大理社會 [Ethnic measures in Under the Ancestors’ Shadow and Republican-period Dali society], unpublished essay. James Millward, “New Perspectives on the Qing Frontiers,” in Remapping China: Fissures in Historical Terrain, ed. Gail Hershatter et al. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), pp. 113–129. Fei Xiaotong 費孝通, “Zhonghua minzu de duoyuan yiti geju” 中華民族的多 元一體格局 [Pattern of diversity in unity of the Chinese nation], in Lun renleixue yu wenhua zijue 論人類學與文化自覺 (Beijing: Huaxia chubanshe, 2004), pp. 121–152. Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian of China, trans. Burton Watson, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), vol. 2, p. 290. Song Shuhua 宋蜀華, “Lun lishi renleixue yu Xi’nan minzu wenhua yanjiu— fangfalun de tansuo” 論歷史人類學與西南民族文化研究─方法論的探索 [Historical anthropology and cultural studies of the ethnic minorities of

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26 27 28 29 30 31

32 33 34 35

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Southwest China—a methodological exploration], in Renleixue yu Xi’nan minzu 人類學與西南民族 [Anthropology and the peoples of the southwest], ed. Wang Zhusheng 王筑生 (Kunming: Yunnan University Press, 1998), p. 92. Fei Xiaotong, Fei Xiaotong wenji 費孝通文集 [Collected works of Fei Xiaotong], 15 vols. (Beijing: Qunyan chubanshe, 1999), Vol. 7, p. 215. Sima Qian, p. 291. Ibid., pp. 291–292. Ibid., p. 294. Ibid., p. 296. Edmund Leach, Political Systems of Highland Burma: A Study of Kachin Social Structure (London: The London School of Economics and Political Science, 1954), p. 38. Ibid., pp. 38–39. Ibid., p. 40. Lin Huixiang, Zhongguo minzu shi, vol. 1, pp. 111–147. Wang Mingming, Shiqu de fanrong: yizuo laocheng de lishi renleixue kaocha 逝去的繁榮 : 一座老城的歷史人類學考察 [A vanished prosperity: A historical anthropological investigation of an old city] (Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 1999). Tong Enzheng 童恩正, Gudai de Ba Shu 古代的巴蜀 [Ancient Ba and Shu] (Chongqing: Chongqing chubanshe, 1998), pp. 237–243; Li Shaoming 李紹明, “Xi’nan sichou zhi lu yu minzu zoulang” 西南絲綢之路與民族走廊 [The southwestern Silk Route and the ethnic corridor], in Li Shaoming minzuxue wenxuan 李紹明民族學文選 [Selected ethnological writings of Li Shaoming] (Chengdu: Chengdu chubanshe, 1995), pp. 868–883. UNESCO Quanzhou International Seminar on China and the Maritime Silk Route ed., Zhongguo yu haishang sichou zhi lu 中國與海上絲綢之路 [China and the Maritime Silk Route] (Fujian: Fujian renmin chubanshe, 1991). Wang Mingming, “Fansi yu jicheng: chongfang Xi’nan lianda shiqi renleixue diaocha didian” 反思與繼承─重訪西南聯大時期人類學調查地點 [Reflection and inheritance—Revisiting sites of anthropological investigation from the period of the Southwest Associated University], in Xixue “Zhongguohua” de lishi kunjing, pp. 103–130. Anthropological studies of the southeast and southwest have indeed stimulated and inspired each other. In the past decade, two types of “ethnography” have been found in Chinese anthropology. One emerged in the study of the southeast, which inherited methods from “community study” and developed new perspectives. This type of “ethnography,” molded on British and American anthropology, was entirely different from the “ethnography” of the 1950s that centered on a single ethnic nationality (fenzu xiezhi 分族寫志). The “ethnography” as “community study” approach, after being practiced in the southeast, has had a certain impact on the study of the southwest and resulted in the large quantity of “ethnic village research.” This new direction

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is seemingly similar to the ethnography of the northwestern rural communities along the Yunnan-Burma road done by Fei Xiaotong and others during the “Kuige era” in the 1930s and 40s, yet its essence is more linked to the emergence of “post-national” “ethnic village research.” By comparison, the research of the southwest has had far less impact on the research of the southeast. Although there are scholars of the southeastern “research region” who are also engaged in the research of the southwest, very few are able to apply the insights gained from the research of the southwest to the research of the southeast. Clifford Geertz, “The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States,” in Old Societies and New States: The Quest for Modernity in Asia and Africa, ed. Clifford Geertz (New York: The Free Press, 1963), pp. 105–157. Wang Mingke 王明珂, “Lun Xi’nan minzu de zuqun tezhi” 論西南民族的族群 特質 [On the distinguishing group characteristics of the southwestern peoples], Zhongguo renleixue pinglun 中國人類學評論 7 (2008), pp. 2–3. Jacques Gernet, A History of Chinese Civilization, trans. J. R. Foster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 60–62. Fang Tie 方鐵 and Fang Hui 方慧, Zhongguo Xi’nan bianjiang kaifa shi 中國西 南邊疆開發史 [A history of the development of China’s southwestern frontier] (Kunming: Yunnan renmin chubanshe, 1997), pp. 71–87. Okada K¯oji 岡田宏二, Zhongguo Hua’nan minzu shehuishi yanjiu 中國華南民 族社會史研究 [Studies on the Ethnical [sic] & Social History of Southern China], trans. Zhao Lingzhi 趙令志 and Li Delong 李德龍 (Beijing: Minzu chubanshe, 2002), p. 331. To a certain degree, the southeast and the southwest had to deal with the empire of the “central plain” (zhongyuan) at the same time, and the empire of the central plain often applied the method of “interlocking” to keep the southwestern and southeastern “peripheries” at bay. She Yize 佘貽澤 , Zhongguo tusi zhidu 中國土司制度 [The Chinese Tusi (Headman) System for Aboriginal Tribes] (Shanghai: Zhengzhong shuju, 1937). On the idea of “territorial cults,” see P. Steven Sangren, History and Magical Power in a Chinese Community (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. 51–60. Wang Mingming, Zouzai xiangtu shang: Lishi renleixue zhaji 走在鄉土上：歷 史人類學札記 [Beyond Rural China] (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2005). Liang Yongjia, Diyu de dengji: yige Dali cunzhen de yishi yu wenhua 地域的等 級：一個大理村鎮的儀式與文化 [Territorial Hierarchy: Ritual and Culture in West Town] (Beijing: Shehuikexue wenxian chubanshe, 2005). Lin Yaohua, Yixu de zongzu yanjiu. Francis L. K. Hsu, Under the Ancestors’ Shadow: Chinese Culture and Personality (New York: Columbia University Press, 1948).

Chapter 8

Chinese of Different Nationalities, China, and the Anthropology of Chinese Culture Tan Chee-Beng

Introduction The study of Chinese outside China originally aimed at understanding Chinese culture and society at a time when it was not possible to do research in post-1949 China. It was in this climate that a great deal of research was done in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Even research on the Chinese in Southeast Asia, such as the works of Maurice Freedman and William H. Newell,1 were done with an eye to understanding Chinese culture not only in Malaya, but also in China. Very soon, in the climate of the Cold War, research on the Chinese in Southeast Asia turned to the issue of whether Chinese could be assimilated and integrated into their country of residence, as pioneered by the classic work of G. William Skinner.2 Since the 1970s local Chinese scholars in Southeast Asia have been more interested in the issues of local identities and Chinese participation in the economy and politics of their own countries. It has become clear that the Chinese in diaspora3 need be studied in their own local and national contexts. The academic popularity of using transnationalism as a mode of analysis has seen the application of this model to the study of the Chinese in diaspora, too. The rise of China as a global economic power has further encouraged the use of this mode of analysis to study the transnational networks between the Chinese in diaspora and those in China. Thus the study of Chinese in diaspora has moved from being a China-centered study to study in local and national context and to transnational context involving multiple sites. Despite all these shifts in focus, the comparative study of Chinese of different nationalities (CDN) remains fruitful for understanding issues of cultural change and cultural

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continuity as well as the ethnic and cultural identities of the diverse categories of people who identify themselves as Chinese, albeit in their respective ways. For this purpose I have proposed to study Chinese in diaspora and relevant peoples in China in a Chinese ethnological field,4 since they all trace their cultural traditions from China and generally identify with Chinese civilization. For example, the study of Minnan (Southern Fujian) cultural traditions should not be restricted to studying them in China only, but should also include those practiced by the Minnan people in different parts of the world. Only in this larger ethnological context can we see the continuity and transformation of Minnan traditions and their significance to the politics of identity. While the study of the Chinese in Hong Kong and Taiwan (there are rather few studies in Macau) are seen as relevant to understanding Chinese culture, the traditions of scholarship on Chinese culture in China and on Chinese in diaspora have been rather separate. For example, few scholars who study popular religion in China pay attention to the research on Chinese popular religion in Southeast Asia or elsewhere, although they may refer to work done in Taiwan or Hong Kong. Scholars on China are often not so familiar with the study of the Chinese in diaspora, although relatively more scholars on Chinese overseas do pay some attention to the research on China, since some aspects are relevant to their area of analysis, including of course that on emigrant villages (qiaoxiang 僑鄉). In this chapter I seek to show that in the study of Chinese cultural traditions, there should be more interaction between discussions of China and those of Chinese in diaspora. The study of Chinese in diaspora can benefit greatly from also paying attention to cultural traditions in China. Indeed, an anthropology of Chinese culture cannot restrict itself to the geographical boundary of China. This is true of other phenomena relating to Chinese peoples in China in as far as there is worldwide migration from that country. In the study of Chinese culture—I use culture in the singular to refer loosely to cultural life, symbols, and institutions such as marriage and religious practices—it is more fruitful to look at Chinese culture not only within, but also beyond, the boundary of China, as this can enable us to compare Chinese cultural practices in different regions and national contexts. In both the scholarship on China and the Chinese in diaspora, Chinese culture is generally assumed to be about Han Chinese. For convenience, Chinese culture in this chapter refers to the Han Chinese culture. Of course, the study of China involves also the study of

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minorities, so-classified in China; and so the study of peoples and cultures of China includes the study of both Han and minorities. While there are members of minorities like Uighur and Hui who have migrated overseas, their number is small compared to those of Han origin, and they are often ignored in the study of Chinese in diaspora or are treated as part of the mainstream Chinese, as is the case of the small number of Hui in Malaysia. As most studies on the Chinese in diaspora are on the Han Chinese, which form the overwhelming majority of the population in China, we shall deal with Han Chinese culture only. Uighur or Miao, for instance, have to be dealt with separately since culturally they are very different. Just as the study of the Han culture of specific regions in China needs to go beyond the boundary of China, the study of Miao culture, for instance, needs to include the Miao in diaspora, where they meet up with the Hmong (who do not like to be called Miao) from Southeast Asia, such as in the USA or France. I shall discuss some Chinese cultural traditions to illustrate the importance of the comparative study of Chinese culture both in China and in diaspora. Cultural traditions are relevant to understanding ethnic and cultural identities. In my work I have emphasized the need to distinguish ethnic and cultural identity.5 Different categories of Chinese may identify themselves as ethnically Chinese, but they may perceive their Chinese identity differently, and they may have different cultural expressions (that is, cultural identities) of their Chinese ethnic identification. Thus studying the relevant categories of Chinese in China and in diaspora contributes to a better understanding not only of their reproduction and use of cultural traditions, but also their different perception of being Chinese.

Han Migration and the Spread of Chinese Culture Anthropologists and historians have written about the migration of Han people throughout the empire, especially from the north to the south, and the transformation of the local peoples by Han culture as well as the reconstitution of Han culture itself.6 How Han culture was standardized and universalized is a fascinating subject, and James Watson, using the example of Tianhou 天后 worship, has written a splendid article on standardizing the gods.7 Another anthropologist, Barbara Ward, understood the operation of Chinese culture by identifying three conscious models, namely, the “immediate model,” which is the people’s own notion of their

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own cultural system; the “ideological model,” which is the people’s version of the traditional literal model; and the “internal observers’ models,” which are people’s construction of the cultural arrangement of other Chinese groups.8 The expansion of Han culture obviously had to do with the expansion of Han people in the Chinese empire, and this expansion started quite early, as shown by the presence of the Han royal tomb in Guangzhou in south China. In fact, the expansion of the Han people involved acculturating the local non-Han peoples, and the Han could also be non-Han becoming Han, or brought about by the changing definition of the Han in relation to the non-Han peoples (see for example Wang Mingke’s study of the Qiang 9). The ethnogenesis of the Han and the non-Han is a complicated process, but the spread of Han culture was persistent and widespread. In the process, the original Han culture was transformed or reconstituted, influenced by the local cultures. In some cases, such as the Yao people’s adoption of Taoist rites, certain aspects of Han culture were incorporated into the non-Han cultures, brought about by historical processes that involved the non-Han interaction with the Han and especially with the Han imperial power.10 The promotion of common cultural institutions and values was obviously related to the roles of the Chinese elite, the Han model of imperial examinations and scholarship, and the imperial power. The idea of the Han as civilized meant that to participate in Han cultural institutions was desirable and honorable. And the Han participated in Han cultural institutions. They shared some common features of Han culture even though there were local cultural variations. The basic institutions of family and kinship, marriage, funerals, the symbolism of yin and yang, and so on are similar even though there are local variations. Han Chinese migrants to overseas destinations carried these “common” Chinese cultural principles with them and reterritorialized them overseas. While Chinese envoys and traders had visited the South Seas (coastal Southeast Asia) for many centuries, it is only since the nineteenth century that Chinese migrated in large numbers to different parts of the world, encountering different opportunities and difficulties as well as suffering.11 As with the migration within China, migration overseas spread Han culture, now perceived as Chinese culture, since Han as a category is not so relevant outside China although understood. Today Chinese overseas generally perceive themselves as Huaren 華人, which means “Chinese.” In some cases, the Chinese in diaspora have become

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extremely acculturated by the local non-Chinese environment, yet traditional Chinese culture remains important in their construction of Chinese identity.

Traditions and Identity On 14 December 2005, I visited a Baba family in Melaka, Malaysia. Since my research in 1977 on the Baba—generally Malay-speaking Chinese in Melaka—I have been close to this Cheong family, even after the death of my good Baba friend, Mr. Cheong, in 1998. Mrs. Cheong, 79 years old in 2005, was the most senior person in the household, which was composed of her eldest son and his daughter (whose mother died at a young age), and Ban, Mrs. Cheong’s second son. Ban is an excellent cook, who is interested in cooking and making all kinds of kuih or cakes and pastries. On 14 December, I arrived at the Cheong house around lunchtime, and I was surprised to find that there were many food offerings in front of the ancestral altars. Mrs. Cheong told me that it was the Dangceh worship, dangceh being the Baba term (derived from Hokkien dang zueh) for the Winter Solstice Festival, called dongzhi 冬至 in Mandarin, which literally means “winter solstice.” This is an important year-end festival, when Chinese who observe this festival eat tangyuan 湯圓, a kind of boiled round dumpling made of glutinous rice f lour served in sweet soup. However, winter solstice falls on 22 December, and it was still early for observing the Dangceh Festival. Mrs. Cheong explained that Ban was leaving for Kuala Lumpur the following day, and he would return only later in the month. Since Mrs. Cheong now depends on Ban to cook food for offerings, as making festival foods involve a lot of work, it was decided to bring forward the Dangceh worship. This kind of flexibility is acceptable in Chinese popular religion. On 22 December 2005, I had lunch with WD, a post-doctoral fellow (who was my doctoral student) in a student canteen at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. On seeing the canteen operator making an offering in front of the altar of Guandi, the martial lord now more honored as the God of Wealth, WD asked me what it was about. I knew immediately that it was the Dongzhi worship, because it was the day of the winter solstice, and the canteen operator confirmed it. WD is an Yi from Sichuan, and he was not so familiar with this festival. There were only a few items of offerings, since lunch time was a busy time for the canteen owner, and he was performing a private rite in a rather public

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area. The observation, however, highlights two points. The Dongzhi Festival is a Han tradition, not observed by the Yi people in China, and so it has no cultural significance to WD. It is considered a Chinese tradition by Han Chinese, not only in China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, but also among the Chinese in diaspora, certainly among the Chinese in Southeast Asia. Despite diversity among the Chinese of different regions and nationalities, they do share certain cultural traditions, such as the observation of Dongzhi. There is something Chinese among them. Another simple example can further illustrate the significance of the idea of the Chinese ethnological field. In some temples in Yongchun, Fujian, in China, one comes across a colored “picture” bearing a long line on the right and a drawing of a block with something round on top. In between these two drawings is one of a pair of scissors. This picture is usually hung high on the wall above the main altars. I also find similar pictures in some Chinese temples in Malaysia. This is actually a Minnan (called Hokkien in Southeast Asia) symbol for yitga bing’an (一家平安), which is Minnan hua 閩南話 (Minnan language) for “the whole family safe and sound.” The line stands for “one” or yit in Minnan language. Scissors in Minnan is gado or gazian. The first morpheme ga is homonymous with the Minnan word for “family.” Now the block stands for a table which is an in both Mandarin and literate Minnan language. The round thing on top is meant to show something flat, which is bing or bni (colloquial) in Minnan, thus the homonym for bing’an or “safe and sound without any mishap.” Thus the picture stands for, in Minnan language, yitga ping’an, “the whole family safe and sound.” In Chinese gentry houses in the past and in many Chinese houses today, it is common to find one or two vases on one or two tables in the front hall where guests are received. This symbolizes “safe and sound without any mishap,” as in Mandarin vase is ping 瓶, table is an 案; thus “safe and sound” (ping’an 平 安). The picture we discuss here is actually a Minnan symbol which stands for the wish for which worshippers often pray. In both China and Malaysia, the Minnan people share this same symbol. However, similar Chinese cultural traditions may differ in details in their practice, and they vary in significance to identity, even though the major symbols may be the same. In 2003, also in December, a few days before Dongzhi, I brought my then doctoral student YL to visit some Babas in Bukit Rambai, Melaka, where I conducted my doctoral research in 1977. YL is a Minnan person from Quanzhou, Fujian. Although she had read my works on the Baba, she was still taken aback when meeting

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Chinese who spoke Malay and no Chinese. At the home of the family where I had stayed for a year in 1977, she noticed the baskets of joss papers which were all nicely folded to look like imperial Chinese ingots, which the Babas all do before offering them to gods and ancestors. Asked what the joss papers were for, the bibi (honorific for the old nyonya— Baba woman) said that it was for the coming Dangceh worship. I served as YL’s interpreter, and she asked the bibi what was the importance of Dangceh. “Of course, it is important. How can Chinese not observe Dangceh?” snapped bibi in her beautiful Baba Malay, and she went on to explain that after eating the tangyuan (called yni in Hokkien and Baba Malay), one became one year older. YL was familiar with this explanation as Chinese parents often tell their children about this, indicating that Dongzhi marks the coming end of a Chinese year. However, YL was surprised by bibi’s emphasis on the festival and Chinese identity, for in Quanzhou, the festival is just another festival that the Chinese observe, just a Chinese tradition. The bibi and indeed the Babas of Melaka treat observing Chinese festivals as something more, being part and parcel of Baba (and Chinese) identity. Perhaps the loss of the Chinese language has led to this emphasis on Chinese traditions (such as festivals and Chinese religious practices) in cultural expression. The Baba in Melaka take the worship of deities and ancestors seriously, giving more offerings and laying them out more neatly than most other Chinese of a similar standard of living. My Baba friends also claim that they lay out their offerings for their ancestors longer than do other Chinese Malaysians. Here we see the significance of traditions to cultural identity, and comparative study of Chinese communities in a larger Chinese ethnological field can allow us to see the similarity and diversity as well as the symbolic significance of Chinese traditions. In fact, some Chinese traditions, especially religious practices, have been practiced continuously outside China, whereas in China they were suppressed during the Cultural Revolution. Comparative study allows us to also examine these traditions in different political and socio-cultural settings, both in China and outside China. In Chinese Overseas: Comparative Culture Issues12 I have discussed the comparative study of ancestor worship and the Zhongyuan 中元 festival (loosely rendered in English as the Hungry Ghost festival) in Malaysia and in Fujian. The relevance of tradition to identity depends on context. Myron Cohen has shown the significance of traditional culture to being Chinese

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in traditional Chinese society in China. He writes, “Consciousness of being a full participant in the total political, cultural, and social arrangements of the Chinese state and Chinese civilization was what being Chinese was all about.” 13 I shall not engage in his analysis of the relevance of traditions in the PRC and Taiwan. The study of Chinese in diaspora shows that observing certain Chinese traditions has become even more associated with Chinese identity simply because they have become localized in the larger non-Chinese cultural environments. My study of the Chinese in Malaysia shows that it is the most localized Chinese, the Baba of Melaka, who most emphasize practicing Chinese traditions as crucial to being Chinese, as we have seen. Some even go to the extent of conducting weddings using the costume of or imitations of the costume of the elite of the late imperial era. It is also no accident that the Babas and the acculturated Chinese in Kelantan and Terengganu, in the northeast Malayan peninsula, continue to post Chinese couplets at their houses’ main entrances and windows, even though very few of them can read Chinese. The practice is a Chinese tradition, and it expresses their Chinese identity, even though today few mainstream Chinese in urban Malaysia still observe this tradition. The description of Chinese symbols and traditions highlights the reproduction of Chinese culture in changing circumstances and in places beyond the boundary of China. It shows the reterritorialization of Chinese culture in diaspora, as well as the changing continuity of Chinese traditions and symbols as the traditions are reproduced in the context of Chinese negotiating with the socio-political forces of the local environment. These traditions are meaningful to the people’s perception and articulation of their identity.

Culture and Identity The comparative study of the traditions of Chinese communities allows us to see cultural continuity, transformation, and local creation, and also the ethnicity and cultural identities of different categories of Chinese. While not taking an essentialist view of identity, it is still important to note that the traditions practiced and languages spoken do affect the perception of Chinese cultural and ethnic identities, even though these are not determined by any particular tradition or language. The Babas who do not normally speak any Chinese language have remained Chinese, but they are perceived by the mainstream Chinese as not quite

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Chinese, while the Melaka Babas also distinguish themselves from the other Chinese, stressing their Baba or Peranakan status. The Babas are localized Chinese who call themselves “Baba” or “Peranakan.” While those in Melaka do not know or speak very little Chinese (Hokkien, Mandarin, or other Chinese languages), they emphasize the maintenance of Chinese beliefs and practices and observe Chinese festivals religiously. This is important to their claim to be Chinese and enables them to avoid identity crisis, despite having to endure the prejudice of the other Chinese. This is in great contrast to the many local-born Chinese in the USA, who have tried so hard to be American, who hardly speak any Chinese, and who neither practice nor understand Chinese traditions. Faced with the reality that the mainstream white society sees them as Chinese, they undergo a crisis of figuring out whether they are American or Chinese, and how they can be Chinese and American.14 They find going to their migrant forebears’ homeland in China helpful to re-identifying their Chinese ethnicity and negotiating their Chinese and American statuses.15 The Babas that I have studied do not find the need to relate to China in their ethnic and cultural identification, even though they recognize that their ancestors (especially the male ancestors) came from China. China is relevant only in the form of Chinese civilization, such as some welleducated Baba claiming that cniutao 上頭, the wedding hairdo ritual, is an ancient Chinese custom that can be traced to Zhou Gong 周公 in ancient China, or those who are knowledgeable about the translations of Chinese popular fiction in Baba Malay talking about the adventures of Chinese emperors and heroes. Baba individuals do negotiate about what kind of Chinese they want to be, as when a few parents send their children to Chinese primary schools with the hope that they will learn Chinese to avoid the prejudice of the Chinese-speaking Chinese. But unlike our American example, they do not feel ambiguous about their local Chinese status, nor do they consciously relate their identity to their ancestral roots in China. I should like to say something about Chinese literacy and cultural identity. Literacy in Chinese allows the Chinese to communicate with Chinese worldwide who are similarly literate. It means sharing the ability to read Chinese and speak Mandarin, called Putonghua 普通話 in mainland China, Guoyu 國語 in Taiwan, and Huayu 華語 by the Chinese in Southeast Asia. These Chinese are able to view their Chinese cultural identity in terms of Chinese literacy and thus transcends local and

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national boundaries. Unlike the Babas, for example, Chinese who are literate in Chinese are more intense in their interest in China as a land of Chinese civilization along with its body of philosophy and literature. It is to this group of Chinese that the concept of “cultural China” 16 is most appealing. The Chinese-educated Chinese in Malaysia not only generally emphasize some degree of Chinese literacy as an essential part of their Chinese identity, they also see Chinese literary works from mainland China and Taiwan as relevant to them, and some even see them as more important than local Chinese literature in Malaysia and Singapore. Chinese literary works are shared by literate Chinese worldwide, as are discussions about Chinese civilization, historical personalities, and literary figures. We thus see that similar Chinese cultural traditions and languages are meaningful to many Chinese in different countries, and China as the source of Chinese civilization and ancestral emigration remains relevant to most Chinese worldwide. While the Chinese worldwide are diverse and do not form a nation, they have some shared cultural and linguistic bases for common association. In other words, they do have something Chinese between them, as can be discerned in their language(s) and Chinese symbolism. They are Chinese of a particular locality and nationality, but at the same time they can be Chinese unbounded by geography and nationalities. I have tried to described this kind of deterritorialized Chinese identification as “civilizational ethnicity,” 17 since in a broad sense it is a kind of ethnicity based on a common Chinese civilization perceived in terms of Chinese history, Chinese literacy, Chinese philosophy, and other things Chinese. Our discussion shows the need to discuss Chinese “culture” beyond the geographical boundary of China.

Conclusion The Chinese in diaspora trace their ancestral roots to China, and so the cultural study of China is relevant to the study of Chinese overseas. Furthermore, the transnational networks between the Chinese in diaspora and the emigrant regions in China since the early period of migration also make China continue to be relevant to the study of the Chinese in diaspora. With the rapid modernization of transport and information technology and the rise of China as a world economic power, these networks have become even more significant. Since the opening up of China in 1978, new Chinese migrants have migrated and settled in

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different continents, especially North America, Europe, and Australasia, but also in Asia as in Singapore. Many of these are officially “overseas Chinese” (huaqiao 華僑) who are citizens of China. In actual fact, even if they are Australians or Germans by citizenship or permanent residency, most of these “new Chinese immigrants” see themselves as belonging to both their country of residence and to China. Advances in information technology have enabled them to keep close contact with their relatives in China, including sharing fun over the Internet during the Chinese New Year.18 Their associations have strong links with official organizations in China, as Pál Nyíri has pointed out about the Chinese in Hungary.19 Increasingly Chinese nationalism cannot be limited to the national boundary of China, as is obvious in the Chinese nationalistic expressions in China and in major cities around the world in the months before and during the Olympics hosted by China in 2008. Thus Sun Wanning writes about the transnational imagination of China and Chinese nationalism and wonders about a transnational China.20 In a way, this is not new as many overseas Chinese in the early twentieth century saw themselves as Chinese of China and contributed greatly to the Chinese Revolution of 1911. However, the descendants of these Chinese (old Chinese migrants) have now generally perceived themselves as Chinese of different nationalities or CDN,21 identifying themselves as Americans or Malaysians. Here we see that even a study of China cannot be territorially bound to China only. A number of China anthropologists have wondered why their works are hardly referred to by scholars, even anthropologists, beyond the study of China.22 Actually if their research is aimed at understanding China, as part of sinology so to speak, then its relevance is naturally confined to scholars interested in China. Only when the cultural issues discussed are related to similar issues beyond China will their work be seen as relevant beyond China. In this regard, the study of the Chinese in diaspora is particularly relevant. As I have shown, the analysis of the culture and identity of Chinese of different nationalities, including the Chinese of China, is fascinating in how it reveals the politics of culture and identity. We can add to this the study of ethnicity, and the contribution to understanding the nature and dynamics of ethnicity is clear. China is so huge and historical, and there is so much to offer for the study of ethnic groups and the politics of identity. The PRC official categorization of its peoples into fifty-six minzu 民族 provides many opportunities for looking at ethnogenesis or the politics of ethnic relations and ethnic identification.

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The Han which make up one of the minzu not only form the overwhelming majority of the population in China, but they also have strong identification as a nation which is assumed to be also the nation of China. In actual fact, China as a nation has, broadly speaking, two nations, the Han and the non-Han. While the non-Han—the fifty-five minority minzu—are not really united as a nation, they have historically never been as bound as they are today as minorities within a strong Han-dominated Nation. Of particular interest is the group alignment and ethnic identification of Chinese migrants and their descendants outside China. In the mainland, the Southern Fujian Chinese (Minnanren 閩南人) and the Cantonese live mainly in two different provinces which are bigger in size than many countries in the world. To the extent that ethnic groups are perceived as self-identified and articulate in relation to other ethnic groups, it is not possible to see the Minnan people in Fujian as an ethnic group. Minnanren in China is merely an ethno-regional category of identification. However, in Taiwan, the Minnan people and the Hakka (who originated from Guangdong or western Fujian) articulate as ethnic groups in the polity of Taiwan. In Malaysia, the Chinese who migrated or whose forebears migrated from different regions in South China live in close proximity, and they have identified as a Chinese ethnic group in relation to the majority Malays and other ethnic groups. Thus being Chinese is perceived differently in South China, Taiwan, and Malaysia. In Fujian, this is generally taken for granted since the people live as Chinese among Chinese. In Taiwan, the status of being Chinese is also not an issue of identification, but contrasting the Taiwanese status from the mainland status is an important political stand. In Malaysia, being Chinese cannot be taken for granted since they are always socially reminded of their Chinese status in the highly ethnically conscious Malaysian society. Even eating or not eating pork in this Malay and Muslim majority country can be an emotional issue linked to Chinese ethnicity, unlike in Hong Kong or Taiwan or Fujian, where eating or not eating pork is taken for granted. Thus comparing the dynamics of culture and ethnicity between different Chinese societies, as with other non-Chinese societies, contributes greatly to a deeper understanding of the politics of ethnic identification and ethnic relations. Our discussion shows that Chinese of different nationalities (CDN) have different perceptions and experiences of Chinese identity. I should

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like to return to the question that some scholars have asked: what make the Chinese “Chinese”? This question was posed in the context of China, but we can extend it beyond China, noting that there are different models23 of being Chinese. First, there is the Chinese civilization, with which the Chinese in China, and those outside China who still perceive themselves as Chinese, identify proudly. This common identification allows communicability about their being Chinese. Second, the emergence of China as a world power reinforces their identification with the Chinese civilization and with their local Chinese identity, for instance, as Chinese of a particular nationality. For CDN who are not citizens of China, the identification is not with the Chinese state but with the achievements of the Chinese civilization, which somehow gives a sense of pride in being Chinese even though they are not Chinese of China. This is what I mean by civilizational ethnicity. Then there is Chinese literacy, another aspect of Chinese civilization, which allows Chinese who are literate in Chinese to share the same script (no matter written in simplified or traditional characters) and to communicate via Chinese mass media and literature. This no doubt cultivates and reinforces a sense of being Chinese, however it is locally perceived. And it links CDN to the Chinese world of which China as the land of Chinese civilization remains in the center, despite calls to de-center China, for example, in the promotion of Chinese literature in Malaysia and Singapore. Lastly there is the issue of participation in Chinese culture, such as the similar Han wedding and funeral rites that both James Watson and Myron Cohen have discussed. While it is important not to essentialize culture and identity, it is worthwhile noting that some forms of traditional culture remain meaningful to the CDN sense of being Chinese. It is no accident that at least some traditional Chinese festivals and lion dances are emphasized by the Chinese in diaspora, whether it is in Australia or in Malaysia, where many non-Chinese also take part in these celebrations. CDN may be Christians and have toast and butter for breakfast, but their participation in the celebration of the Chinese New Year expresses something Chinese. And the significance of Chinese festivals and rites is not necessarily discounted by the acculturation of the Chinese to the extent of not speaking Chinese. The Malay-speaking Baba of Melaka not only celebrate all the major Chinese festivals, but some cling to some traditional rites that the mainstream Chinese have given up, such as wearing the wedding costume of the imperial era or kneeling down to

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wish an old grandmother “panjang umur” (long life) on her birthday, albeit speaking in Malay. Myron Cohen concludes his discussion of the “peripheralization of traditional identity” by saying that “being Chinese no longer is buttressed by a firm sense of cultural participation in something Chinese.”24 However in this highly globalized era, perhaps it is the observation of some forms of Chinese festivals that provides a sense of cultural participation in something Chinese. The Babas have shown us that linguistically they can be like Malay, but in observing Chinese festivals and rites, they express something which is undeniably Chinese, and which is meaningful as long as they continue to see themselves as Chinese, albeit being “Baba” and despised by the mainstream Chinese society. Similarly, a person identifying as Chinese may practice very little that is linked to Chinese tradition, but participation in some forms of Chinese festivals (such as the Chinese New Year) may be sufficient to make him or her feel Chinese. In fact in mainland China there is a revival of Chinese popular beliefs and practices, and the state has also slowly responded to the wish of the people to have greater convenience in participating in traditional festivals. In 2008 China officially recognized Qingming 清明, the Chinese All Souls’ Day, which usually falls on 5 April, as a national holiday. This is no doubt a concession on the part of the Communist government that Qingming is an important festival for ordinary people who need to go to graveyards to pray to ancestors. Some western mass media described this as yet another example of the Chinese government’s promotion of nationalism. Yet even before the official recognition, which is significant given the official communist stand against superstition, the Chinese in China have continued to observe Qingming worship of ancestors. The cultural life of the people in China is changing rapidly in the increasingly globalized world, and like the Chinese in diaspora, those in China will also find something traditional as meaningful, not out-dated. Thus as globalization brings about an increasing homogenization of cultural life, traditions as part of a distinctive local or ethnic heritage are even more emphasized as symbolically significant. What does all this mean for the study of China and Chinese culture? First there is the study of China in China—the state and its people, the Han and the fifty-five minorities, and so on. Even this national approach cannot neglect the globalized context and the transnational networks, in particular the Chinese transnational networks, since our paper focuses

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on China and the Chinese in diaspora. Not only are there many transnational networks between CDN and China, including those who have transnational families in two localities, such as haigui 海龜 or Chinese who return from overseas to work in China, often leaving their wives in the USA or other advanced countries.25 There are also many citizens of China (officially huaqiao or overseas Chinese) distributed in different parts of the world but whose life is still closely linked to the Chinese homeland. This chapter focuses on the study of Chinese culture, and this is distinguished from that of China. It illustrates the need to deterritorialize this field so that Chinese/Han culture, and truly regional Han culture, can be more fruitfully analyzed in a global ethnological field, in this case, the Chinese ethnological field, that transcends national boundaries. The national context is of course still important when researching the dynamics within a society, but with migration and globalization, if the focus is on certain cultural traditions, as I have illustrated via the discussion of the Chinese dongzhi (winter solstice) rite, it is more enlightening to examine these in different transnational localities. This is true of other “cultures,” too, in their respective ethnological fields, such as that of the Uighur and Miao from China, or the Sikhs in India, and in diaspora. We can thus also speak of a Uighur ethnological field, a Sikh ethnological field, and so on. “Culture” in the form of tradition is still very relevant even in our ever more globalized and transnational world.

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Notes 1

2 3

4 5 6

7

8

9

Maurice Freedman, Chinese Family and Marriage in Singapore (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1957); and William H. Newell, Treacherous River: A Study of Rural Chinese in North Malaya (Kuala Lumpur: University of Malaya Press, 1962). G. William Skinner, Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1957). I use Chinese in diaspora without any political connotation to refer to Chinese residing outside China, who may be citizens of China (that is, officially seen by China as huaqiao 華僑 or “Chinese sojourners,” usually rendered in English as “overseas Chinese”) or citizens of their countries of residence. The Chinese term haiwai huaren 海外華人 or literally “overseas Chinese” can technically mean Chinese residing outside China, and its English usage in the form of “Chinese overseas” as popularized by Wang Gungwu and other scholars who study the Chinese in diaspora more often refer to Chinese who are not huaqiao. I have introduced the term Chinese of different nationalities (CDN) (see Tan Chee-Beng, “Introduction: Chinese Overseas, Transnational Networks and China,” in Chinese Transnational Networks, ed. Tan Chee-Beng [London: Routledge, 2007], p. 1), which can include Chinese who hold Chinese nationality. Thus when I want to emphasize CDN outside China, I use the term Chinese in diaspora. While CDN who are not of Chinese nationality generally refer to themselves as huaren rather than Zhongguoren 中國人 (from the root-word Zhongguo 中國 or China), both meaning “Chinese,” the term huaren is increasingly also used in China to refer to Chinese irrespective of nationality, such as quanqiu huaren 全球華人, or Chinese all over the world. Tan Chee-Beng, Chinese Overseas: Comparative Cultural Issues (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004), p. 12. Ibid., p. 26. Cf. Myron L. Cohen, “Being Chinese: The Peripheralization of Traditional Identity,” in The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning of Being Chinese Today, ed. Tu Wei-ming (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), pp. 88–108; David Faure and Helen F. Siu, eds., Down to Earth: The Territorial Bond in South China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995). James L. Watson, “Standardizing the Gods: The Promotion of T’ien Hou (‘Empress of Heaven’) along the South China Coast,” in Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, ed. David Johnson, Andrew J. Nathan, and Evelyn S. Rawski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 292–324. Barbara Ward, “Varieties of Conscious Models: The Fishermen of South China,” in The Relevance of Models for Social Anthropology, ed. Michael Banton (London: Tavistock Publication, 1965), pp. 113–137. Wang Ming-ke, “From the Qiang Barbarians to the Qiang Nationality: The Making of a New Chinese Boundary,” in Imagining China: Regional Division

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10 11

12 13 14

15

16 17

18 19 20 21 22 23 24

and National Unity, ed. Shu-min Huang and Cheng-Kuang Hsu (Taipei: Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, 1999), pp. 43–80. Cf. Eli Alberts, A History of Daoism and the Yao People of South China (Youngstown, NY: Cambria Press, 2006). Cf. Adam McKeown, “Chinese Diaspora,” in Encyclopedia of Diasporas: Immigrant and Refugee Cultures around the World, ed. Melvin Ember, Carol R. Ember, and Ian Skoggard, 2 Vols. (New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2004), Vol. 1, pp. 65–76; Tan Chee-Beng, “Diaspora: Chinese,” in Encyclopedia of the World’s Minorities, ed. Carl Skutch, 3 Vols. (New York: Routledge, 2005), Vol. 1, pp. 382–385; Tan Chee-Beng, “Overseas Chinese,” in Berkshire Encyclopedia of China, 5 Vols. (Great Barrington, MA: Berkshire, 2009), Vol. 5, pp. 1675–1679; and Min Zhou, “The Chinese Diaspora International Migration,” in Social Transformation in Chinese Societies, ed. Bian Yan-jie, Chan Kwok-bun, and Cheung Tak-sing (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 161–190. Tan Chee-Beng, Chinese Overseas, pp. 15–23. Myron L. Cohen, “Being Chinese,” p. 100. Sucheng Chan, “Race, Ethnic Culture, and Gender in the Construction of Identities among Second–Generation Chinese Americans, 1880s to 1930s,” in Claiming America: Constructing Chinese American Identities during the Exclusion Era, ed. K. Scott Wong and Sucheng Chan (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), pp. 127–164. Andrea Louie, Chineseness across Borders: Renegotiating Chinese Identities in China and the United States (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), pp. 69–94. See Tu Wei-ming, “Cultural China: The Periphery as the Center,” in The Living Tree, pp. 1–34. Tan Chee-Beng, “Chinese in Southeast Asia and Identities in a Changing Global Context,” in Chinese Populations in Contemporary Southeast Asian Societies: Identities, Interdependence and International Inf luence, eds. M. Jocelyn Armstrong, R. Warwick Armstrong, and Kent Mulliner (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 2001), pp. 210–236. See Yazhou zhoukan 亞洲週刊, 25 April 2004. Pál Nyíri, New Chinese Migrants in Europe: The Case of the Chinese Community in Hungary (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), pp. 89–117. Sun Wanning, Leaving China: Media, Migration and Transnational Imagination (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002). Tan Chee-Beng, “Introduction: Chinese Overseas, Transnational Networks and China,” pp. 1–19. Liu Xin, ed., New Reflections on Anthropological Studies of (Greater) China (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 2002). Here I use models in the sense of indicating different ways of being Chinese rather than Barbara Ward’s conscious models. Myron L. Cohen, “Being Chinese,” p. 108.

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Cf. Philip Yang, “Transnationalism as a New Mode of Immigrant Labor Market Incorporation: Preliminary Evidence from Chinese Transnational Migrants,” Journal of Chinese Overseas 2.2 (2006), pp. 173–192; Wang Cabai, Wong Siu-Lun, and Sun Wenbin, “Haigui: A New Area in China’s Policy toward the Chinese Diaspora?” Journal of Chinese Overseas 2.2 (2006), pp. 294–309.

Chapter 9

The Movement to Indigenize the Social Sciences in Taiwan: Origin and Predicaments Maukuei Chang

Introduction Towards the end of the 1920s sociology began to be institutionalized as an academic discipline. The first national sociological association in China, the Chinese Sociology Association (Zhongguo shehui xuehui 中國 社會學會; CSA), was formed in Shanghai in 1930. The development of sociology in China was interrupted first by the Japanese invasion in the late 1930s, and then by a prohibition in 1952, after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took control of mainland China. In 1951, some sociologists exiled to Taiwan with the Guomindang 國民黨 (Chinese Nationalist Party; GMD) government and started their own version of the CSA in Taipei. With the GMD’s permission, and with resources endowed by the United States, a revival in the teaching of sociology commenced in the late 1950s in Taiwan.1 By the 1980s, sociology courses in Taiwan had gradually overcome the constraints of political ideology and the suspicions of the authorities because of the softening of authoritarianism. Since the 1990s, sociology has been a widely taught and researched subject in Taiwan’s higher education.2 As with other social science disciplines, sociology originated from the Enlightenment, the problems associated with the collapse of feudalism, and the transformation of society pushed by the growth of industrialization and capitalism in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe. The formation of its assumptions and problematiques have been heavily influenced by the social and historical trajectories and concerns of the evolving worldviews of the European powers, and, since World War II, those of the United States.3 Sociology is conventionally defined as the scientific study of society. As such, one may wonder just what kind of society or which particular

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society this field of study is all about. Likewise, when preparing to teach sociology, one might ask just what kinds of knowledge about (which) society(ies) should be taught to students.4 In 1999, a group of Taiwan sociologists published a textbook for undergraduate teaching: Shehuixue yu Taiwan shehui 社會學與台灣社會 [Sociology and Taiwan society].5 Drawing its primary sources from the many available sociological studies on Taiwan, the textbook was promoted as the first bentu 本土/ bentuhua 本土 化 (indigenous/indigenization) sociology textbook in Taiwan; and on the opening page of the preface the editors proclaimed their “indigenization”: Regrettably, we always relied on original textbooks from Europe and the US, or their translations, for our elementary sociology teaching materials. Students have learned cases and illustrations, and concepts and theories, derived from Europe and the US. The end result is that students could not comprehend the social realities of “bentu” society, nor understand those concepts and theories that may seem not to be part of their life experience…. The purpose of this textbook is to enforce bentu education. It attempts to use many sociological research findings about Taiwan and, through their incorporation in this book, to lead students not only to understand general concepts and theories in sociology, but also, starting from this bentu society, to understand bentu society and the growth and development of Taiwan’s sociology studies.

The publication of this first “indigenous” textbook in the field of sociology in Taiwan represented only a very limited aspect of the practical needs in teaching, not to mention the more abstract and theoretical dimensions that had been discussed regarding the need for indigenization. Moreover, this modest progress and limited achievement took place after at least twenty years of serious thinking and enthusiastic debate. The terms “Sinicization” (Zhongguohua 中國化), later qualified or substituted by the term “indigenization” (also “localization,” bentuhua 本 土化) are two prominent keywords in the development of sociology in Taiwan.6 For instance, in 1982, the CSA organized a forum entitled “Sociology in China: Problems and Prospects” to discuss issues concerning Sinicization.7 In 1991, to commemorate its anniversary, the CSA published a special issue on a similar topic. As a key title-word, it has appeared in almost every one of the presidential addressees of the CSA (in 1995, the Association’s name was changed to the Taiwan Sociology Association [TSA]), beginning with Ye Qizheng 葉啟政 in 1987, Xu Zhengguang 徐正光 in 1991, Xiao Xinhuang 蕭新煌 in 1995, Qu Haiyuan 瞿海源 in 1998, and Zhang Yinghua 章英華 in 2001.

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If we focus on the more recent development of the indigenization of sociology in Taiwan in the past twenty-five years, we will find that it has really been part of a broader concern for the indigenization of the social sciences in general, and social psychology and anthropology in particular. Today, “indigenization” is commonly used in Taiwan to refer to process of “Taiwanization” in the cultural and political arenas. Typically, the concept is opposed to “Chinese-ness” or “Sincization,” premised on the conviction that Chinese culture and national politics are alienating and have been imposed on the land and the people of Taiwan. In this chapter, however, the term indigenization is employed to refer to a process of engaging the putative generality contained explicitly or implicitly in the “theory” of social sciences derived from the West by asserting the importance of, or proposing the total replacement by, the socio-cultural specifics or traditions of indigenous (non-Western) contexts. Indigenization advocates the production and practice of local knowledge and the interrogation of social sciences from the West. It was for this reason that the indigenization process in Taiwan began under the name of “Zhongguohua” 中國化 (Sinicization), because (in the social sciences) China was regarded as the “local” during the 1980s. Together with the change in imagination of the “local” from “China” to “Taiwan” that occurred in the 1990s, the terms “Sinicization” and “indigenization” have been constructed to qualify each other in order to adjust to changes in the larger environment. The rationale for, and approaches to, the indigenization of the social and behavioral sciences were formally presented at the 1981 conference on Shehui ji xingwei kexue yanjiu de Zhongguohua 社會及行為科學研究的中 國化 [The Sinicization of the social and behavioral sciences].8 The conference proceedings were published in 1982 under the same title.9 Today, this conference and the resulting volume are regularly identified as marking the beginning of the “Sinicization movement” (and later, the “indigenization movement”) among “sinitic” (Huaren 華人) communities.10 The conference volume is still widely referred to (although not all readers have understood it properly) in different social science disciplines and in different polities. It is discussed not only by “Chinese” scholars, but also by “indigenous” scholars in various corners of the “non-Western” world, and even by Western scholars.11 The primary subject of this chapter is this “Sinicization-indigenization movement,” its origin, diffusion, and predicaments. As Arif Dirlik suggested, the confrontation between theory (that is, perceived to be

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general and Westernized) and culture (that is, seen as national, local, and historical) generated by indigenization discourse can never be transparent and has different meanings at different times.12 I will therefore document and explain what this “movement” is all about, what its various standpoints and strategies are, and how and why its meanings evolved over time. As an exercise in “the sociology of knowledge,” I will look into the underlying structures of the various meanings of the multifaceted concept of indigenization; situate them in the larger context of the legitimation and institutionalization of the social sciences and knowledge production; and examine their intricate relations to interest, power, and hierarchical social/political positions. Three disciplines are embraced by this “movement”: social psychology, anthropology, and sociology.13 Because of discipline-specific practices and heritages, the problems each faces are not always similar.14 In this chapter, I will restrict my analysis to the “movement” and its relation to sociology in particular. My analysis will look at “Sinicizationindigenization” not just from “within” the discipline of sociology, but also from the discursive and interested relations that the discipline has with the “outside” world. Toward the end, I will also elaborate on the general significance of this movement and its implications for our understanding of the notion of “indigenization” in general.

The Sinicization Movement and Its Original Meaning The 1981 conference initiated a series of conferences on related topics.15 The ensuing discussions went beyond Taiwan and involved the participation of social scientists of Huaren communities in other parts of the world. The scale and impact of the movement has changed the landscape of the social sciences in Taiwan and contributed to the development of the “indigenization of anthropology” and the “indigenization of social psychology” in Hong Kong and mainland China. More recently, this “movement” has also stirred reactions from western scholars, mainly anthropologists, who have responded both sympathetically and critically.16 In reflecting on these developments, Yang Guoshu 楊國樞 related that he first came up with the idea of Sinicization in discussions with colleagues at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Yang’s initiative was to propose that Taiwan and Hong Kong—the two “most Westernized” Chinese societies—consider “Sinicizing their social and behavioral

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science studies.” 17 Having reviewed the background to, and aims of, the conference, Yang and his co-editor Wen Chongyi 文崇一 then reflected on the accomplishments of the conference in their preface to the conference volume. Some of their main points were: (1) They were deeply dissatisfied with their own (earlier) writings, and that of their contemporaries, for blindly borrowing Western concepts, theories, and methods, while ignoring the social and cultural biases imported with this knowledge from the West. They raised an earnest self-critique: “May we ask ourselves if we have ever made any unique contribution to theory or method? Has there been any unique contribution by our anthropologists to international anthropology, by sociologists to international sociology, and by psychologists to international psychology?” 18 (2) They passionately called for a goal of “self-recognition”: a return to the cultural roots of “being Chinese” in order to be liberated from western subordination. “Although the subjects of our studies concern Chinese society and Chinese people, the theories and methods we employ are almost exclusively from the West or are Western in style. In our daily life we are Chinese; but when carrying out our research work, we turn into Westerners. Either intentionally or unintentionally we suppress thoughts, ideas, and philosophical orientations that are Chinese in style.... As for our research, neither quantitatively nor qualitatively can we compete against the West. Today, neither our contributions to the social or behavioral sciences of the world nor our withdrawal from them, matter at all.... We are nothing but ‘vassals’ (fuyong 附庸) of the West.”19 They also expressed a need for self-assertion and Chinese innovation, suggesting: “After so many years of absorbing (xishou 吸收) and imitating (mofang 模仿) we should be able to overcome this stage of learning....” The phrase, still frequently quoted today, “we are nothing but vassals of the West,” and the reflective, passionate calls for attention to indigenous social/cultural heritage, and hence the call for self-assertion, struck a cord in many people over a considerable period of time. After the threeday conference they summarized the significance of what they had constructed and laid out future tasks for Sinicization:20 (1) To make social and behavioral studies better reflect Chinese history and the unique characteristics of Chinese culture and society. (2) To emphasize the systematic study of problems that are significant

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and unique to Chinese societies in order to solve practical issues confronting Chinese societies and people. (3) To rehabilitate the unique and critical abilities of Chinese social and behavioral scientists so that they can regard themselves with selfrespect and confidence. (4) To get rid of the “overly-Westernized” inclinations and “vassal” status of Chinese social and behavioral science researchers vis-à-vis the West (the US in particular) and the world. They also stipulated some very strong qualifications regarding their call for Sinicization, maintaining that they were not condoning conservatism, ethnocentrism, parochialism, or isolationism. Their attempt was not to construct so-called Chinese anthropology, sociology, psychology, and so on, since all of these disciplines should embrace both what is general to humanity and what is particular to the Chinese. They also warned against the misuse of Sinicization as a “fig leaf” (zhexiubu 遮羞布) to cover people’s ignorance about Western theories and methods. It is fair to argue that they really held a dialectical view about the implementation of Sinicization: Only those who knew the West well, and who possessed maturity and self-awareness could pursue this course. Moreover, only those who had first “entered” (jinru 進入) the Western stock of knowledge could “come out” (chulai 出來) to understand the importance of Sinicization. Consequently, those who refused to “enter” the West first were not regarded as being qualified to discuss the matter at all.21 Their experiences and self-reflections in the 1980s can be understood today as an expression of “postcolonial sentiments,” a term that was not yet known to many. In a sense, they are no different from many postcolonial intellectuals, both modernistic—in that they opposed returning to traditionalism—and nationalistic in their calls to resist the West and for self-assertion. For them, the West was perceived as the source of domination, but it could be appropriated for their own interests and self-empowerment. The key instigators of the conference were Yang Guoshu (social psychologist; b. 1932), Wen Chongyi (sociologist; b. 1925), Li Yiyuan 李亦 園 (anthropologist; b. 1931)—all from the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica—as well as Qiao Jian 喬健 (anthropologist; b. 1935) and Jin Yaoji 金耀基 (Bruce King, sociologist; b. 1935), 22 from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. They were all born in mainland China from which they were forced to f lee in their teens to Taiwan in the 1950s,

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completing their college degrees in Taiwan before they went abroad for postgraduate education. Yang, Wen, and Li were long-time associates. Their cooperation went beyond academic concerns. They shared a moderate liberal stand on politics. They advocated a moderate approach to reform, emphasizing the historical and cultural uniqueness of being Chinese, yet were critical of conservatism. In their academic work, they all relied on their familiarity with Western theories, concepts, fieldwork, and empirical methods to make their research on China “different” from that of both traditional Chinese scholars and “Westernized” experimental psychologists.

The Chinese Character Study and the “Real” Beginning Their cooperation can be traced back to their earlier project on the “Chinese character,” carried out between 1970 and 1972. This collective project resulted in the publication of the book, Zhongguoren de xingge 中 國人的性格 [The Chinese character], 23 a landmark work in the development of the social sciences in post-war Taiwan. As Sinicization advocates have all agreed, this study eventually led to the Sinicization conference that took place a decade later. On the one hand, they believed that they had grasped genuinely “indigenous” research problems: Why is the society/culture of the “Chinese” people different from society/culture in the West? Why could China not develop democracy? Why did the Chinese “fail” to develop “capitalism”? Although such questions might have already been studied by Western social scientists, they regarded those studies as unsatisfactory. This early experience illustrated their first systematic engagement with both “the local” and “the general.” It provided them with self-confidence in working collectively (and democratically) to acquire skills in applying western concepts to the study of “Chinese-ness,” and also the opportunity for deeper ref lection on their own work. Perhaps most importantly, the project also helped them to establish a leading position in the modern development and growth of the social sciences in Taiwan since the 1970s through exemplary research work that attracted a talented younger generation to follow them. They collectively succeeded in setting a new trend in scholarly practices, and their ideas about studying “Chinese-ness” later qualified them to speak of the need for Sinicization.

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A Critical Interpretation of the Sinicization Movement One of the most important attributes of the project on “the Chinese character” was its implicit criticism of traditionalism and the lack of a modern outlook among the Chinese people (in Taiwan). Relying on the standards of the West and the dichotomy between the “modern” and the “traditional,” the Chinese character was described in terms of family piety (leading to feudalistic social relations), collectivism (lacking the ability to think independently and being afraid to take an individual stand), particularism (which despises the value of due process and rule of law), and blind support for authority. And all of these “characteristics” were scrutinized against “objective” data collected from “standardized” modernity measurement scales. The underlying political message was that the Chinese people must pursue modernization and that this could be achieved by objective (positivist) analysis and through interdisciplinary work.24 Recently, historian Fu Dawei 傅大為 has offered a critical interpretation of the political import of the “Chinese character” study and the later Sinicization campaign. He suggests that what the Sinicization scholars really accomplished was the discursive formation of a hegemony aimed at “modernizing China” by blending positivism (in the name of being “scientific”) with a “watered-down” or moderate (vis-à-vis critical) liberalism (through a compromise between ultra-traditionalism and ultraWesternization).25 This happened at a critical political juncture in the authoritarian rule of Taiwan in the 1970s, when the GMD government was facing a crisis of legitimacy sparked by Taiwan’s loss of international recognition as a sovereign state, as well as by rising patriotism and demands for political reform.26 Challenges to the regime came from two groups. The first was the Xiangtu wenxue 鄉土文學 movement (literally, “literature of the country and soil”), comprised mainly of dissident writers who inclined toward Chinese nationalistic and leftist thinking and who were critical of the general subordination of society to the rich and the powerful, and other beneficiaries of capitalist expansion and Westernization. The second group was the dangwai democratic movement (dangwai minzhu yundong 黨外民主運動), which included dissidents from “outside” of the GMD who were mostly of Taiwanese background and sought to promote a “Taiwanese consciousness.” In 1979, the authorities cracked down on both of these groups after street violence that erupted on 10 December in Kaohsiung (known as the “Kaohsiung

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incident” [Gaoxiong shijian 高雄事件] or “Meilidao incident” [Meilidao shijian 美麗島事件]). Both groups were crushed by the authorities immediately after the Kaohsiung Incident, and many individuals were given harsh sentences and, in some instances, tortured and terrorized. Fu Dawei maintains that this crackdown was the last demonstration of the GMD’s era of “rule by predatory power,” and that a new era of “harsh yet delicate rule” ensued, due to the pressing need to re-consolidate and to win pubic support for regime legitimization.27 It was during this transition from one stage of rule to another in the immediate post-Kaohsiung Incident era that the movement to indigenize the social sciences began. During the decade from 1970 to 1980, Yang Guoshu was a young intellectual and a Western-minded liberal who played a leading role in the reform-oriented magazine, Daxue zazhi 大學雜誌 [Intellectual magazine], before becoming the chief editor of Zhongguo luntan 中國論壇 [China Forum Bi-monthly]. The latter magazine was associated with the liberal camp event though it received support from the rich Lianhebao 聯 合報 [United Daily] newspaper, whose owner was a privileged Chinese nationalist and a client of the GMD ruling party. Fu suggests that Yang, Wen, and Li—the three pioneers of the “Chinese character” study conducted in the early 1970s—had formed an “iron-triangle” through interpersonal and organizational networks and that their Sinicization push in 1981 was an orchestrated self-proclamation of their collective position in both the academic community and the political sphere. Fu’s main argument is that, together with Jin Yaoji (the other important Sinicization movement supporter based in Hong Kong), they began the movement in 1980 in response to earlier criticisms from both the antiWestern ultra-conservative nationalistic camp and from the leftist nationalistic camp.28 The Sinicization advocates also took cues from the softening of authoritarianism, namely, the new era of “delicate rule” after the Kaohsiung Incident. Their overall position is illustrated by their methodological stance—the conservative paradigms of positivism and indigenization on the academic front—and moderate political intervention on the political and cultural fronts—as the self-proclaimed bearers of the liberal tradition associated with modern Chinese intellectuals such as Yin Haiguang 殷海光 and the May Fourth tradition that originated in 1919 in China. According to Fu, supporters of the movement were, in fact, maneuvering and juggling for a definite political and academic position at the same time, f lying their f lag in the midst of competitors from emerging academic and political groups, in a particular political era.

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I agree with Fu’s account that this larger political context was conducive to the ascendancy of the call for Sinicization but believe he may have overstated the strategic aspect of the movement.29 We need to take more seriously the persistent and genuine dissatisfaction that the movement’s supporters expressed about academic practices that relied on utilizing alienating Western theories and concepts, despite the fact that they were also “beneficiaries” of “Western social sciences.”30 It is no coincidence that their research problems were couched in terms of the “people,” the “culture,” and the “society,” a formulation that easily leads to a polarized “us/we/ours” versus “other/others.” Consequently, their interests in social psychology, sociology, and anthropology, and their emphasis on the value of inter-disciplinary research, differentiate them from other social science professionals, such as their colleagues in experimental psychology and nomological economics.31 Moreover, they did not resemble the majority of Chinese historians in Taiwan who were more like “nationalistic historians” rather than social scientists. There was a genuine desire to innovate and contribute to their respective disciplines, as well as a fear of being made “vassals” of the West—America in particular.

Diversification and Differentiation: Problems with Positivism It is noted above that positivistic thinking was an integral part of the early Sinicization movement. During the second half of the twentieth century, however, different strands in the philosophy of science became influential, partly in response to the social and political unrest in Europe and the US during the 1960s. Since the 1960s the positivistic conceptualization of the social sciences (and sociology) and the modernization thesis have often been targeted for criticism because of their conservative political orientation. Newly emerging social thinking, for instance, included Western Marxism and structuralism, the critical paradigm of the Frankfurt school, world systems theory, and development theory, as well as interpretative paradigms from the humanities. So when positivism became the “in” thing in Taiwan during the 1970s and the 1980s, it was actually losing ground to competing paradigms in the West. In this respect, Taiwan was already lagging “behind” core developments in the discipline of sociology. The “methodological fixation” on positivistic thinking needs further explanation. First, the academics promoting Sinicization were scholars of mainland origin and in their late-40s and early-50s when the movement

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started. They believed that they were following in the footsteps of the May Fourth Movement and the liberal tradition of certain Chinese intellectuals. In their 1970s’ battle against traditionalism and authoritarianism, “Mr. Science” (Sai xiansheng 賽先生) and “Mr. Democracy” (De xiansheng 德先生) from the West were still two powerful allies. Also, when they looked to the West, they saw mostly American positivism and structural functionalism; they were not familiar with the European tradition, which was inclined to interpretive, critical philosophy or Marxist thinking. 32 For all these reasons, if the social sciences were to have a stronger impact on the status quo and to have their legitimacy as “nomological sciences” enhanced, positivistic empiricism seemed to be the default choice. At the same time, even the repressive GMD government felt the need to resort to being “scientific” to legitimize its authority to lead social and economic development projects and to control society more effectively. Under these circumstances, the non-critical or putatively “objective” standing of “science” was seen to be the best way to advance the social sciences. The academics promoting Sinicization even managed to get the authorities to accept their advice on social and cultural issues for policy change, even if this raised the ire of the ultra-conservatives.33 The more senior and leading figures of the Sinicization movement, Yang and Wen, were strong supporters of positivistic research and lobbied the government to invest in longitudinal studies and quality data collection through survey sampling and the sophisticated use of statistical methods. Two of Yang’s students and later close associates, Qu Haiyuan and Huang Guangguo 黃光國 contributed essays to the 1982 Sincization conference volume based on the use of survey and statistical analysis with illustrations of how “scientific techniques” could be applied to the study of China.34 The implicit goal of Sinicization was to assist in rebuilding the motherland and to pursue modernization, a goal that all the key Sinicization scholars regarded as their intellectual responsibility. 35 They conscientiously researched issues relating to social change brought about by industrialization, and the continued national suffering caused by previous (western and Japanese) powers. The movement’s leaders garnered personal reputations for “leadership” and “authority” through their studies on issues that affected China (Taiwan), such as the impact of industrialization and modernization, pluralization, middle-class politics, contemporary social problems, social movements, and mitigation

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measures for rapid social change. Their moderate political stance and their promotion of positivism eventually resulted in even higher levels of support from the authorities and the academic administration for “interdisciplinary (and empirical) studies” of social change and social problems. In this sense, Fu Dawei’s arguments concerning the coming of age of the positivistic social sciences in the 1980s and the ascendancy of the discourse on “objectivity” and “science” to a position of “hegemony”— which has both aided and been aided by the ambitions of state-led modernization—are well taken. The movement contributed directly to the enhancement of the interests of the social sciences, in general, and to sociology, anthropology, and Yang’s (own style of) social psychology, in particular, in Taiwan. Not all of the sociologists, however, agreed with the dominance of empirical sociology. Both the rationale and the strategy for Sinicization and indigenization promoted by Yang, Wen, and others, were regularly questioned, especially by more humanistically oriented sociologists such as Ye Qizheng (b. 1943), Gao Chengshu 高承恕 (b. 1948), and Xiao Xinhuang (b. 1949). These younger scholars were more familiar with the new trends in Euro-American sociology and were forthright in attacking the positivistic sociology of the Sinicization movement. Gao, for example, who studied with Habermas for a short time, was one of the few scholars who employed both Weberian and critical sociology in Taiwan during the 1980s and 1990s. He was skeptical about empiricism and its reproduction in Taiwan, especially in the Sinicization movement. He argued that the assumption of generalizability through empirical analysis was actually “Western sociology biased” and that it should be the very first and primary problem to be tackled in the Sinicization process. Ye was even more critical of the “superficial” and “blind borrowing” of the natural science analogy, the misuse of sociology in policy making, and the false belief in the “scientifically objective nature” of sociology. He argued that these “unbearable” practices had reduced sociology to a “non-reflective,” instrumentalist discipline, a problem that is very much rooted in western instrumentalism and is foreign to Chinese culture. Xiao Xinhuang maintained that the peripheral status of Chinese sociologists paralleled the peripheral status of China (meaning Taiwan) in the “world system.” He looked at the problem from a world systems’ framework in conjunction with “dependent development” arguments borrowed from the newly emerging sociology of development. He

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proposed that China (meaning Taiwan) should tackle this issue in cooperation with other “third world countries” to overcome its peripheral status.36 Despite these differences regarding the rationale and methodological assumptions behind the indigenization movement, these researchers all shared the more general goal of pursuing knowledge about the “uniqueness” of “our” culture and society, about the development process of different civilizations, and about the contrast between the “West,” the “foreign,” out “there,” and the “Chinese” or “ourselves” “here” in this particular society. Perhaps more importantly, in retrospect, they shared an even larger common interest: to expand the influence of sociology and to legitimize its position in the eyes of skeptical academic administrators, the authorities, and the general public, at a time of social change resulting from rapid industrialization, political crisis, and the rising political demands coming from the emerging interests of the middle class.

Encountering the Mainland Chinese: Further Complications In the movement’s initial phase, Yang did not intend to include Chinese scholars from mainland China to join his call for “western-dependent” Chinese scholars to become self-critical. He did not believe that the “Communist Chinese” were “qualified” to speak about Sinicization because they had insufficient experience of the “West” as yet.37 However this view was challenged when Chinese scholars from the mainland joined the second Sinicization conference held in Hong Kong in 1983. The conference also marked the first encounter in decades between “Taiwan Chinese” and “mainland Chinese” scholars. As scheduled, Qiao Jian from the Chinese University of Hong Kong was conference organizer. Qiao made two significant modifications to the agenda. First, he warmly invited scholars from the mainland to attend, and second, he dropped the name “Sinicization” due to its lack of appeal in Hong Kong, 38 changing the conference title to “Modernization and Chinese Culture.” As China began to revive the discipline of sociology in 1979, former sociologists were given more freedom in meeting with the outside world. Some organizations and sociology departments were selected for rehabilitation in the 1980s after being banned and persecuted in the 1950s. Against this background, the Sinicization movement that originated in Taiwan and Hong Kong met with its professional counterparts from mainland China for the first time in decades.

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Among the mainland participants was Fei Xiaotong 費孝通, the wellknown student of Malinowski and author of the seminal works Peasant Life in China and From the Soil.39 At the time, Fei was also leading the rehabilitation of sociology research in China. In commenting on the significance of the participation of both mainland and Taiwan sociologists, Qiao explained in his opening address that the first conference held in Taipei (1981) had attracted wide attention among Chinese (i.e. mainland) social scientists. He said: “Shanghai’s Fudan University abstracted some of the articles from the first conference and published them in Shehuixue congkan 社會學叢刊 [Bulletin of sociology]. Mr. Fei Xiaotong was very interested in the conference and wished to expand its participation.... Hong Kong is a place that people can come to more easily, and therefore it is an ideal place to hold this conference.” 40 Even though Qiao suggested that the purpose of the conference was to carry on previous research on issues of Sinicization, Yang Guoshu’s particular dialectical views about “Westernization” being the prerequisite of Sinicization as expressed in the first conference were no longer prominent because of the recent engagement with mainland Chinese scholars. As the conference proceedings show, the mainland scholars were mainly concerned with very practical issues such as aging, social welfare, child rearing practices, changes in kinship, economic improvement, socialism, and modernization, concerns that Ye Qizheng described as “unbearably shallow.” These studies were generally based on empirical surveys of local communities, made regular reference to the Communist Party’s leadership and its official lines, and proposed suggestions for public policy. Noticeably absent was reference to Western sources and Chinese classics in these papers. In contrast, the Taiwan Chinese scholars were still struggling with the rigid dichotomy of the “West” and the “Chinese,” as they tried to deepen their criticism of Western sociology and psychology and offer new perspectives from which to pursue Sinicization to construct a more national-cultural specific sociology and psychology. They also expressed the need to promote their professional interests, including calling for government investment in the expansion of sociology institutions and the number of sociologists, in the belief that these measures would benefit the general public and society at large. Moreover, only the presenters from Taiwan and Hong Kong wrote anything about the “grand tradition” or specific characteristics of Chinese culture and society, such as topics on Confucianism and “the Chinese personality.” The mainland scholars,

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however, demonstrated little to no interest in these matters, being preoccupied with social realities and problems under communism. Ironically, Chinese intellectuals under communist rule in the mainland had advocated the Sinicization of Marxism and the rejection of the West for decades when the entire nation was striving to construct “the Chinese Socialist Road.” 41 Shortly before China’s policy change in pursuit of the “Four Modernizations,” the West was officially portrayed as imperialist and dominating, and Western sociology was regarded as of little value in being able to contribute to the welfare of China’s peasant masses and working class. Therefore the opposition between China and the West was a matter of unquestionable truth and reality and so required no scientific research during the entire Cold War era. The call for Sinicization, therefore, was not an academic issue but simply a matter of practicing social knowledge in the real world under the rule of the Chinese Communist Party. On the contrary, in Taiwan and Hong Kong, Sinicization served as a vehicle for open self-criticism, soul-searching, or for the long-term development of the professional interests of sociology. Having been isolated from Western sociology for more than thirty years, the perspective of the mainland Chinese scholars in the 1980s was that they really needed to “catch up” and to become more “Westernized” in their sociological outlook (under the watchful guidance the Communist Party, Marxism, Leninism, and Mao Zedong thought.) For them, the term “Sinicization” did not mean finding the “roots” of Chinese culture or society so as to correct an “overly-Westernized” or “vassal-like” tendency, but to continue to make sociology, now available from the West, serve the official line and Marxist historical materialism. Therefore, we can argue that Chinese participation in the second Sinicization movement may have had three purposes: to gain the confidence and support of Chinese authorities, to conform with the official policy on the use of sociology, and to provide a conduit to the West through more “westernized” Chinese scholars as the middleman. The unintended result of this conference was a “dilution” of the original focus on the problems of “over-Westernization” raised by Taiwan scholars, as mainland scholars pursued the goal of fostering the development of “Western” sociology in China. The 1983 Hong Kong conference thus brought to the surface the issue of “what China” and “whose China”: the China that existed historically and culturally, or the China that exists now, under Communism. In the previous Sinicization campaign in

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Taiwan, the meaning of Chinese culture, society, nation, or “Chineseness” was often glossed over, as attention was focused on contrasts with the West, in such formulations as clannishness versus individualism, Confucianism versus Christianity, or humanism versus instrumentalist rationality. The analysis of real politics, such as government, institutions, economic structures, and, hence, communism, were not matters of academic concern. “Chinese-ness” was treated as a very decontextualized and highly abstract idea. It was defined or perceived as if it were a lump sum with commonly recognized essential characteristics; and even though these characteristics might require further clarification, there was no doubt about its epistemological and essentialized existence. This view would be challenged by mainland scholars. In 1983, soon after the Hong Kong Conference, Taiwan scholars led by Li Yiyuan, Yang Guoshu, and Wen Chongyi decided to promote their own edited volume of the conference papers, Xiandaihua yu Zhongguohua lunji 現代化與中國化論集 [Essays on modernization and Sinicization].42 They selected all of the eight papers written by Taiwan scholars and the three papers written by Hong Kong scholars, deeming them all to address the topics of modernization and Sinicization.43 In this edited volume, not only did the editors reintroduce the term “Sinicization” that was excised at the Hong Kong conference, but they also excluded the ten papers by mainland scholars.44 In the preface, the three editors continued to uphold their interpretation of the original ideals of the movement, such as the goals set at the first conference and how they should be carried out. This 1984 attempt to continue to separate the development of the social sciences in Taiwan (and Hong Kong) from their development in mainland China was obvious even if it was nowhere overtly stated. In what follows, I will argue that this separation could not be sustained for long if interest from the outside world in the development of sociology in mainland China continued to grow, and if the Communist government began to welcome sociologists of Chinese background from overseas to the mainland to teach and to do research. As such, the “center” of the movement and its priorities would have to be modified.45

The Differing Perspectives of Chinese-American Sociologists This simplistic notion that “Chinese-ness” is a quality shared by all Chinese people, regardless of conflicting political views and systems, was also challenged by Chinese-American sociologists, although perhaps not

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intentionally. In 1984, at Tempe, Arizona, USA, five overseas ChineseAmerican sociologists 46 met to exchange views on Sinicization/indigenization. The meeting was organized by Cai Yongmei 蔡勇美, a sociologist of Taiwanese background.47 Two years later the participants published Shehuixue Zhongguohua 社會學中國化 [The Sinicization of sociology]48 with additional papers contributed through post-conference solicitation. Xiao Xinhuang—a key participant in this conference and active participant in the previous two Sinicization conferences— described this gathering and the publication of the book as representing “the third wave” of the Sinicization movement.49 Several different themes emerge in the fifteen chapters of the edited volume. A general theme concerned the surging interest in the Sinicization movement and commentators’ views on this development. Another group of papers also touched on this issue, but from the perspective of particular academic specializations such as mental health, women studies, urban sociology, minority studies, and so forth. The authors of these papers addressed the issue of whether Western knowledge was applicable to the case of China. A third theme concerned the willingness of Chinese-American sociologists to assist mainland China in rebuilding the discipline of sociology. The contributors to the volume were a select group of Chinese academics who had spent at least fifteen years or so of their adult life in the United States. Although some of them had recently returned to China or Taiwan (as “visiting” sociologists), most had spent the greater part of their time either teaching sociology to American students (mostly in American state universities), or working for the US government as researchers or administrators. One may argue that their professional interests and primary concerns in their day-to-day life would have been different from those of their counterparts in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China. After all, their working environment was in American academic and government institutions. As such they were not in the position—nor was it in their career interests—to critique America’s dominant position in the world of sociology. Being recipients of a reward system prescribed by the sociology profession in the United States, there was little incentive for them to oppose American domination, or to introduce their daily work to a Chinese readership. To be successful as “go-between” sociologists, their interests in China would have to coincide with the interests of the sociology profession of the United States, just as their interests in the

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sociology profession in the United States would have to be recognized and respected by their Chinese counterparts.50 Having explained this background better enables us to understand the attitudes of the Chinese-American sociologists toward Sincization. For instance, in his paper, Nan Lin, one of the leading Chinese-American sociologists in North America, described himself as a sympathetic “outsider” (juwairen 局外人) to the Sinicization movement, and that this enabled him to analyze the movement more “objectively” by offering constructive “advice” and “reminders.” 51 He proposed asking appropriate and specific questions about the social systems in both traditional AND communist China, and to collect more data and produce more and better-trained sociologists. Because he clearly opposed closed-door or ethnocentric tendencies that might be advanced under the rubric of “Chinese sociology,” he advocated increased contact between Chinese scholars and American-Chinese scholars.52 It was clear that Lin did not think there was anything seriously “wrong” with the discipline of sociology or the main standards of American sociology. If sociology had been overlooking the Chinese people and Chinese society, that was because Chinese sociologists had contributed little to the profession. The situation could be remedied through the organized participation of more and better-trained Chinese sociologists able to ask the relevant questions. In short, for Lin, Chinese sociological studies could enrich sociology and make sociological theory “more generalizable.” Toward the end of his paper, Lin placed universal professionalism above nationalism, and suggested that the ultimate goal for Sinicization should be to enrich “world” or “global” sociology rather than seek to provide an alternative to it.53 This particular view prompted the conference organizer Cai Yongmei to comment that, although Chinese-Americans in the United States might find Lin’s position on global sociology attractive, scholars from the “motherland” might not necessarily find the proposition so appealing.54 In fact we find at least three major points of difference between Lin as a Chinese-American sociologist and other “native” Sinicization advocates: (1) Lin did not express any views regarding the “subordination” of Chinese sociologists; (2) he did not come forward to support the need for self-assertion or for deep self-reflection other than what was necessary to enhance sociology’s professional interests; and (3) he drew a distinction between the goal of Sinicizing sociology and the need to modernize the

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nation (China). On the other hand, he and other Sinicization advocates shared the following views: There was a need to have more and bettertrained sociologists, and there was a need to undertake more empirical studies with relevant questions asked in response to particular Chinese social/cultural settings. Finally, toward the end of book, there is a dialogue between Li Zhefu 李哲夫55 and Xiao Xinhuang concerning the paths by which sociology had developed in mainland China and Taiwan. In describing mainland Chinese sociologists, Xiao related the negative impressions he had formed of them during his first and very recent meeting with them at the Hong Kong Conference. He described the mainland sociologists as “chauvinistic” (wenhuade shawenzhuyi 文化的沙文主義) and completely ignorant about Taiwan’s history, just like “those mainlanders who came to rule Taiwan in the 1950s.” 56 After interrupting Xiao on the grounds that he was being too political, Li Zhefu went on to offer an apologetic account of the unfortunate political upheavals in China over the previous thirty years, stressing the need for political correctness and policy practicality as the prerequisites for sociology’s development in China. He even suggested that only in Taiwan (and Hong Kong) might Sinicization be an issue worth pursuing. In mainland China the issue was not Sinicization but the political demands of a socialist government: how to conduct sociology in line with the government’s expectations and official ideology while remaining selectively open to the West. Xiao responded by remarking on the “advanced” state of development of sociology in Taiwan relative to China, suggesting that sociologists from Taiwan were younger, more westernized, pluralistic in outlook, critical-minded, and not always obligated to follow the official ideological line. 57 In his own chapter in the volume, Xiao outlined the historical development and lineage of “Chinese” sociology in Taiwan, contrasting it with the general concern of Chinese-American sociologists to re-build the discipline of sociology in mainland China. By now it should be evident that with the “emerging market” of sociology in mainland China and the interest shown by western scholars, overseas Chinese scholars (as “go-between” sociologists liaising between the core and the periphery), and Hong Kong Chinese scholars, the exclusion of the “majority” of “real” Chinese—those from the Motherland— as the premise of Taiwan’s Sinicization movement, became impossible to uphold.

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The Self-Assertion of Taiwanese Consciousness By the mid-1980s it became clear that the Sinicization movement which originated in Taiwan could not be applied to mainland China, and that Taiwan could not represent China even culturally. This realization was compound by the surging interest in mainland China expressed by Chinese-American and Hong Kong Chinese sociologists, and by the rising tide of Taiwanese consciousness and Taiwanese cultural and political nationalism. National identity issues also gradually became a focal point in domestic politics in Taiwan.58 The immediate reasons for escalating identity conflicts had to do with the power imbalance between mainlanders (waishengren 外省人) and Taiwanese (benshengren 本省人), the lack of representative government, and the regime’s brutality and lack of justice. Taiwanese dissidents and their supporters confronted the ruling authoritarian regime, attempting to discredit the legitimacy of GMD rule by characterizing it as an “outsider and colonial regime” that must be toppled. From the mid-1970s, the opposition movement started active political mobilization during elections and political campaigns. By 1984, the momentum of the movement had rebounded to a point that surpassed that which it had experienced prior to its suppression in 1979. Like all political movements, the expansion of the opposition required effective mobilization of public consciousness. Successful political transformation depended on a growing number of supporters who shared similar views on such matters as Taiwanese historical consciousness, the responsibility that the GMD “outsider regime” had for causing contemporary social and political discontent, and the moral value of working to build a future ideal country for the Taiwanese people. In short, the “indigenization” of “real” politics also required the “indigenization” of the general public’s cultural outlook. Here we find a broader indigenization of many areas in the field of culture, including language, literature, arts, movies, popular songs, history, and sociology, and anthropology in particular. If sociology is as sociologists define it—the scientific study of society—then its subject of study could not avoid this larger environment in the process of re-structuration, or the making of a “homology” in many fields at the same time (following Bourdieu). Therefore, broader issues relating to nationalistic conflict began to surface in internal power struggles within the field of sociology. The following sorts of questions became the subjects of debate: Which society, what kind of society, and, most of all,

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whose society are you or (we) sociologists studying? Are we “Chinese” or are we “Taiwanese”? Should we make our sociological studies represent Taiwan or China? What does “the Sinicization movement” in Taiwan mean? Should it be a “Taiwanization” movement instead?

Replacing Sinicization with Taiwanization? In this section we will examine the changes took place in the 1990s, when the term bentuhua became more popular and was used to qualify the original meaning(s) of “Sinicization” as the movement inclined more toward “Taiwanization.” In 1990, the Chinese Sociology Association commemorated its sixtieth anniversary in Taiwan. According to traditional chronological schemes, every sixty years constitutes a completion of one cycle (jiazi 甲子), an auspicious event that calls for a special occasion. But the celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the CSA in 1990 was a subdued, nearly unnoticed, affair. A special issue of this anniversary was eventually published by the Chinese Journal of Sociology (issue no. 15, December 1991). Two key articles on the evaluation and the future of the Sinicization/indigenization movement stood out in this issue due to their conflicting emphases. One of the articles was written by Wen Chongyi,59 a long-time advocate of Sinicization. Wen’s article addressed the issue of the contradictory tendency inherited in the history of, and the making of, sociology in countries such as German, France, Britain, the USA, Japan, India, the Soviet Union, and, of course, non-communist China during the 1930s and 1940s. The contradictions were illustrated in terms of pairs of oppositions: “generality and particularity,” “universal theoretical models and national or indigenous research,” “global and national,” “empirical and interpretative/critical,” and so on. He tried to present the Sinicization movement as one instance of many national developments of sociology throughout the world. The article represented a more sophisticated account of Sinicization than when the idea was first proposed a decade earlier. The basic theme of the movement, however, had changed very little in the interim: Chinese social scientists should be self-conscious, self-critical, and independent (i.e., not subordinated to the West) so as to contribute creatively to the world’s social science disciplines with proper acknowledgment being afforded national and cultural particularities. He encouraged scholars to do more cross-cultural and cross-national comparative studies, and continued to caution against potential ultra-traditional, ethnocentric, and anti-global tendencies when

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supporting the long-term objective of a global discipline. He did, however, make the construction of a national–typical sociology his first priority. He submitted: According to our current sociological knowledge, as long as it is remains impossible to have one unified structure for the international community, it will be impossible to have one school of sociological theory that is able to account effectively for the global. So far, we have only been able to have American sociology, German sociology, French sociology, or Chinese sociology, but no real internationalized sociology. Therefore, until a global village can be realized, until a successful global social structure has been created, the path of Sinicizing sociology remains the only path; there should be no room for hesitation and waiting.60

Wen, like earlier participants in the movement, still supported the idea of Chinese sociologists’ developing an appropriate sociological knowledge of Chinese societies that had the potential to contribute to a general global sociology. As early as 1983 he was well aware of the political sensitivity associated with the term “Zhongguohua” 中國化 (Sinicization),61 but he never conscientiously distinguished Taiwan from China, and he consistently suggested that sociology in Taiwan had its origins in the development of sociology in China in the 1930s, despite the fact that Taiwan was actually ruled by Japan from 1895 until 1945. He emphasized that the call for Sinicization in the 1930s by Chinese sociologists on mainland China paralleled the call for Sinicization in 1970s’ Taiwan. In a footnote of clarification, he maintained: “Internationalization and globalization are synonyms, and so are nationalization (guojiahua 國家化), localization (diquhua 地區化), and indigenization (bentuhua 本土化).” By thus qualifying the complex relation between Sinicization and Taiwanization, he thought he could avoid the thorny issues of political movements and identity politics.62 The immediately following article was written by Xu Zhengguang (b. 1943).63 In comparison to Wen, Xu belongs to a younger generation of sociologists and is of Taiwanese-Hakka origin. The article was also his presidential address, written to mark the completion of his term as elected president of the CSA between 1988–1990. Through commemorating and re-examining Chen Shaoxin’s 陳紹馨 (1906–1966) last work, especially his hopes for the future of sociology in Taiwan,64 Xu intended to outline a new direction for the sociological study of Taiwan, with an emphasis on the unique “subjectivity of Taiwanese culture and society” (Taiwan wenhua yu shehui de zhutixing 台灣文化與社會的主體性).65 Chen

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Shaoxin was a native Taiwanese who studied sociology at T¯ohoku 東北 Universit y in Japan during the 1940s. He was perhaps the only “Taiwanese” sociologist, by origin, of his generation during the period of Japanese rule of Taiwan. In this particular article, published in his last years, Chen believed that Taiwan was not only rich in cultural diversity but also more modernized than the mainland; therefore, the study of Taiwan could contribute significantly to the study of China. Chen concluded, “Taiwan is the laboratory for the study of Chinese culture and society,” but not a surrogate or a substitute for the study of China. According to Xu’s “reasonable speculation” (Xu’s own words),66 Chen was a Taiwanese native scholar oppressed in his time because of his education and ethnic background. In writing this article, Chen suppressed his anger in the hope of correcting the biases of his mainlander counterparts who looked down on Taiwan and the value of Taiwan studies.67 Xu praised Chen as a pioneer who had foreseen, although very implicitly, the value of Taiwan studies with a “distinctive Taiwanese identity.” Xu was highly critical of attempts in the past to use Taiwan as a surrogate or substitute for China studies, which in so doing failed to look at the uniqueness and subjectivities of Taiwan. Xu also made the bold suggestion that the Sinicization movement in the 1980s was an extension of Chen’s “laboratory paradigm” (“shiyanshi” dianfan「實驗室」典範)68 since it was compatible with Chen’s paradigm and put Chen’s suggestion into practice in many ways. Xu maintained that Chen’s “paradigm” and the “movement” both agreed that Taiwanese society and culture are a regional part of a greater Chinese society and culture, and, hence, the Sinicization movement in Taiwan should carry out studies on China as the general and Taiwan as the local. As a result, the Sinicization process and the “Taiwanization” (Taiwanhua 台灣化) process could develop handin-hand.69 In this very ironic manner, Xu was really trying to connect a lesser-known Japanese-educated Taiwanese scholar—alienated and oppressed by Chinese tradition—with the later development of the Sinicization movement by many mainland scholars.70 Xu then proceeded to criticize the problems associated with Sinicization. He started by raising the epistemological problem of “What is this so-called ‘China’?” He put the word “Zhongguo” in brackets71 and suggested that what was characteristically thought to be “Zhongguo” was highly problematic, but was never thought of as such by the Sinicization scholars. He believed that Sinicization’s “blind spots” lay in its tendency

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to look at “China” without reference to changes and differences in time, places, and situation, and failure to take note of sociological differences in class and institutional structures. He also suggested that, despite the claims of Sinicization scholars to be “Westernized,” in fact, they lacked understanding of the philosophical premises underlying the social sciences as practiced in the West. As such, their works were “superficial” and their criticisms of Western measurements, wording, or other trivial matters focused on the merely “technical.” They had not launched any serious challenge to western epistemological issues at all. Finally, he charged that although Taiwan studies was incorporated in the Sinicization movement, many of these studies of Taiwan were “de-contextualized,” giving the impression that Taiwan had no identity or any meaningful existence in itself. From reading the series of studies conducted by Yang Guoshu, one often finds that extremely complicated and dynamic people and events in Taiwan are distorted to fit the shape of a static measurement model. In this kind of analysis, one cannot see anything about such real life (huo sheng sheng de 活生生的) matters as humiliation, the distortion of people’s personality structures when impacted by real historical influences, the regime, or the international environment, as well as [the effects of] power and strategic domination in interpersonal relations. This kind of study says nothing regarding the strenuous effort and autonomous struggles of ordinary people under the dominant cultural and social system. Advocates of the Sinicization movement refuse to acknowledge that they are conducting realistic “Taiwan Studies” in name and in essence. Floating in the air of traditional China to find their research problems, they face incompatibility in their epistemology. Not only are they undermining the ideal objectives of the Sinicization movement, but they are also forcing the movement to succumb to academic formalism and vanity since the essential problems of Taiwan are overlooked.72

Xu revealed his thoughts on the future development of sociology in Taiwan by proposing that the field move beyond Chen Shaoxin’s paradigm and the Sinicization movement. That is, he proposed moving away from critiquing western cultural imperialism in order to construct a Chinese model of the social sciences, to critiquing the “internal conditions” in Taiwan so that Taiwan would become a valuable research subject in its own right.73 Although Xu did not specify what these “internal conditions” in Taiwan were, elsewhere in the article he commented on

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the effects of the GMD’s cultural hegemony on the Taiwanese population 74 and the “naïve” views held by many Sinicization advocates regarding a traditional and idealized China. The “Taiwanization” trend continued in many fields in Taiwan in the 1990s. Politics, education, and culture all became increasingly ethnicized and nationalized. 75 In December 1995, at the annual convention, members of the CSA eventually discussed the issue of changing its title from the Chinese Sociological Association to the Taiwanese Sociological Association. The proposal was passed swiftly with almost no objection. Despite this trend, the so-called “Taiwanization movement” has not replaced the Sinicization movement in the social sciences. Today people prefer the term “indigenization” to either “Taiwanization” or “Sinicization.” This is largely because the “Taiwan versus China” opposition and its political connotations are viewed as politically confrontational, and a threat to the free flow of ideas and scholarly exchange across political boundaries. Moreover, although locally the historical and cultural ties between Taiwan and China might be disregarded for the purposes of selfassertion of Taiwanese consciousness, this goal would be more difficult to achieve in the trans-national and global communities of the social sciences in which many non-Chinese, non-Taiwanese, and criticalminded scholars of diverse national backgrounds participate in the same field of knowledge production. In reality, there are many western institutions for China Studies in many disciplines which follow their own geopolitical interests and institutional logic and which still hold on to the idea that places Taiwan Studies as a special part of, or a minor variation of, China Studies.76 The influence of overseas institutions has been much greater in the 1990s than in the 1970s because of increasing scholarly exchange across boundaries, partially due to the invention of new communication technologies and the increasing number of multi-lingual and trans-national scholars.

Three Indigenization Models Beginning from the mid-1990s, the dominant cultural and political discourse in Taiwan has moved toward embracing globalization and strengthening competitiveness in the global “market.” The early Sinicization movement has already lost its appeal and dissipated into many strands. But as in other countries and regions, increasing globalization

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has not made “indigenization” or “localization” disappear; rather, indigenization/localization has become “transformed,” either by including the global into the local context (i.e., localizing the global), or simply by making the local “globalized” (i.e., globalizing the local). In the following I will provide three typical “models” of the indigenization movement that have emerged in Taiwan. The first model can be represented as the “trans-national indigenization model.” This model can be regarded as a direct continuation of the “Sinicization movement” led by Yang Guoshu, Li Yiyuan, Qiao Jian, and some of their students, and is now joined by counterparts in mainland China. Although Sinicization has gradually lost favor in Taiwan during the 1990s as a consequence of a changing nationalistic landscape, during the same period it has found support among anthropologists and psychologists in the mainland. It is principally mainland scholars who now use the terms indigenization and Sinicization interchangeably.77 In Taiwan, Yang Guoshu himself now uses the term “indigenizaton” more often than “Sinicization,” and founded the journal titled Bentu xinlixue yanjiu 本土心理學研究 [Indigenous psychology journal] in 1993.78 Yang also agreed to substitute use of the term Zhongguoren 中國人 with the less politicized term Huaren 華人, although he was reluctant to do so at first.79 Despite these changes, Yang’s strategy to achieve “indigenization” (formerly Sinicization) has changed little, except that he has now linked “indigenization” to a broader and more general phenomenon evident in many non-Western countries or cultures. He is less committed to building an essentialized Chinese (nation-bounded) psychology—a notion that that has come under heavy criticism—preferring to develop a trans-national psychology within Huaren communities. He has also abandoned his original goal of developing an “alternative” paradigm to Western psychology (premised on the belief that a deep chasm separates “China” and the “West”), proposing instead the goal of achieving “local correlation” (bentu qihexing 本土契合性). It means that the fundamental issue of indigenization is to determine “whether correspondence (xiangyingxing 相應性), compatibility (peihexing 配合性), and reconciliation (tiaohexing 調和性) can be achieved between research activities and findings, and the behavior of local subjects.” 80 Yang added strong qualifications to the dichotomy of “the local verses the West” (or the national versus the global) because he began to regard “Western psychology” not as a nomological science but just another kind of “indigenous psychology” that may have attained the

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goal of “local correlation” in the localized context of Western societies. Therefore, he recently clarified that it is not “Western psychology” he opposes, but the “Westernization of psychological studies in non-Western societies,” or the blind application of Western psychology to non-Western societies.81 Moreover, in advocating the goal of “local correlation,” he maintains that although indigenous scholars may have certain advantages when it comes to determining local relevance, this would not always be the case because some local researchers could still be functioning as “vassals” of the West. On the other hand, a non-local or a foreign scholar can obtain the goal of “local correlation” as long as local particularity and context are given proper consideration. 82 He is therefore moving further away from his previous advocacy of “a native psychology proposed by native researchers acquiring ‘emic’ views from within.” He is now more open to cross-cultural or comparative studies involving researchers of all backgrounds, Western and non-Western, although it appears his main priority has not changed—that is, native scholars should undertake native study from an emic point of view, first and primarily, since scholars of different backgrounds will not have the same interests.83 It is clear that Yang has moved beyond the confinement of the nation-state’s borders by making indigenization an issue relevant to psychologists from other Asian countries, even though his primary influence has always been in Huaren communities. His flexibility makes him less prone to cultural nationalism and more attuned to regionalization. By doing so he been able to bring his “indigenous psychology” to a wider audience as part of the predominant discourse of globalization that surged in the 1990s. At the same time, Li Yiyuan and Qiao Jian have maintained their “indigenization movement” through a series of “modernization and Chinese culture” conferences rotated between Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the mainland, and involving inter-disciplinary participation.84 Since the changes of 1979, scholars from the mainland have gradually become more involved with the themes of indigenization along with their deepening “westernization” and the growing need for professional representation in the domestic environment.85 Analysis of these developments is, however, beyond the scope of this chapter.86 The second model can be described as the “theoretical-reasoning model.” This model has its origin in the humanistic critique of empirical sociology in the 1980s, of which Ye Qizheng is representative. According

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to Ye, the fundamental problem with Western sociology is no different from the problem of Western civilization: the expansion and penetration of instrumentalist rationality into every aspect of social life and the prevalence of utilitarian individualism. Since the social sciences in the West have their roots in their mother culture, empirical research is necessarily influenced by this relationship, and so the resulting “sociological knowledge” cannot be applied to other cultures with the same validity. Ye proposes that the indigenization movement should abandon positivism and empirical research in favor of alternative interpretative and critical approaches. What Ye proposes for an indigenized sociology is the kind of knowledge that can grasp the existential meaning and underlying principles of the social actions of ordinary people and the fundamental social structures of indigenous society. However, much of his writing has been directed at pointing out the “problems” inherited in the West—its basic cultural assumptions. In doing so, he also relies on the critical and humanistic traditions from the West to make his criticisms. Other sociologists have dubbed Ye and his followers as belonging to the “theoretical camp” as distinct from the “research camp.” In this sense, their indigenization movement is better understood as being more concerned with socio-cultural critique than engaging in “scientific” data gathering and empirical analysis. This critique is designed to challenge the dominance of empiricism and mainstream sociology in Taiwan and to oppose the capitalist tendency, in general, and its dominance in Taiwan, in particular. The third model can be termed the “grounded indigenization” model. It emphasizes the importance of grounded research with careful fieldwork, constructing (sometimes, also deconstructing) the “taken-forgranted” and “naturalized” social world. Xie Guoxiong 謝國雄 (b. 1957) is a good example of a scholar who has adopted this approach. His 1997 book, Chun laodong: Taiwan laodong tizhi zhulun 純勞動─台灣勞動體制 諸論 [Labor only: Essays on the labor regime in Taiwan], was well received for its thorough fieldwork and observations from the bottom, as well for the author’s use of the theories of Western sociologists from the leftist tradition, such as Pierre Bourdieu and Michael Burawoy. In the final chapter, Xie presented his thoughts on what sociology should be like together with his personal reflections and a passionate call for indigenous sociology: Being a Taiwanese sociologist who studies Taiwan, my ultimate wish is to be able to answer the question: “What kind of society is Taiwanese society?”

The Movement to Indigenize the Social Sciences in Taiwan · 237 (and “What are its characteristics?”)…. A sociologist … should be able to distinguish three layers of knowledge. First, to know precisely how Taiwan’s social system functions; second, what makes it unique; and third, innovation in sociological theory…. Only when we can have the insight to grasp the uniqueness of Taiwanese society can we have innovation in theory…. “Taiwan flavor” (Taiwan wei 台灣味) and “theoretical innovation” are inseparable. The road to scholarship ahead of me will certainly be very long. Even if it appears to grow longer and longer, my heart is set on the course.87

Although Xie admitted that he is an admirer of Chen Shaoxin, he also has his own points to make. First, he is not an empiricist in his methodological preferences. He relies on interpretative and critical ethnography as his primary method to collect data. Second, he manages to escape falling into the same trap as his Sinicization predecessors; influenced by Pierre Bourdieu, he always “engages” the notion of Taiwan (represented as the “local”) by “bracketing” it and situating it in a larger context so as to avoid “naturalizing” it. Like Ye Qizheng, he also advocates study of the underlying organization and systems or patterns of the “practices” of people. The difference between Xie’s and Ye’s theorizing model is that Xie relies heavily on fieldwork and ethnographical data. Indigenous scholars should, and could, develop their own problematiques or research agendas that will be more relevant to indigenous society, rather than just blindly following the West. Unlike Sinicization scholars, his ultimate criterion for “good” sociology is not just its relevance to the local, but the “comingout” of local study, as Yang suggested in the first Sinicization conference but neglected later. Local sociological works should be measured by theoretical innovations (of profession and academic interest) in the discipline grounded in a careful understanding of the local, with meaningful problematiques originating from the local.

Conclusion Recently, Björn Kjellgren lashed out against the Sinicization trend in Chinese anthropology and Yang Guoshu’s early Sinicization movement in Taiwan.88 He suggested that the danger of Sinicization and indigenization discourse—in mainland China today, and in Taiwan since the 1980s— has been the tendency towards “cultural nationalism” and its naïve assumptions concerning the putative chasm between Chinese culture and Western culture.89 He was also concerned about the Chinese bias in favor of “native” scholars over foreign scholars, coming from the false and

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essentialized dichotomization of the “Western tradition” and the “Grand Chinese tradition,” and the alleged “incomprehensibility” that native culture poses to foreign scholars. These narrow-minded and ungrounded methodological assumptions threaten to bring more harm than benefit to the work of Chinese academics if the “native advantage” is defined in primordial or ethno-national terms, not in organizational and resource terms. His criticism of Sinicization psychologist Huang Guangguo’s cultural essentialism, as well as the more widespread naïvete and misconceptions concerning western culture and western scholars, are also very well taken: Claims about the “uniqueness” of Chinese culture or society, or stereotypes of the tradition of the West, are dubious.90 Moreover, the pitfalls of emphasizing “native research” cannot be over-emphasized. On the other hand, I think Kjellgren might have unfairly constructed a negative image of many of the critical-minded Sinicization and indigenization scholars already discussed in this chapter. His criticisms completely ignore the diversity and processes of differentiation that can be linked to the distinct historical trajectories, and the differing positions of influence, interest, and conflict in the academic, cultural, and political fields of Taiwan and mainland China, respectively. When Kjellgren marshaled evidence against indigenization advocates by drawing from a mixed bag of discourses taken out of place, time, and context, not only did he de-contextualize the movement, but he also failed to differentiate the distinct and various paths of development that individual social science disciplines underwent in different “Chinese” societies. In short, the Sinicization movement in Taiwan in the 1980s led by Yang and his colleagues and its spread to mainland China after the 1980s, as well as the call for “native” anthropology at the end of the 1990s in China, vary markedly in significance, aims, and strategies, relating as they do to the perception of individual and professional interests in both the domestic and international spheres. One of the key points Kjellgren makes concerns the alleged advantage associated with being “native” in doing “native” research. Yet in the entirety of the indigenization discourse in Taiwan, this matter has remained trivial and unimportant. It was certainly not a “hidden agenda” of the indigenization movement. In Taiwan, the early phase of indigenization discourse was addressed to a domestic audience, not a foreign one. “Foreign” scholars and their works on “China” or the “Chinese” were not

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the “targets” of the indigenization movement. The “targets” were mainly the overly-Westernized “native” social scientists who lacked “self-identity” and who failed to grasp the relevant and meaningful problematiques from an “indigenous point-of-view” or to achieve “local correlation.” 91 In this chapter I have presented the Sinicization/indigenization movement in the social sciences, with particular reference to sociology, in Taiwan. I have examined its origin and the larger contexts in the 1970s and the 1980s that were conducive to the emergence of the movement; its spread outside of Taiwan; and its evolution as the “trans-national indigenization” model, “theoretical-reasoning indigenization” model, and the “grounded indigenization” model. I have argued that the indigenization process in the social sciences is better understood in light of its intricate relations to the external environment and the historical trajectory of the local society. In doing so, I pointed out that this movement has been consistent with the efforts made by social scientists to enhance the social status of their respective profession—be it sociology, psychology, or anthropology—in their own eyes, as well as in the eyes of the authorities, the general public, and, sometimes, their Western counterparts. The movement thus reflects the professional interests of intellectuals, as a group(s) or as individual scholars, to strengthen their influence nationally and globally, through deciphering the west and the local, so as to construct a dichotomy. As long as competing interests are involved, it will be difficult to find a unified position. When people have different interests because of their relative social positions, whether those interests are theoretical or practical, academic or political, it becomes difficult to maintain similar goals, directions, and strategies for the movement. As noted, the competition between the old and the young (seniority difference), theoretical schools and political standings (interest difference), ethnic background differences in relation to nationalism,92 and relative distances from the dominant position at the center (global hierarchy difference), have rendered a “unified” cultural nationalism—which constitutes the basis of Kjellgren’s critique—a secondary issue.93 The maturation and expansion of various social science disciplines and the emerging demands to become “more global” in the late 1990s will continue to affect internal struggles within academic communities. More resources will continue to be allocated to other “practical” sciences than to the humanities and social sciences. As the number of scholars

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with exposure to the West increases, there will be more diversified interests and more competition for the local centers, Huaren centers, and regional centers; also, the academic hierarchy will be inf luenced by outside struggles such as those between globalization and anti-globalization. Be it Sinicization, Taiwanization, or indigenization in general, all will have to face new challenges in these emerging realities. Indeed, many assumptions or claims about the uniqueness of indigenous society may prove to be merely rhetorical or frankly unsustainable when subjected even to mild scrutiny. Nor will it be the case that “local” studies, conducted by so-called “native” scholars, will naturally or automatically prove to be more valid or truthful. Such studies must be properly recognized within their particular disciplines, which are part of a larger social science community. Although this community was staunchly Euro-America-centric before the 1960s, it has become increasingly pluralistic and self-critical since then, just as national and disciplinary boundaries have become less tenable given the tremendous growth in the transnational flow of ideas and the numbers of multi-lingual scholars. We must, however, acknowledge the larger significance and social consequences of the indigenization movement, which extends beyond the review we have presented here about the case of Taiwan and other places. Our claims that the Sinicization/indigenization movement in the social sciences in Taiwan is not unique, when compared to other non-Western countries,94 and, moreover, that it has many problems which parallel the development of the social sciences in Western Europe and the United States, will come as a surprise to many indigenous scholars and their critics. When “opening” the history of the social sciences, Wallerstein and others95 found that since the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, there have been problems of assumed “spatiality” (defined by national borders or by groups of “people”); problems of social disruption associated with rapid social-political change; the state’s need for new knowledge to govern and for state expansion, and so on, that led to the differentiation and institutionalization of many disciplines known today as “social sciences.” 96 Historically, sociology, like other social science disciplines, has been an “indigenous” enterprise almost from its beginning. This “indigenized” and “border-bound” character was historically important in the legitimating process required to establish the institutional infrastructure of academic departments, journals, national associations, and above all, national resources. Wallerstein would probably

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agree that the indigenization of the social sciences in Taiwan and in other non-Western countries is similar. Moreover, it would have been an inevitable process because of the surging skepticism regarding the assumed “universality” of the social sciences since the 1950s among the many who have been excluded or marginalized by previously biased social science research. The demand for Sinicization in Taiwan, after all, was not all that different from the demands for feminization, ethnicization, internationalization, or decolonization that emerged within the establishment of Western social sciences in the context of social and political change since 1970s, except that it occurred “outside” of, even though it was “influenced by,” the “West.” In short, as long as issues of “universality” and “particularity” remain unresolved in the social sciences, indigenization movements will continue. In Taiwan, indigenization has become much less of an issue than in the 1980s when the development of sociology was first considered. Today, it has gradually shifted from the “production” of indigenous knowledge to the “re-production” of indigenous scholars and knowledge. Strengthening existing sociology institutions and emphasizing the training of the next generation of sociologists have proceeded apace with the “indigenization process.” 97 The publication of the first “indigenous sociology textbook” in 1999, mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, is but one sign of this long process. Finally, we need to comment on the general meaning of indigenization. First, it is concerned with the construction of an “us-them” dichotomy. Second, it is concerned with the existing hierarchical relation between “us” and “them,” with “them” perceived to be dominant. Indigenization has often arisen from calls to overcome that perception of inequality. Contemporary indigenization movements are thus either Third World or postcolonial phenomena. Indigenization strives to achieve not only self-recognition, but also other-recognition. The essentializing tendency in the construction of the opposing groups of “peoples,” however, can lead to nationalistic and ethnocentric pitfalls that are harmful to knowledge production, even though essentialism may assist indigenous scholars to promote themselves in the short-term. To avoid this problem, indigenization should not be regarded as a vehicle to construct a unique “national” discipline but should be pursued as “grounded” research rooted in the “local” context, or the “trans-local” in its configuration and formation. Any of the many forms of spatiality

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involved in the discourse of the indigenization movement should be viewed as a construct and subjected to close scrutiny. And lastly, indigenization of social sciences should rely on comparative perspectives and multi-lingual researchers. They are useful in forcing “native” or “spatialbound” scholars to problematize the limiting ontology of the “native versus foreign” dichotomy.

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Notes 1

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The government started the first sociology and social welfare department by promoting its training classes for civic administration at Zhongxing 中興 University in 1955. Christian missionaries from the US and the Asia Foundation of the US helped in promoting the foundation of the three major sociology-related undergraduate courses at National Taiwan University and Donghai 東海 University. See Xiao Xinhuang 蕭新煌 , “Sanshi’nian lai Taiwan de shehuixue: Lishi yu jiegou de tantao” 三十年來台灣的社會學：歷史 與結構的探討 [Taiwan’s sociology over the past thirty years: A historical and structural exploration], in Sanshinian lai woguo renwen ji shehuikexue zhi huigu yu zhanwang 三十年來我國人文及社會科學之回顧與展望 [Human and social sciences in our country over the last thirty years in retrospect and prospect], ed. Lai Zehan 賴澤涵 (Taipei: Dongda tushu gongsi, 1987), p. 341. Zhang Yinghua 章英華 estimates that about two hundred sociologists hold doctoral degrees in Taiwan. See “Shehuixue zai Taiwan: Cong bentuhua de huyu dao zhiduhua de suqiu” 社會學在台灣：從本土化的呼籲到制度化的訴求 [Sociology in Taiwan: From calls to indigenization to requests for institutionalization], in 21 shiji de Zhongguo shehuixue yu renleixue 二十一世紀的中 國社會學與人類學 [Chinese sociology and anthropology in the 21st century], ed. Qiao Jian 喬健 et al. (Kaohsiung [Gaoxiong]: Liwen chubanshe, 2001), p. 106. See Immaneul Wallerstein et al., Open the Social Sciences: Report of the Gulbenkian Commission on the Restructuring of the Social Sciences (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996); Peter Wagner, A History and Theory of the Social Sciences (London: Sage Publications, 2001). For instance, American scholars have also wondered what should be taught to undergraduate students, and the American Sociological Association has begun to promote “internationalization” in their undergraduate teachings. See J. M. Armer, ed., Syllabi and Resources for Internationalizing Courses in Sociology (Washington, DC: American Sociological Association Teaching Resources Center, 1983). Wang Zhenhuan 王振寰 and Qu Haiyuan 瞿海源, eds., Shehuixue yu Taiwan shehui (Taipei: Juliu tushu gongsi, 1999). Each of the two editors served as the President of the Taiwanese Sociological Association (TSA). The book was originally proposed as a collective project by the TSA. Wang Zhenhuan is a professor at Donghai University; Qu Haiyuan teaches at National Taiwan University and is a research fellow at the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica. The term “Sinicization” was the preferred term in the 1980s, while “indigenization” has gained more prominence in use in the 1990s. The reasons for this, and the respective meanings of the two terms, are explained later in this chapter.

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The forum was organized and moderated by the then-President of the CSA, Wen Chongyi 文崇一. See Zhongguo shehui xuekan 中國社會學刊 7(1983), pp. 233–321. The conference was held at the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, 21–24 December 1981. Yang Guoshu 楊國樞 and Wen Chongyi 文崇一, eds., Shehui ji xingwei kexue yanjiu de Zhongguohua (Taipei: Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, 1982). This conference volume contains eighteen articles plus a lengthy editorial preface. The contributors consisted of seven sociologists, six educational and social psychologists, four anthropologists, a historian, a philosopher, and a political scientist. Thirteen of the contributors were from Taiwan, and seven from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The papers were grouped into three parts. Part one is a theoretical discussion of the epistemological and methodological rationale and possibilities for Sinicization; part two concerns methodological issues, including exemplary uses of survey methods and multi-variate analysis; and part three deals with empirical findings, including historical studies and anthropological fieldwork on the “particularities” of Chinese culture and society. Both “Zhongguoren” 中國人 and “Huaren” are usually translated as “Chinese” in English, but have different connotations and are used in different contexts. “Zhongguoren” has more emphasis on the Chinese motherland, or the Chinese nation-state, whereas “Huaren” has a connotation of connectedness with Chinese cultural heritage, not necessarily with the political motherland. The group boundary of “Huaren” is thus more f lexible, and it is often preferred when people want to de-emphasize the political connotations, or to avoid political confrontations among many people with “common” Chinese origin. See, for instance, Xu Jieshun 徐杰舜, ed., Bentuhua: Renleixue de da qushi 本土化：人類學的大趨勢 [Nativization: The Great Trend of Anthropology] (Guangxi: Minzu chubanshe, 2001). Also, Yang Guoshu was successful in organizing the third Conference for the Asian Association of Social Psychology in Taipei, 1999, which adopted “indigenization of social psychology” as the plenary theme of the conference. Arif Dirlik, “Theory, History, Culture: Cultural Identity and the Politics of Theory in Twentieth-Century China,” Development and Society 29.2 (2000), pp. 73–104. I am grateful to John Makeham for this reference. As the most “Westernized” and the most “natural science–like” of the many social science disciplines, economics has little problem with its legitimation and has never been part of the movement. On the other hand, political science played a small part initially and began to re-engage with this issue only in 1999, having “lagged behind” for about twenty years. This occurred partly because of the need of Taiwanese Chinese and overseas Chinese scholars to participate in the recent development of the discipline’s “market” in mainland China. See Zhu Yunhan 朱雲漢 et al., eds., Huaren shehui

The Movement to Indigenize the Social Sciences in Taiwan · 245 zhengzhixue bentuhua yanjiu de lilun yu shijian 華人社會政治學本土化研究的 理論與實踐 [The theory and practice of indigenous political science research 14

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in Sinitic societies] (Taipei: Guiguan tushu gongsi, 2000). For instance, anthropology is often practiced as the study of the “other culture” by a non-native scholar; whereas sociology is often practiced as the study of a particular “society” by a so-called “native” scholar. Therefore, indigenization for anthropologists and for sociologists can have very different meanings and strategies, as well as the problems addressed. The most recent conference was held at Nanhua 南華 University, Jiayi, Taiwan, in April 2002. It was the third of a series of three conferences called “Symposia on Social Science Theories and Indigenization.” Recently, Ye Qizheng, one of the most inf luential sociologists in Taiwan, published Shehuixue he bentuhua 社會學和本土化 [Sociology and indigenization] (Taipei: Juliu tushu gongsi, 2001). For examples in anthropology, see Frank Pieke, Stephan Feuchtwang, and others in Xu Jieshun, ed., Bentuhua. For a recent example in social psychology, see Björn Kjellgren, “The Predicament of Indigenization: Constructions and Methodological Consequences of Otherness in Chinese Ethnography,” Taiwan Journal of Anthropology 1.1 (2003), pp. 147–178, and Arif Dirlik, “Theory, History, Culture.” Yang seems to have wanted to include Singaporean Chinese but did not succeed. Possibly this was due to the Singapore government’s sensitivity about Chinese cultural nationalism as well as to political nationalism, thus making Singaporean scholars apprehensive about participating. As a result, Yang suggested that contributions from Singapore should be for “supplementary” purposes. One obvious reason that Yang did not include mainland China in the framework of the Sinicization campaign at this stage was because of the political bans on all exchanges between Taiwan and mainland China at that time. It should, however, also be borne in mind that Yang, being a modernist and trained in the West, did not think that mainland Chinese scholars were “Westernized or modernized” enough to grasp the complicated issues, given their long isolation from Western social and behavioral studies. Yang later changed his mind, becoming a strong supporter and participant of mainland China’s own indigenization movement beginning in the early 1990s. Yang and Wen, eds., Shehui ji xingwei kexue yanjiu de Zhongguohua, pp. i–ii. Ibid., pp. ii, v. Ibid., p. v. Ibid., p. vi. For a more detailed discussion of Jin Yaoji’s inf luence on the theme of “modernization,” see Fu Dawei 傅大為, “You Taiwan sixiangshi zhong yige lishi zhuanzhe kan fayanquan de qudai yu zhuanxing: Cong Yin Haiguang Zhongguo wenhua de zhanwang guodu dao Jin Yueji Cong chuantong dao xiandai” 由台灣思想史中一個歷史轉折看發言權的取代與轉型：從殷海光《中國文

246 · Maukuei Chang 化的展望》過渡到金耀基《從傳統到現代》[Substitution and transformation of

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the right to speak viewed from a historical turning point in Taiwan’s intellectual history: Interim transition from Yin Haiguang’s The Prospect of Chinese Culture to Jin Yaoji’s From Tradition to Modernity], in Ziyou minzhu de sixiang yu wenhua 自由民主的思想與文化 [The thought and culture of liberal democracy], ed. Yin Haiguang Foundation and Wei Zhengtong 韋政 通 et al. (Taipei: Zili chubanshe, 1990), pp. 182–206. Li Yiyuan and Yang Guoshu, eds., Zhongguoren de xingge: Keji zonghexing de taolun 中國人的性格：科際綜合性的討論 [The Chinese character: An interdisciplinary discussion] (Taipei: Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, 1972). The conference set exemplars in many ways. First, it was genuinely “interdisciplinary.” Second, it was conducted in a colloquium format, which appeared to be more “democratic” than most of other conferences in that period. See Yang Guoshu, “Xueyuan shenghuo de zhuisuo” 學院生活的追索 [Searching in academic life], in Wode tansuo 我的探索 [My explorations], ed. Zhongguo luntan bianji weiy uanhui《中國論 壇》編輯委員會 [Editorial committee of the China Forum] (Taipei: Zhongguo luntan chubanshe, 1985), pp. 88, 98. The book was reprinted three times, although just as an in-house publication and not for commercial sale. The editors suggested that the Institute should not re-print it for several years so as to avoid trouble with the authorities until the political atmosphere softened. Fu wrote at least three related articles on the subject: “Cong ‘bi Qin’ dao ‘fan yilai’—sanshi nian Taiwan ‘shehui rewenkexue’ lishi pianduan de fanxing” 從「避 秦」到「反依 賴」─ 台灣「社 會人 文 科 學」歷 史 片段 的反省 [F r o m ‘escaping the Qin’ to ‘anti-dependence’: Reflections on a historical moment in the social and human sciences in Taiwan], in his Zhishi yu quanli de kongjian 知識與權力的空間 [The space of knowledge and power] (Taipei: Guiguan tushu gongsi, 1990), pp. 81–94; “Kexue shizheng lunshu lishi de bianzheng: Cong jindai xifang qimeng dao Taiwan de Yin Haiguang” 科學實 證論述歷史的辯證─從近代西方啟蒙到台灣的殷海光 [The historical dialectics of the discourse of scientific positivism: From modern Western enlightenment to Taiwan’s Yin Haiguang], in Taiwan shehui yanjiu jikan 臺灣社會研 究季刊 1.4 (1988), pp. 11–56. Here my account is mostly, but not entirely, based on his third article, “Lishi jiangou, bianchui celüe, yu ‘Zhongguohua’” 歷史建構、邊陲策略、與「中國化」[Historical construction, peripheral strategies, and “Sinicization”], Daoyu bianyuan 島嶼邊緣 1.1 (1991), pp. 103–127. Fu’s view is a commonly held analysis of the political situation in 1970s’ Taiwan. See, for example, Xiao Aqin 蕭阿勤, “Minzuzhuyi yu Taiwan 1970 niandai de ‘xiangtu wenxue’: Yige wenhua (jiti) jiyi bianqian de tantao” 民族 主義 與台灣 一九七 ○ 年 代的「鄉土文學」：一 個文化（集體）記 憶 變 遷 的 探討 [Nationalism and Taiwan’s 1970s “Xiangtu Literature”: An exploration of the change in cultural (collective) memory], Taiwan lishi yanjiu 臺灣歷史研究 6.2 (2000), pp. 77–138. At the time, the ROC not only lost its seat in the United

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Nations to the People’s Republic of China in 1971, but also lost most of its diplomatic relations with all major countries except for the US. There was also a territorial dispute over the Diaoyutai 釣魚台 islands (off the northeast coast of Taiwan) with Japan that triggered very strong nationalistic sentiments among students and passionate and conscientious intellectuals. Fu did not define these terms specifically in the paper quoted. I interpret “rule by predatory power” (tunshizhe quanli 吞食者權力) to imply the use of brutality and harsh forms of coercion and suppression when confronted by opposition; the second term, “harsh yet delicate rule” (yansu er jingzhi tongzhi 嚴肅而精緻統治), implies the use of more subtle forms of power, such as persuasion, cooptation, and propaganda education. Fu Dawei, “Lishi jiangou, bianchui celüe, yu ‘Zhongguohua,’” ibid, p. 103. In fact, Fu admitted that he was preparing deliberately to attack this group of liberal-minded positivist scholars in the late 1980s because he wanted to justify his own “radical” movement—a leftist and de-constructive one in nature—by contrasting it to the position represented by the Sinicization and modernization advocates. See Fu Dawei, “Wo yu ‘Taishe’ shinian” 我與「台 社」十年 [My involvement with “Taishe” over a decade], , accessed on 1 August 2011. This should not be self-contradictory since one’s own “value” can be increased or redeemed through self-analysis or self-criticism. Yang has spent most of his career in the Department of Psychology, National Taiwan University. He served as the head of the department and is now an honorary emeritus professor. Because of Yang’s seemingly incessant attacks on the “blind Westernized tendency” that existed within the profession of psychology in Taiwan, his major contributions to the “indigenization of psychology” were not welcomed by the department. The department’s official website has no reference to the “indigenization” of psychology and Yang, along with several other members of the department, is listed as belonging to a small section called “Social and Personality Psychology” of the department. Prior to 1985, the GMD government still kept a vigilant eye for anything that might be linked, even remotely, to Marxism. For Yang’s discussion of how he managed to situate his academic works side by side with his applied concerns about social problems and social change, see Yang Guoshu, “Xueyuan shenghuo de zhuisuo,” pp. 84–92. See Yang and Wen, Shehui ji xingwei kexue yanjiu de Zhongguohua, pp. 209–254. See, for example, Yang Xuantang 楊選堂, “Xinyou tianxia, shouyuan tianxia” 心憂天下，手援天下 [Deeply concerned about the country: Supporting the country], a summary preface to the series of books published for the tenth anniversary of China Forum Bi-monthly, in Wode tansuo, ed. Zhongguo luntan bianji weiyuanhui, pp. 1–8.

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Of course, his resolution to this problem drew little response from his peers in Taiwan in the early 1980s because Taiwan had just begun to pride itself on its “economic miracle” and advances in material prosperity. Taiwan, as the model for China, was not to be regarded as a member of the Third World. Although Yang Guoshu had this “degree of westernisation” in mind to separate mainland China from Taiwan and Hong Kong, it only meant that mainland China was irrelevant to this movement, not that they were essentially different “kinds” of Chinese. One should be aware that by international standards Hong Kong academics have been generally very well paid and privileged by their pro-western attitudes under British colonialism. “Sinicization” thus was really not in their best interests even at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, which had a stronger tendency to teach Chinese classics and culture. Also, presumably the conference’s American sponsor, the Rockefeller Foundation, preferred to see China adopt a more open position toward Western ideas rather than become more “nationalistically” anti-Western. Peasant Life in China: A Field Study of Country Life in the Yangtze Valley (London: Routledge, 1937). The later Chinese translation was titled Jiangcun jingji 江村經濟 [The economy of Jiangcun] (Hong Kong: Zhonghua shuju, 1987). From the Soil: The Foundation of Chinese Society (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1992) is a translation of Xiangtu Zhongguo 鄉 土中國 (Hong Kong: Sanlian shudian, 1985). Qiao Jian, ed., Xiandaihua yu Zhongguo wenhua yantaohui lunwen huibian 現 代化與中國文化研討會論文彙編 [Proceedings of the Conference on Modernization and Chinese Culture] (Hong Kong: Faculty of Social Science and Institute for Social Research, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1985), pp. v–vi. Arif Dirlik has recently discussed this matter, see Dirlik, “Theory, History, Culture: Cultural Identity and the Politics of Theory in Twentieth-Century.” Li Yiyuan et al., eds., Xiandaihua yu Zhongguohua lunji 現代化與中國化論集 [Essays on modernization and Sinicization] (Taipei: Guiguan tushu gongsi, 1984). A careful reader will find the three papers from Hong Kong unequal in their respective qualities. Furthermore, there is some question about the “fitness” of the three papers to the central theme of the book, suggesting that the basis for selection may not have been related to the quality of the papers. The three writers were Qiao Jian, Jin Yaoji, and Zhang Desheng 張得勝. In any case, in 1984, papers by mainland scholars were not allowed to be published in Taiwan, regardless of quality and suitability. Since the early 1990s, even Yang Guoshu, Huang Guangguo, and Ye Qizheng have felt the obligation and need to travel to China to teach their respective disciplines. Li Yiyuan was also invited to the mainland several times as a leading international promoter of the study of China and pioneer in the Sinicization of anthropology.

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This group also included one Taiwan sociologist, Xiao Xinhuang, who was a visiting scholar at Boston University at the time. Cai was then a professor of sociology at the Texas Technology University in Lubbock, a remote city in Texas. When describing the genesis of the meeting, he recalled how, one evening in March 1983, he had awoken from a nightmare and become sleepless. He began to have flashbacks of his whole life, from his time in Taiwan until he became a sociologist in the United States. He was startled by the progress of sociology in Taiwan and the revival of sociology in China. He was puzzled by the universality claim of sociology, modernization, and Westernization, and the value or meaning of his own work (or his life?). Inner feelings of doubt became “so vivid, so compelling, just like a long dormant volcano that was about to erupt.” Cai Yongmei 蔡勇 美 and Xiao Xinhuang, eds., Shehuixue Zhongguohua 社會學中國化 [Sinicization of sociology] (Taipei: Jiuliu chubanshe, 1985), p. 2. Ibid. Ibid., p. 330. Because of the small number of Chinese sociologists of Chinese origin then resident in the US, and the even smaller number who actually participated, this meeting was conducted as a colloquium of acquaintances and friends, rather than a serious conference. Its English title was somewhat different: “Sinicization of Sociology: A Collective Portrait of Some American Trained Chinese Sociologists,” but its Chinese title was: “Shehuixue Zhongguohua: Lü Mei Zhongguo shehuixuejia de ruogan guandian” 社會學 中國化：旅美中國社會學家的若干觀點 [Sinicizing sociology: Some views of Chinese sociologists residing in the US]. The volume under discussion was used as the primary source for Arif Dirlik’s analysis of the Sincization movement of sociology in Dirlik, “Theory, History, Culture: Cultural Identity and the Politics of Theory in TwentiethCentury China.” However, he was unable to recognize the multiple facets of the movement and the significance of this “go-between” phenomenon for Chinese-American sociologists, a group that should be distinguished from other “native” sociologists working in their “native” country. In fact, the paper he wrote was intended for a broader and different audience: the Western Division Conference of the Association for Asian Studies; it was not intended for Chinese readers. It was first written in English and then translated into Chinese by Tu Zhaoqing 凃肇慶. Lin was very active in the North American Chinese Sociologists Association, which he founded in 1982. He also served as Chair for the Department of Sociology, State University of New York at Albany, between 1979–1982. Since the early 1980s he has also helped to educate many mainland Chinese sociologists at Nankai University, Tianjin, and in the United States. Lin was relatively more successful and active than his Chinese sociologist peers based in the US at that time. His viewpoint does not represent the views of other contributors to the book. I have selected Lin for particular discussion because of his relatively prominent position among his peers.

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Cai Yongmei, “Xulun” 緒論 [Introduction], in Shehuixue Zhongguohua, ed. Cai Yongmei and Xiao Xinhuang, pp. 14–15. 55 Li was a professor at the Catholic University of America and one of the few Chinese-American scholars who spent some time teaching at Nankai 南開 University in Tianjin in the early 1980s to revive Western-oriented sociology in China. This section of dialogue is titled “Toushi sanshi nianlai haixia liang’an shehuixue de fazhan” 透視三十年來海峽兩岸社會學的發展 [Penetrating the fundamentals of the developments of sociology over the past thirty years on both sides of Taiwan Straits], pp. 311–328. 56 Ibid., p. 316. 57 Unlike two years later, this was, of course, an exaggeration of the state of political freedom that existed in 1984. 58 See Fu-chang Wang’s chapter in this volume for discussion on this topic. 59 Wen Chongyi, “Zhongguo de shehuixue: Guojihua huo guojiahua” 中國的社 會學：國際化或國家化 [Chinese sociology: Internationalization or nationalization] Zhongguo shehui xuekan 15 (1991), pp. 1–28. 60 Ibid., pp. 18, 19, 20. 61 Wen Chongyi’s evasiveness on the sensitive issue of choosing appropriate wording can be found in his comments in the forum on “Sociology in China: Problems and Prospects,” Zhongguo shehui xuekan 7 (1983), p. 319. He said: “This term, Zhongguohua, can stir up some emotional reactions. But we have not been able to find an appropriate substitute word for it over the sixty-nine years of the Republic. This is to say that we cannot find a better term to express our emphasis on the things (dongxi 東西) inside our own culture. We hope that no one will react emotionally to this term.” 62 Wen Chongyi, “Zhongguo de shehuixue,” p. 21n2. 63 Xu Zhengguang 徐正光, “Yige yanjiu dianfan de xingcheng yu bianqian: Chen Shaoxin ‘Zhongguo shehui wenhua yanjiu de shiyanshi—Taiwan’ yiwen de chongtan” 一個研究典範的形成與變遷：陳紹馨「中國社會文化研究的 實驗室─台灣」一文的重探 [The formation and vicissitudes of a research paradigm: A re-evaluation of “A laboratory for the study of Chinese society and culture—Taiwan” by Chen Shaoxin], Zhongguo shehui xuekan 15 (1991), pp. 29–40. 64 Chen Shaoxin 陳紹馨 , “Zhongguo shehui wenhua yanjiu de shiyanshi— Taiwan” 中國社會文化研究的實驗室─台灣 [A laboratory for the study of Chinese society and culture—Taiwan], Zhongyang yanjiuyuan minzusuo jikan 中央研究院民族所集刊 22 (1966), pp. 1–14. 65 The word zhutixing 主體性 is difficult to translate into English. Ostensibly it is a synonym for the English word “subjectivity,” but it can also have the meanings of being a “desirable,” “unspoiled,” “autonomous,” or “authentic” subjectivity. 66 Xu Zhengguang, “Yige yanjiu dianfan de xingcheng yu bianqian,” p. 31. 67 Ibid., pp. 31–32. 68 Ibid., p. 34.

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Ibid., p. 35. The leaders of the Sinicization movement, however, had always wanted to connect themselves to the “greater” intellectual tradition in China associated with either the May Fourth Movement of 1919 or with the early founders of sociology in China. Xu Zhengguang, “Yige yanjiu dianfan de xingcheng yu bianqian,” p. 36. Ibid., p. 38. Ibid., p. 38. Ibid., p. 37. On this topic, A-chin Hsiau, Contemporary Taiwanese Cultural Nationalism (London: Routledge, 2000) provides an in-depth analysis. Ardent Taiwanese scholars can do very little about the international state of the “China Studies” field that boasts so many reputable and well-funded establishments and programs outside of Taiwan; many more than are devoted to Taiwan Studies. See, for instance, Qiao Jian et al., eds., 21 shiji de Zhongguo shehuixue yu renleixue, and Xu Jieshun, ed., Bentuhua. The journal publishes articles written in Chinese, and, although based in Taiwan, it has many contributors from other Huaren communities. The journal has been surprisingly open to the critics of indigenization and does not take an exclusive stand in supporting Yang and the movement. See Yang Guoshu, “Women weishenme yao jianli Zhongguoren de bentu xinlixue” 我們為什麼要建立中國人的本土心理學 [Why we want to establish a Chinese indigenous psychology], Bentu xinlixue yanjiu 本土心理學研究 1 (1993), p. 63n1. Yang Guoshu, “Bentu qihexing jiqi xiangguan wenti de luenzheng” 本土契合 性及其相關問題的論證 [Arguments for “local correlation”], Bentu xinlixue yanjiu 8 (1997), p. 85. Ibid., pp. 231–233. Yang was occasionally inconsistent. Earlier he wanted to emphasize the use of Chinese language as the primary writing or research tool to effect indigenization, seeming to imply a “hidden” agenda giving native Chinese scholars more advantages than Western scholars. See Yang Guoshu, “Women weishenme yao jianli Zhongguoren de bentu xinlixue.” Ibid., pp. 113–114. One of the recent examples was the conference in Hong Kong which resulted in the publication of Qiao Jian et al., eds., 21 shiji de Zhongguo shehuixue yu renleixue. See, for example, Xu Jieshun, ed., Bentuhua. For instance, see Frank Pieke, “China and Anthropology,” paper presented at the workshop “Anthropology in and of China: A Cross-generation Conversation,” Annual Symposium, The Center for Chinese Studies, University of California at Berkeley, 8–9 March 2002. Pieke noted that

252 · Maukuei Chang Chinese anthropologists are now divided by a generational difference, with the older ones being more inclined toward traditional ethnography, while the younger ones are more open to current Western approaches. Underlying the indigenization debates also lies an academic power struggle. He said: “Many scholars in China use the phrase ‘indigenization’ (bentuhua) as a defense against the threat of a generation of younger anthropologists who use their familiarity with Western anthropological fashions to challenge the older generation’s credentials as ethnologists, folklorists, anthropologists, or sociologists.” 87 Xie Guoxiong, Chun laodong 純勞動 [Labor only] (Taipei: Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, 1997), p. 347. 88 Kjellgren, “The Predicament of Indigenization.” However, Kjellgren’s main argument against Sinicization in Taiwan was limited since he relied narrowly on an analytical reading of Yang and his former student, Huang Guangguo, now also a well-known advocate for cultural conservatism. He is especially critical of Huang’s essentializing tendency regarding the uniqueness of Chinese culture and his misconceptualization of the West. See pp. 154–155, in particular. 89 In fact, as this I have shown, Ye Qizheng and Xu Zhengguang were both critical of naïve attempts to essentialize Chinese culture and society. Ye Qizheng, “Bianchuixing yu xueshu fazhan: Zailun kexue Zhongguohua” 邊 陲性與學術發展：再論科學中國化 [Peripherality and academic development: Further discussion of scientific Sinicization], in Xiandaihua yu Zhongguohua lunji, ed. Li Yiyuan et al., pp. 221–262; Xu Zhengguang, “Yige yanjiu dianfan de xingcheng yu bianqian.” In advancing Sinicization, Yang Guoshu himself cautioned against becoming ignorant of the West, although he cannot be said to be well versed in either the philosophy of social science or the historical formation of the West. 90 In fact, already in 1991 Xu Zhengguang made similar criticisms of other Sinicization advocates, even though he also advocated indigenization, but in the name of “Taiwanese identity and subjectivity.” 91 Kjellgren, “The Predicament of Indigenization,” pp. 157–158, made another mistake by lumping the Academia Sinica (Taiwan) and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (China) together by saying: “Neither has a tradition of sending anthropologists overseas to conduct research,” and hence, “In this respect, China is like most other third world countries.” The truth is that both institutions, supported by their respective governments, have been keen to provide funds for researchers—albeit relatively less compared to the funding available to their Western counterparts—to study the “outside world” when deemed important for national interests. 92 In our review of the indigenization movement, the gender difference has not been broached since all of the advocates are male. Yet this is not to say that gender is not a factor in social and academic power struggles.

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For instance, in the special issue of Bentuxixue yanjiu 8 (1997), one will find how critical Yang’s most loyal followers—such as Huang Guangguo, Ye Qizheng, and Yu Dehui 余德惠—are. Sometimes they are unreasonably critical of each other through misrepresentation and misunderstanding. This is best illustrated by the journal International Sociology launched by the International Sociological Association in 1986. In the foreword to the first issue, the then-President of the ISA, Fernando H. Cardoso, articulated the need to go beyond “provincial” perspectives that are limited to the Western Cultural and American Functionalistic traditions. Against an imagination of a normal science of sociology, he advocated the need “to increase our knowledge about contemporary societies and sociologies, by showing pluralistic paths of concern in sociology rooted in different historical and cultural traditions.” See International Sociology 1.1 (1987), p. 2. Also, Frederick Garreau contributed a very lengthy essay in Current Sociology to address the issue of cultural-regional/local-national concerns versus general theory concerns in sociology. See his “The Multinational Version of Social Science with Emphasis Upon the Discipline of Sociology,” Current Sociology 33.3 (1985), pp. 1–169. For discussions of indigenization concerns in India and in South Korea, see T. K. Oommen, “The Nature of Sociological Research and Practice Worldwide: A Perspective from India,” International Sociology 3.3 (1988), pp. 309–312, and Myoung-kyu Park and Chang Kyung-sup, “Sociology between Western Theory and Korean Reality: Accommodation, Tension and a Search for Alternatives,” International Sociology 14.2 (1999), pp. 139–156. Wallerstein et al., Opening the Social Sciences. They emerged in the following approximate order: history, economics, sociology, political science, anthropology, oriental studies, and area studies, with economic history and social psychology occupying marginal positions. Ibid., pp. 20–32. The publication of the first “indigenized textbook” is an illustration of this “reproduction effort.” For a general analysis, see Zhang Yinghua, “Shehuixue zai Taiwan,” pp. 97–116; see also Qu Haiyuan, “Shehuixue kecheng neirong yu Taiwan shehui yanjiu” 社會學課程內容與台灣社會研究 [The curriculum content of sociology and the study of Taiwan society], Taiwan shehui xuekan 台灣社會學刊 21 (1998), pp. 1–20.

Chapter 10

From Sinicization to Indigenization in the Social Sciences: Is That All There Is? Allen Chun

Within this chapter, I trace in the development of social sciences (mainly anthropology and psychology) in Taiwan trends in indigenous theory, as a function of “mainstream” theoretical debates as well as “local” discourses. In both cases, the interpretation of “culture” as a framework on which it is possible to articulate native theory represents the primary problematic issue. One might ask, by what sense or authority does the native “know” or understand in indigenous terms and does this really qualify as cultural interpretation in disciplinary or theoretical terms? One might also ask whether such subjectivity is seminal at all, when other disciplines seem to consider it less or not even relevant.

Problematizing the Study of Culture in Anthropology and Psychology The common concern with culture in certain schools of anthropology and psychology is a point of departure allowing me to address specific problematics that link both disciplines, especially in reference to the possibility of native theory and the role of native academics in articulating it. The content of such theory and the subjective identity of the scholar are two distinct issues that have been improperly understood in the literature; thus the main goal of my paper is to establish a framework for recasting the epistemological and methodological dimensions of this problem in better light. Anthropology (or any social science) in Taiwan as an academic discourse practiced in a local setting by native Chinese seems concrete and unambiguous, but it is in fact a problematic entity whose multiplicity of meaning lies in its concatenation and whose contradictions arise from our misunderstanding of exactly what is local and/or

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native about it. It would be easy to write a descriptive history of the development of anthropology in Taiwan as a discipline. Many institutions hold retrospective conferences every ten years to produce a summary account of past research and future directions based on a laundry list of publications produced by their major contributors, so there is no lack of such compilations of developments in the discipline, if that is what one means by disciplinary formation. However, it is important to establish as a point of departure whether the disciplinary formation of anthropology refers primarily to its content, as the study of primitive cultures or folk societies, or to its existence as an institutional formation, however defined. In practice, especially in its professionalization, both have evolved hand in hand, but I argue that they are analytically distinct phenomena whose frame of reference has important ramifications for how we understand its concatenated existence and operation. If I define anthropology by the former, I should not be limited to academic anthropology or the work of trained scholars associated with institutions that are also part of a larger modern transformation. There have always been folklorists and local historians whose work and data have provided rich sources for academic anthropologists, but to frame such studies as a point of departure would shed a different light on what academic anthropology is as a specific genre of knowledge. Whatever traditions of knowledge shape anthropology, one cannot at the same time deny that anthropology as a field of knowledge is dominated by professionally trained academics operating in institutions that are regulated by rules and mindsets that seriously shape the way such knowledge is conducted, produced, and disseminated. To take seriously disciplinary formation as a phenomenon of academia, one cannot be blind to the functioning of academia as well as its link to society, and even to the state.

The Rise and Fall of “The Native’s Point of View” in Anthropology Anthropology in the 70s and 80s was dominated mostly by rifts between two different kinds of approaches, one generally advocating objective, scientific, or materialistic approaches and one advocating subjective, interpretive, or culturalist approaches. There are many other schools of thought, but it suffices to say that theoretical debates in different eras have been epitomized by different conflicts of thought. Without doubt, the dualistic opposition between structuralism and functionalism,

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materialism and culturalism, etc., had specific nuances that must not be reduced to easy dualisms, but the advent of subjective, interpretive, and culturalist approaches in effect recognized for the first time the seminal existence or primary importance of the “native’s point of view.” This term itself was made famous in an often quoted essay by Clifford Geertz, which seemed on the surface to paraphrase the textbook definition of anthropology as the study of other cultures, but this concept, as articulated by Geertz, was meant to underscore the salience of a specifically culturalist or interpretive approach to the study of society and social relations.1 His peculiar definition of “thick description” as a methodology for his “theory” of culture highlighted less his reliance on literary imagination as a focal mode of analysis than his use of culture as a language with which to craft a social scientific analysis.2 The epistemological primacy placed upon culture, however defined, was characteristic of many approaches in American anthropology, explicitly termed culturalist and symbolic, and most, if not all, operated on adopting language, cosmology, symbols, ideology, moral ethos, or other standards as distinctive features representative of culture. Although based on sources of cultural uniqueness and relative diversity, such definitions of the native’s point of view were not entirely synonymous with native discourses of culture themselves. As a concept, the native’s point of view was in other words not limited to the natives; it could be authored by anyone (namely alien anthropologists studying other cultures), as long as it was based on native sources or cultural codes, in contrast to facts and phenomena produced more typically by objective, materialist, or scientific modes of analysis. What made the native’s point of view distinctive as a culturalist theory of society was thus in essence its definition of culture and its method of analyzing it as a system of social relations. The fact that it was in theory not synonymous with native knowledge raises then relevant and significant questions about the nature of native knowledge, the extent to which this can be called native, the role of native academics in producing such knowledge, and its epistemological conditions. The debate regarding the native’s point of view was analytically distinct from, but nonetheless indirectly inf luenced, a parallel debate regarding the privileged position of the native anthropologist, at least in Western academia, studying his own society. The latter was less about the subjectivity of ethnographic interpretation than the positionality of ethnographic subjects in ethnographic analysis, of whatever genre. Reflexivity was often invoked here in reference to the presumed objective

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status of the (typically alien) anthropologist, but this objectivity was not entirely synonymous with the kind of materialistic approaches that first represented the object of interpretive critique and referred instead to the phenomenology of ethnographic engagement that characterized different ethnographic subjects and their objects of study, at least in the first instance. There are many dimensions of this kind of subjective positionality as well as different variations on the relevance of subjective engagement. While it is safe to say that positionality in such terms was for most part invoked by the Writing Culture debates of James Clifford and George Marcus that problematized the identity of ethnographic authority and championed the inclusion of indigenous voices, as well as other efforts, such as those of Rosaldo, to subjectivize experience in ethnographic writing, the privileging of native voices and native academics in the construction of anthropological knowledge is actually a multiple phenomenon that conflicts at many levels, while underlining the peculiarities of anthropology as a field of knowledge.3 While much of “the new ethnography” naively promoted the authenticity of native voices, which resulted in verbatim descriptions and unmediated narratives as the new genre of writing, others, such as the work of Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, have separated their own subjective identity from the theoretical enterprise of cultural analysis in a way that has largely legitimized their existence as different modes of writing and knowledge.4 At the same time, many native (diasporic) academics (in the West) have pointed to the hybrid nature of their own identities and the complicated nature of their ethnographic encounters, to which an outsider anthropologist seems immune, which suggested the need for more nuanced narratives and multiple readings.5 Others have written seriously on the seminal importance of reflexivity and the role of native anthropologists in clarifying the need to go beyond unmediated narratives and define the nature of “selfcultural anthropology” in order to develop a more nuanced postcolonial (politically accountable) positionality.6 The privileging of native ethnography in this regard, while admirably championing the value of authenticity and political reflexivity, seems ironically on the other hand to take for granted that the contribution of native (i.e. non-Western) anthropologists is primarily one of studying their own society, even as it runs counter to the usual textbook definition of anthropology as the study of other cultures. This paradox becomes evident, when one looks at the context of anthropology outside the West.7 Why or how has “native

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anthropology” (as an academic enterprise) become the study of the self, ironically in the global order of things?8 I raise the above questions to suggest that the notion of a native Chinese anthropology (i.e., as an academic discourse practiced in a local setting by native Chinese) may mean many different things, both polysemic and contradictory, to which I can add that the notions of local and native may be problematic, impure, or irrelevant by definition or in practice. Even as a historical formation, how are we so sure that its existence is unambiguous or that it can be meaningfully separated from academic discourse and practices elsewhere? Finally, are its Western or Chinese characteristics relevant at all? I assume that, by disciplinary formation of anthropology in 20th century China, one refers primarily to the existence of a discipline that is defined institutionally as such (through the recognition of explicit professional criteria) rather than to the traditions of learning or knowledge that happen to involve the study of non-literate or folk cultures. In the West, the development of anthropological thought as a discipline was influenced heavily by traditions of amateur folklorism and even more importantly the work of missionaries, which are still viewed as classical sources of traditional ethnography, so much so that one can easily posit a direct link between earlier traditions and later formation as thought and discipline. As for the disciplinary formation of anthropology in postwar Taiwan, insofar as one can trace its origins to the mainland during the Republican era, its institutional history as a profession is somewhat distinct from the traditions of ethnohistorical research or folklore studies on frontier minorities, which continue to inf luence ethnological and historical research today and constitute a substantial genre of knowledge. Anthropology’s disciplinary existence must be located in its development as academic institution per se, in which the appropriation of ethnographic knowledge of various kinds is really secondary and where its development, as mode of thinking and practice, can also be influenced by its direct relation to society and the state. In the context of academia (rather than knowledge per se), the question of what is local or native becomes problematic. Insofar as local academia is intertwined with its institutional development (defined professionally while interacting with society and politics), it would be difficult at the same time to characterize its nature and operation as inherently Chinese in any sense. With regard to native knowledge, despite being based on the scholarly description and study of folk or other cultures, I do not regard native anthropology as being ipso facto nativist,

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or vice versa, for reasons already spelled out. These are totally separate issues. Given its rootedness in empirical fieldwork and its study of other or just folk societies, anthropology is still above all the study of culture in society, for which its basis of knowledge and practice as a discipline can be defined by values or conceptual standards, as distinct from its rootedness in literal definitions and superficial practices noted above, although one cannot necessarily agree to how these values and standards are defined. Nonetheless, it is necessary to emphasize this in order to put forth the following points about the disciplinary formation of anthropology in Taiwan: 1) Its development as an institution has always been influenced more by politics than knowledge per se; 2) its development as knowledge or school of thought is framed more by its form than content in ways that ultimately reflect its ongoing relevance to wider political changes and societal mindsets and 3) only by locating local academia in the above terms can one properly understand what indigenization of the social sciences means exactly and critically assess its theoretical ramifications, especially in anthropology and psychology. Before unpacking this argument, one must explain the affinity of anthropology to psychology. Historically speaking, the theoretical trend toward indigenization in Taiwan is in large part a continuation of what was initially phrased the sinicization of the social and behavioral sciences in Taiwan. This influence has contributed most prominently to the emergence of the movement toward indigenous psychology, which contrasts with its relative waning in other social sciences. Nonetheless, its prominence and overlap with anthropology is connected to a commonly shared interface with the concept of culture. In many respects, the concern with culture and native conceptions has a longer and more complex history in psychology. More than in anthropology, psychology has been dominated by natural scientific theories as well as emphasis on psychic unities or human universalisms. The emergence of schools of cultural, cross-cultural, and indigenous psychology, respectively, represented attempts to deal with or integrate cultural diversity in the context of larger theoretical issues. While there are without doubt differences of thought within these different subfields, one might say that cross-cultural psychologists (like their anthropological counterparts) seem the most concerned with cultural diversity in terms of concrete beliefs and practices, as a means of reconciling its relationship to common psychological processes.9 Cultural psychologists, while concerned with cultural diversity, tend to be

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interested more in abstract levels of cultural mindsets.10 Indigenous psychology shares common beliefs with the above with regard to cultural diversity but tends to be more exclusively interested in the native sources of thought and behavior, in the genre perhaps of ethnoscience, and seems less concerned with psychic unities of any kind.11 In short, I ultimately wish to spell out the importance of a native’s point of view for anthropology, with ramifications for other social sciences, but can do so only by showing how anthropology has been inextricably politicized, to the extent that its knowledge is inseparable from its societal relevance, as a precondition for offering critical alternatives to native theory.

Disciplinary Formation in Postwar Taiwan in a Context of Nationalizing Mindsets I have in previous works detailed the historical formation of anthropology in postwar Taiwan from its origins in early modern China.12 It seems natural for one interested in the development of anthropology in non-Western countries to look first at the existence of “anthropological” work in these venues, then situate the content of these studies within a wider academic or other context. But as we know it now (as a profession), anthropology has evolved into a discipline that includes many other things. Given the nature of its professional diffusion, it is difficult to understand its intellectual history as a discipline apart from those institutional forces that have given birth to it and sustained its development. Even its genre as writing must be assessed in light of the functional embeddedness of the discipline within those institutions, not just as a function of its ability to portray native culture. From this perspective, the starting point for understanding the history of anthropology in postwar Taiwan is not necessarily the history of its content as anthropological writing but rather the history of institutions that created and fostered its development, within which one can begin to see the parameters of its writing as a genre. The history of the discipline there is made simple by the fact that the bulk of anthropological research has come from the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, and the Anthropology Department, National Taiwan University. The staff in both institutions graduated from the latter department, and many of the major figures in the discipline shared joint appointments in each

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other’s institution. Despite the postwar homogeneity of its practitioners, the discipline, as practiced, originated elsewhere, and the training of its founding fathers was initially the product of external influences and not a result of any native school of anthropology. A Brief Introduction to Academia Sinica, 1996, describes the history of the Institute of Ethnology (or IOE) as follows: Although formally established in 1965, the Institute of Ethnology traces its origin to 1928 when under the leadership of Academia Sinica’s President Cai Yuanpei, an Ethnology Section was set up in the Institute of Social Sciences in Mainland China. By 1934, the Ethnology Section was transferred to the Institute of History and Philology. Following the Republic of China’s move to Taiwan, a preparatory office of the Institute of Ethnology was founded in August 1955. Since this period, the Institute’s primary mission has been the study of sociocultural change among the island’s aborigines and Han Chinese. By the 1970s, the Institute was primarily composed of researchers from the fields of anthropology, sociology, and psychology.

Academia Sinica was modeled on L’Academie Francaise, and its historical founding was a creation d’etat. As Chen Shiwei described in detail, its establishment was part of Chiang Kai-shek’s effort to garner the support of intellectuals for his state-building program to buttress the Nanjing regime’s claim to political legitimacy.13 This legitimacy in turn gave Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培 and his cohorts the authority to determine the future agenda of China’s scientific institutionalization. Academia Sinica was thus the first institution born with the founding of the Nanjing regime. Cai had studied aesthetics and ethnology in Germany, and the founding of an Ethnology Section in the Institute of Social Science was the first institutional presence of anthropology in China. His choice of minzuxue 民族學 (ethnology) deliberately associated ethnos with nation, avoiding the Japanese term for anthropology (renleixue 人類學), which conventionally included the physical study of man.14 Cai’s own writings on the relationship of ethnology to sociology and social evolution show that the anthropology of primitive cultures and societies had important ramifications for nation-building.15 In 1934, Cai helped found the Chinese Ethnology Association (Zhongguo minzuxuehui 中國民族學會), then in 1936 its journal Ethnological Studies (Minzuxue yanjiu jikan 民組學研究集 刊). As Duara noted, the policy concerns of this journal were explicit.16 The editors were Huang Wenshan 黃文山 and Wei Huilin 衛惠林 (the latter became a prominent figure in Taiwan ethnology with his work on aboriginal cultures as professor of anthropology at National Taiwan

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University [or NTU] and research fellow at the IOE), and the nature and role of cultural-historical studies of non-Han minorities served as a focal point for debates on the relative desirability of assimilationalist and multiethnic policies in the broader project of Chinese nation-building that complemented more politically explicit debates in journals, such as Bianzheng gonglun 邊政公論 [Frontier Affairs], Yu gong 禹貢 [The Chinese Historical Geography], and Xinyaxiya 新亞細亞 [New Asia]. In sum, the combination of events that led to the founding of Academia Sinica in Nanjing, the explicit relevance of ethnology to nation-building politics, and the symbiotic relationship formed between intellectuals and officials in the public sphere provide a core framework for explaining the ongoing dynamics of anthropology in postwar Taiwan. Anthropology in Taiwan can be understood to be politicized in different senses, but the relationship between ethnology and nation-building can explain first of all the essential nature of anthropology there as a kind of area studies in a project of national learning rather than the study of the other in a project of Orientalism that seems to reflect Western academia. Politicization of anthropology did not mean that its literal content was ideologically colored. The nationalist impulse more precisely turned anthropological energies inward (self) rather than outward (the other). The methodologies and epistemologies that became relevant to this trend toward cultural introspection were a specific subset of theories or a limited notion of the field that reinforced its concrete nature as local area studies. These trends in local knowledge were distinct from the intellectual backgrounds that scholars themselves brought with them. There are structural consequences for social science and academia when prioritization of knowledge is allowed to turn increasingly inward as the basis of its “world view.” A brief perusal, for example, at the composition of institutes in humanities and social sciences at Academia Sinica, regarded as the highest academic institution in the country, is indicative of the ongoing intellectual mindset. A recent statistical tabulation of research staff in May 1998 of various institutes shows that (the Institute of) History and Philology has 58 full-time researchers, Modern Chinese History 49, Taiwan Field History 14, Social Sciences and Humanities (formerly called Institute for the Study of Sun Yat-sen’s “Three Principles”) 46, Chinese Literature and Philosophy 19, Euro-American Studies 34, Ethnology 28, Sociology 20, Economics 46, and Linguistics 12. There are in sum more Institutes for the study of Chinese history (four, if one includes a section of historians in the Institute of Social Sciences and

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Humanities) than there are historians in Academia Sinica who study the rest of the world. Despite the focus on social science disciplines in the Institutes of Ethnolog y, Economics, Linguistics, and Sociolog y, researchers there specialize typically on some aspect of Chinese society (Han and aboriginal Taiwan). Ironically, despite the origin of the Institute of Social Sciences and Humanities as a center devoted to the study of Sun Yat-sen’s Three Principles, it became a fertile arena for the study of Western thought, such as intellectual history and critical theory, which Taiwan mainstream academia viewed at the time as irrelevant to studies of one’s own society.17 “Western” theory was just an “applied” method. In effect, anthropology in Taiwan means from a native point of view anthropology of Taiwan. It may be viewed as a general matter of fact, but the importance of this definition cannot be understood in normal disciplinary terms. Its intellectual history must also be seen as part of this politicized world view. Tang Mei-chun 唐美君 first pointed out that Chinese anthropology on the mainland was represented by two schools of thought, “northern” and “southern.”18 The northern school, based at Yanjing University, was represented primarily by Fei Xiaotong 費孝通, Francis L. K. Hsu 許烺光, and Lin Yaohua 林耀華, whose community studies in rural China were influenced by their training in British social anthropology. The southern school was represented mostly by anthropologists, ethnohistorians, and archaeologists at Academia Sinica such as Li Chi 李濟, Ruey I-fu 芮逸夫, and Ling Shun-sheng 凌純聲. The latter group moved to Taiwan in the postwar era and established anthropology at National Taiwan University and Academia Sinica. Li Chi’s influence was the deepest, introducing American four-field anthropology at NTU. Ruey Yi-fu was a historian who did research on ethnic minorities. His ethnohistorical approach influenced his interest in classical Chinese culture and society. Ling Shun-sheng was a French-trained ethnographer whose interests were more cross-cultural, insofar as they spanned the origins of and relationships between Austronesian cultures and peoples. In short, there was little or nothing in the intrinsic intellectual content of anthropology as practiced by Chinese anthropologists (northern or southern school), given everyone’s diverse backgrounds, that linked it necessarily to a field of “national learning.” 19 Rather, it was the way in which anthropology was carried out as regime of practice, both as mode of empirical fieldwork and in its operation as academic institution (with linkages to other socio-political institutions), that characterized its tradition to this day. In a similar vein, the colonial legacy of Japanese ethnographic studies

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on Taiwan became appropriated less for its intellectual influences than simply as sources of data for the study of Taiwan.20 In retrospect, instead of theory (textbook wisdom) defining practice, in Taiwan practice forged a tradition of anthropological thought. Native discourses on anthropology in Taiwan unconsciously mimic its embeddedness in the evolution of “national learning.” In his retrospective of forty years of anthropology in Taiwan, Chen Chi-lu 陳奇祿, one of the main personages linked with the founding of anthropology at NTU, cited as key features of its history a long heritage of Austronesian and Chinese peoples in Taiwan, the contributions of scholars from the mainland who established and developed the two main centers of anthropological research in Taiwan, the anthropology department at NTU and Academia Sinica’s IOE, and then the research done on Taiwan during the colonial era by Japanese scholars. Next, he noted the achievements of a later generation of scholars in Taiwan, first in the archaeology and ethnography of Taiwan’s aboriginal peoples, then on ethnic Chinese communities, bolstered by work done by American and British colleagues. As Chen noted, “Rapid cultural and social changes have transformed aboriginal societies from ‘closed’ to ‘open’ status and made them less ‘exotic’ or less ‘interesting.’ This may be part of the reasons for anthropologists to shift their interest to their own society.” 21 He closed by noting the shift in Taiwan’s anthropology from a humanistic to social science focus and the contributions of anthropology to national reconstruction, which he promoted as the first Minister to chair the Committee for Cultural Development (Wenhua jianshe weiyuanhui 文化建設委員會). From Chen’s description, it is clear that anthropology’s achievements as a discipline was a less explicit concern than its applied or concrete societal contributions. Li Yih-yuan 李亦園, another authority in Taiwan anthropology who fostered the development of IOE at Academia Sinica, offered a slightly different picture of anthropology’s development in the past forty years and viewed changes there as a general transition from descriptive ethnography to a comprehensive social anthropology.22 Li called the first phase of Chinese anthropology in postwar Taiwan (1949–1965) “a period of traditional ethnographic approach” whose descriptive nature had to do with the urgency of preserving the heritage of tribal peoples, which explains the use of a cultural-historical approach adopted by most firstgeneration ethnographers.23 Li termed the second phase (1965–1987) “a period of integrative social science approach.” 24 This included a shift to

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the study of Chinese society and overseas Chinese societies; the Choshui River Project, which was a collaboration between anthropologists at IOE and Yale, led by K. C. Chang; and several interdisciplinary projects that produced most notably an edited book entitled The Character of the Chinese (Zhongguo ren de xingge 中國人的性格) and a series of works prompted by the publication of an anthology entitled Sinicization of the Social and Behavioral Sciences (Shehui ji xingwei kexue de Zhongguohua 社 會及行為科學的中國化). Li termed the third phase (1987 to the present) “a period of emerging interpretive approach.” 25 This was the most tentative of the three phases but, according to Li, covered Chuang Ying-chang’s 莊 英章 comparative study of Hokkien customs and cultures in Taiwan and Fujian, Wang Sung-hsing’s 王崧興 interest in Han and non-Han interactions, Hsu Mu-tsu’s 許木柱 studies of biological and cultural affinities among Austronesians in Taiwan and Southeast Asia, and Huang Yingkuei’s 黃應貴 work on cultural categories of person, things, and space. Li’s description of anthropological trends in Taiwan accented the shift from a cultural-historical to behavioral-social scientific to humanistic-interpretive model. Moreover, Li’s “history” reflected also the implicit nature of anthropology in Taiwan as an ethnographically-based area studies, which was in practice tied prima facie to its relevance to local Taiwan society. In this sense, the later interest in overseas Chinese and Austronesian societies in Southeast Asia was in effect a sinocentric extension in a project of national learning and not anthropology per se, which (despite its accent on primitive others) has been typically worldly in orientation. It was in the context of national learning that the methodological distinctiveness (by Taiwan definition) of anthropology vis-à-vis other fields as an ethnographic knowledge enterprise became most pronounced. This was the kind of division of labor that marked anthropology, sociology, and psychology in this integrative phase that Li described, where anthropologists conducted fieldwork, sociologists crunched numbers, and psychologists abstracted. It resembled but in fact contrasted with the integration of Harvard’s Department of Social Relations (where Li studied). The focus in Taiwan’s anthropology on study of its own society was a function of local academia’s link to the state and its relevance to public currents, not disciplinarity per se. Despite the significant contributions of Chinese anthropologists in having developed the field of anthropology in Taiwan, one must then wonder why Huang Ying-kuei, in his retrospective of the development of anthropology in postwar Taiwan, attacked its poverty on the grounds of

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its apparent mindlessness or superficial arbitrariness in mimicking Western theoretical trends. 26 He noted perceptively that, despite the efforts of native anthropological scholars on Taiwan, the radical shift in focus from Taiwan aboriginal studies to research on Chinese society in mainstream Taiwan anthropology was prompted more by trendy emulation of a new wave of sinological anthropology promoted by Westerners (Bernard Gallin, Morton Fried, Burton Pasternak, Arthur Wolf, G. William Skinner, etc.), than by any systematic shift in theoretical paradigm or sophistication in social scientific approach.27 The severity of his criticism was prompted in my view not just by his low assessment of Taiwan anthropologists, for reasons which were made clear in great detail in his essay, but also for his equally low assessment of (Western) sinological anthropology, in the sense that it did not really reflect more significant developments in anthropology as a whole. There are merits in Huang’s criticism, much of which became a basis for his own style of anthropology, but it is necessary to point out, in relevance to the discussion here, what he regarded as the pitfalls of native anthropology in Taiwan. First for him was its lack of systematic accumulation of empirical data, which was the basis for any long-term ethnographic study. Second was its superficial application of theories to empirical research. Third was the lack of cross-cultural comparison that tied ethnographic work to related ethnic groups. Fourth was lack of a macro-perspective that marred broader synthesis in regional or historical terms. The fifth was the existence of institutional barriers, mostly fiscal and political, that constituted obstacles to basic scientific research. The sixth was its emulation of trends in Western anthropology instead of a reliance on indigenous perspectives. Among other things, it is evident from Huang’s paper that the work of local native anthropologists should not be taken for granted ipso facto as “nativistic,” as is usually assumed to be the case by many Western anthropologists. Anthropologists in Taiwan would acknowledge most of Huang’s criticisms, but poor quality of scholarship, which is his main critique of Taiwan anthropology, was not, in my view, just the result of poor (material or intellectual) resources, as though one could improve quality by raising objective standards in the areas he outlined. Something more basic to the way in which anthropology in Taiwan was practiced inscribed its discursive possibilities of being and becoming, set the standards that the system used to foster and evaluate it, then demanded societal relevance, often at the expense of theory, which reified its nature as local area studies.

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Sinicization of the Social Sciences, or How Is It Possible to Know Culture? What Huang and others in Taiwan do not question is the fact that anthropology is essentially a fieldwork enterprise. The question that should be addressed in this regard is, what is it about the tradition of field ethnography, as it has been practiced there, that drives the system as a whole, then perpetuates a specific mindset that makes it prone to the kind of theoretical failures and narrowness to which Huang alludes? It is important to note that almost all of Huang’s criticisms center upon methodological weaknesses instead of epistemological problems. That is to say, he is not questioning the nature or scope of anthropological inquiry that is practiced there; he is simply saying that it is not scientific or rigorous enough. Thus, to what kind of ethnographic tradition is one referring, if not just local area studies? What defines its discursive parameters and prioritizes the goal of its research and teaching? Finally, what implications does this have for the study of culture, especially from native perspectives? In the previous section, I went to great lengths to characterize the development of anthropology in Taiwan in the context of its institutional history, not simply to underscore the primacy of disciplinary practices in the formation of anthropological thought there as a means of highlighting the inf luence of the state and nationalizing mindsets in the appropriation of knowledge but also to suggest some basic differences between local academic discourse on Chinese culture or society and the native’s point of view, as an epistemology of cultural or symbolic anthropology advocated in mainstream theory. Using anthropology in Taiwan as an example, one can see that native (local) scholars do not necessarily advocate nativist theories (discourses promoting a native point of view); theirs have in fact been no different from the Western theories (ranging from pure ethnographic description to Boasian, Parsonian, and other theoretical approaches) prevalent to the discipline as a whole. Their emphasis on fieldwork as a mode of methodological practice is also common to the explicit division of labor that has characterized the disciplinary divide elsewhere. Yet underlying Huang’s criticism of his local colleagues vis-à-vis his Western counterparts was less his promotion of a specific brand of interpretive or scientific approach than his contention that native academics “can do better” in developing a local knowledge that on the one hand benefits from a more intimate and long-term

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engagement with one’s own society, while on the other hand resisting easy mimicking of trendy theories from Western anthropologists. Sensitivity to indigenous conceptions was the last but hardly the most important of his criticisms and implicitly pointed to the advantageous position of the local scholar in studying his own society, at least as a point of departure. The fact that the native academic, as insider, has an a priori advantage in the factual knowledge of his society is incontestable, but his construction of such knowledge can be problematic too. The sinicization of the social and behavioral sciences was an influential intellectual movement in Taiwan during the 1980s that included to some extent the work of Chinese-speaking academics elsewhere and culminated in a widely read and cited collection of essays of the same name.28 It was prompted by the publication in 1982 of a volume of essays by nineteen scholars from eight disciplines (to be precise, six sociologists, four anthropologists, three psychologists, two political scientists, one philosopher, one historian, one economist, and one pedagogist). It was one of the few books that was not only seriously influential in academia but also became a popular best seller. The guiding principles that motivated the book, as articulated in the introduction, were probably more ambitious than the essays themselves, judging by their content. As was clearly acknowledged at the outset, modern social scientific knowledge derived largely from the West and was to a large extent predicated also on its relevance to the study of the modern West. As most social scientists in Taiwan were also professionally either trained in the West or educated in those academic traditions, they recognized in turn that many of these Western theories and methods were ill-suited to the study of Chinese society. This crisis then became the point of departure for critical reflection of their intrinsic Westernization and the need to develop their own models for the study of their own society. Sinicization in this sense can be seen as “postcolonial” in intent, insofar as it was predicated on the “Western” nature of social theory rather than its presumed scientific objectivity. By rallying native “Chinese” scholars to this cause, it also suggested that such sinicization was best promoted by native scholars and not inherently relevant to Western social scientists studying China. Finally, if some form of native theory was the ultimate goal of sinicization, it is clear that this resulted less from a spirit of primordial nativism than a recognition that a sinicized social science was still embedded a priori in a general (worldly) social scientific tradition. If anything, one can contrast the sinicizing impulse here, as a discursive formation, with

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its absence in traditional fields of sinology, such as Chinese literature and history, which seem immune to the need to rely on theories of any kind. Nonetheless, the complex elements making up this discourse of sinicization, as well as the factors underlying its emergence and formulation, deserve careful scrutiny, especially in contrast to the notions of native theory already outlined above. At least in principle, sinicization here was meant both to develop a new framework for the study of Chinese society that relied in content on native concepts while at the same time being espoused by native scholars. Developing native concepts meant both rejecting Western terms that originated from their embeddedness in Western society in favor of Chinese terms as well as the development of one’s own social scientific style. “Social science with Chinese characteristics” referred to two different levels of abstraction. In practice, it is more difficult to determine when any concept is inherently Western (as though culturally colored or socially embedded) or scientifically objective (as ref lective of a value standard). Style on the other hand really meant its distinctive difference vis-à-vis mainstream academia that was not necessarily dependent on the native authenticity of its concepts. Secondly, the fact that sinicization was at the same time a rallying call for native Chinese scholars seemed to reiterate the assumption that only native scholars, through familiar and intimate knowledge of their own culture and society, were capable, if not best suited, to define native knowledge. Finally, I argue that the extensive influence of sinicization in Taiwan social scientific circles and its positive impact in public intellectual circles at that time also had to do with the general current of sinicization that pervaded the political defense of Chinese tradition and the KMT’s hegemonic promotion of Chinese cultural renaissance, which led among other things to state-sponsored social movements, the ideological inculcation of conservative Confucianism, the sanitization or eradication of superstitious folk traditions and popular religions of various kinds, and the preservation of traditional language, civilization, and other national treasures from Western corruption and Communist vilification. Despite its postcolonial sentiments and its attempt to transcend its Westernized origins, sinicization of the social sciences in Taiwan represented less in the first instance (despite its explicit declarations) a systematic critique of specific theoretical currents (i.e. French structuralism vs. British functionalism) than a general reification of a politically relevant (and correct) mindset that became articulated intellectually.

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The contents of the various essays were widely divergent in their ability to “sinicize” social scientific concepts. Indigenization in this sense (given social science’s embeddedness to general knowledge) involved to some extent de-Westernization, which is above all a value judgment. Despite the legitimate intentions of the project as a whole, my reading of many of the essays found little difference or originality in various authors’ attempts to transcend such concepts as logical method, critical reflexivity, historical modernization, world system theory, hermeneutic knowledge, or social structure. Other writers in the volume emphasized the need to focus on native terms of social scientific concepts, whether they were encoded in language or distinctive phenomena, such as bao (reciprocity) or guanxi 關係 (connectedness), while for still others sinicization involved more contrast between cultural approaches, such as Chinese and Western styles of business management, medical and health practices, power values, etc. In short, recognition of Chinese distinctiveness did not always yield new sinicized theories. In the long run, sinicization as intellectual movement did not really make a permanent imprint on social sciences in Taiwan, and its influence varied in different fields. Despite the avid participation by sociologists and anthropologists initially, I think its impact was largely superficial. Sociologists were generally the most modern in orientation, and sinicization did not stem the increasing fervor for statistical surveys, policy studies, and social organizational analysis, which became the dominant themes of sociological research and teaching in Taiwan. Anthropologists on the other hand were more varied in their special interests, and while most continued to pursue intensive studies of culture of all kinds, few if any in Taiwan seriously pursued sinicization or indigenization as a theoretical approach. In political science, business, education, health, and medicine, I think it is safe to say that, despite the explicit attention to comparative approaches and studies, few people approached sinicization or indigenization as a kind of ethnoscience that directly challenged their reliance on general social science models. Psychology was the sole exception that continued to seriously pursue native epistemology as theory. Its efforts coincided with theoretical developments in mainstream psychology, as was detailed at the outset, but I think there was a stronger link between the sinicization movement of the 1980s and the advent of indigenous psychology in the 1990s, continuing to the present. The change from sinicization to indigenization is both the adoption of a term already in general disciplinary usage and a reflection of the

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negative meaning of sinicization in 1990s Taiwan, which referred increasingly to mainland China, in contrast to the indigenizing trends of a multicultural (subethnic) Taiwan. In substance, however, there was little evidence of any change in cultural referent in these two phases of psychological theory. As an institutional formation, indigenous psychology concretized its presence with the founding of the journal Bentu xinlixue yanjiu 本土心理學研究. Although the Chinese title meant “research in indigenous psychology,” its English title was rendered as “Indigenous Psychological Research in Chinese Societies.” As Yang Kuo-shu 楊國樞, founding editor of the journal, stated in the preface to the inaugural issue, the publication of this journal was the fruition of fifteen years of discussion and planning.29 In large part, it systematically shaped ideas that Yang in particular had developed in those preceding years and at the same time helped to rally the work of others along similar lines of thought. Intellectually, it was an extension of principles already spelled out over ten years ago in the book Sinicization of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, co-edited by him, with the goal of explicitly linking the work of scholars in all Chinese-speaking societies. Although the journal centered on psychology, its emphasis was more on indigenization as theory and could include research in other social sciences. Its explicit focus on Chinese societies in this regard was an implicit call for Chinese-speaking scholars to rethink research in their own society in a way that rejected the “blind application of Western concepts and methods.” As indigenous theory, it aimed to be multidimensional in approach rather than prioritize one kind of cultural method over another. Finally as a scholarly endeavor, this emphasis on native epistemology should not be mistaken for a nationalistic ideology; it avoided ethnocentrism and welcomed contributions by non-Chinese scholars. Its ultimate goal was to establish indigenous theory as a legitimate, constructive approach to cultural psychology and in other social sciences as well. Although works in indigenous psychology were not limited to this journal, the journal nonetheless took an active role in promoting research under this banner, through publication in particular of three special issues devoted to “The development of indigenous psychology” (Bentu xinlixue de kaizhan 本土心理學的開展), Volume 1 (1993), “The methodology of indigenous psychology” (Bentu xinlixue fangfalun 本土心理學方 法論), Volume 8 (1997), and “Innovations and advances in indigenous psychology” (Bentu xinlixue de chuangxin yu chaoyue 本圖心理學的創新與 超越), Volume 22 (2004). A two-volume handbook entitled Huaren bentu

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xinlixue 華人本土新理學 [Chinese indigenized psychology], edited by Yang Kuo-shu, Hwang Kwang-kuo 黃光國, and Yang Chung-fang 楊中芳, was published later. 30 It was a volume of original essays systematically covering themes like the history of indigenous psychology, its methodology and theories, distinctive features of Chinese society, notably family and face relationships, and finally sections devoted to interpersonal relations, moral values and change, and organizational psychology and behavior. While this two volume book should not be viewed as the definitive statement of indigenous psychological research in Chinese societies, special attention should be paid to the ways, if any, the authors promote perspectives that are different from the prevailing literature and the way certain social or cultural phenomena are highlighted as being distinctive features of Chinese society. Both are ultimately relevant to an assessment of how indigenous psychology differs from previous research in Chinese psychology and how it compares with the literature advocating indigenous psychology in other societies.31 Limitations of space prevent me from reviewing systemically the diverse publications associated with indigenous psychology here, but a comparison with Geertz’s native point of view and indigenous psychology in general reveals similar weaknesses. In Geertz’s case, his methodology of thick “description” relied in fact on a “deep” epistemology that was never clearly spelled out. In other words, while locating society’s uniqueness in culture, he rarely justified his choice of “core symbols.” The takeit-or-leave-it character of Geertzian analysis and its absence of politics prompted the Writing Culture debates in the first place. Indigenous psychology relies on a more literal recognition of culture but has the same absence of politics.

Indigenization as Cultural Critique: Depoliticization as Method Intellectual developments in Taiwan’s anthropological and psychological circles say much about native academia, both in regard to the content of indigenous theory as well as the role of native scholars in defining a distinctive style vis-à-vis mainstream academic discourse that includes indigenous discourse and other schools of thought. I went to great lengths to trace the development of sinicization and indigenization of the social sciences in Taiwan in order to suggest first of all that there are subtle differences with similar mainstream theories, whether they be in the

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general domain of symbolic anthropology or cultural psychology, in addition to shared omissions, namely its relative failure to recognize politics in the content of any such epistemology and its formation as institutional, disciplinary practice. The absence of politics in its epistemology and our naïve perception of academic discourse as being immune from its societal relevance and embeddedness in nation-state processes are analytically distinct factors that are intertwined in practice. Moreover, the question of where politics enters knowledge and infiltrates the practice of academia in the definition of its research ultimately involves the critical subjectivity of the analyst or how we as individuals position ourselves within our own contexts of knowledge formation and institutional operation as thinkers and academics. It is relatively easy to criticize the pitfalls of indigenous theory in general, especially as a kind of solipsism. While one can in principle extol the virtue of any description of native facts and its interpretation against misreading and corruption by alien concepts and theories, it is not entirely apparent why any theory should be limited to the use of native concepts. In the case of Geertz, his epistemological discovery of the native’s point of view was hampered by his difficulty in articulating how he legitimized the explanatory primacy of one set of symbols over another as well as his interest only in defining epitomizing “core symbols.” Yet despite the primordial reference to culture, his construction of the cultural system was anything but native and was really a function of interpretation. As for indigenous psychology in Taiwan, one sees a concrete reference to more literal concepts of culture and language, but the modes of abstraction do not tend to differ much from the formal methods and analytical tools general to psychology as a whole. Lastly, in both cases culture is largely normative by definition. As a theoretical solipsism, indigenous theory is mistaken in its criticism of “Western” theory. As we know it today, theory (especially in the classical era) really began as critiques of their own society, whether it is called a reflection on modernity or capitalism, which explains theory’s social relevance. The boundaries between cultural and objective articulation are in any event difficult to define, but more importantly this is a value judgment and not one of being native. It is interesting to note that, in his critique of Taiwan anthropology, Huang Ying-kuei, who does not claim to promote an exclusively indigenous theory of anthropology, has in his own work always advocated a deep structural, interpretive brand of anthropology. In contrast to his

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colleagues, his approach has been informed by his wide reading of the anthropological literature on other societies and its prevailing theories. Despite anthropology’s devotion to the intensive study of a culture and its attempt at least at the level of factual description to rely on native data and sources, the construction of any ethnographic knowledge is not just limited to pure assimilation of native facts but can be meaningfully contrasted to similar knowledge elsewhere. This is what Wang Mingming 王銘銘 aptly terms “the third eye.”32 The subjectivity of the worldly anthropologist in this regard differs from one practitioner to another, but from another perspective it separates the professional anthropologist from any folklorist or scholar of local culture and their work as well as the discursive regimes in which they are embedded. In our analysis of that academic formation, one should take as one’s epistemological point of departure the recognition that those regimes of knowledge are in the first instance embedded just as intimately in academia in general as in those local institutions to which they are affiliated in routine practice, despite our casual reference to native academia, and the separateness that they claim vis-à-vis the mainstream (especially in their primary participation in local circles and publication for a predominantly Chinese audience). Discursive formation, of the nativist brand or otherwise, is still a function of the embeddedness of local academia in the world. Native epistemologies aside, I think much more can be said about reference to native phenomena in the construction of the Chinese social world. Prior to the advent of indigenous theory, scholars of all kinds have been engaged in the study of Chinese society, with various degrees of reference to or intimacy with native phenomena and conceptions. An ideal case in point of relevance to both anthropology and psychology is the Chinese notion of face, including the more current debate over guanxi. One of the inf luential works that contributed to the surge of interest in indigenous psychology was Hwang Kwang-kuo’s analysis of face, guanxi, and renqing, which was an abridged version of his 1985 paper in Chinese. 33 While it is clear from his analysis that Chinese cultural behavior required a nuanced understanding of face, guanxi, and renqing from an indigenous point of view, the rational construction of behavior in this regard involved for him the abstraction of these concrete cultural nuances in the form of rational strategic calculation that could be ultimately expressed in the form of flow charts and decision-making choices. That is to say, the power game is really about power in the abstract instead of the embeddedness of cultural phenomena in changing power

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contexts. I emphasize power in the concrete here, because as I have argued elsewhere that there are few examples where cultural phenomena are divorced from their embeddedness in the political. 34 The case of guanxi is particularly relevant. As a phenomenon, it is common to all Chinese societies, even though from the scholarly literature one gets the impression that it is particularly endemic to the PRC, particularly in the post-Mao era. While I think that it is important to distinguish the phenomenon of guanxi from its problematic, which has invoked its own discourse about its culturally distinctive features, I raise this particular example to show that, in many discourses of indigenous theory, ranging from Geertz to nativist ones, one finds the curious inability to recognize or account for the embeddedness of culture in ongoing politics or changing social conditions. In psychology, I surmise that politics in the concrete runs counter to some degree to psychological abstraction and formal generalization. In anthropology, political pollution finds little place generally in theories tending to emphasize systematicity and functionality. Politics in cultural phenomena that constitute the object of social scientific analysis is, however, distinct from the politics that is an endemic aspect of academia and its construction of knowledge, as I detailed in my description of the development of anthropology in Taiwan. Despite our tendency to view knowledge as value-free and academia as immune from political institutionalization and engagement, nothing is further from the truth. Academia has never been free; this is even more so in the case of China. One must as a point of departure regard academic discourse as a function of this larger framework. While academia does not sway to the whims of political ideology anymore, it is still conditioned in more subtle ways by waves of political correctness or the desirability to conform to the public mainstream. At a more abstract level, the content of knowledge may seem to be immune from politicizing pressure, but the form and practice of disciplinary knowledge can and does evolve in tune to changing institutional landscapes in ways that make its knowledge socially relevant. Whether history as a discipline is “a sign of the modern” in Dirks’ terms, at the service of the nation-state, or whether social science as normalizing knowledge is the product of an evolving disciplinary regime, as in Foucault, and the need to know and regulate society, disciplinary formations everywhere are more likely to be intertwined with society than detached from it, as depicted in the fiction of

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the ivory tower.35 All this should raise even more salient questions about the role of the academic in society in the production of knowledge. The third eye in my opinion is not just the impartial observer of an anthropology whose worldliness is an important corrective to the solipsism of nativist knowledge, but it can also embody the critical subjectivity of a detached analyst whose knowledge production can be used to contest political hegemony of all kinds.36

Cultural Critique as Theory: When Has Theory Not Been Indigenous? Indigenous discourse in anthropology and psychology is predicated on the misleading illusion that theory is culturally Western. All theory, especially from the classical formative era, began as social and political critiques of their specific cultural condition, whether it be called modernity or utilitarian capitalism. Modern theory formalized these cultural critiques into a set of abstractions that became reified as objective only with the advent of the social sciences. As Immanuel Wallerstein noted, the intellectual division of labor that bore the social science disciplines was in large part institutionalized by the dominant liberal ideology of the 19th century that reflected the separate domains of state and market and their particular logics.37 The call to indigenize social theory is thus an oxymoron, because social science as we know it today is itself an abstraction rooted in concrete and local social experience. This is not to say that all theory is inherently cultural but rather to suggest that we are far from fully understanding when theory is culturally rooted (i.e. Western) and when it can represent a set of value-neutral standards. Tom Nairn said this about the ethnic (cultural) character of philosophy: The true subject of modern philosophy is nationalism, not industrialization; the nation, not the steam engine and the computer. German philosophy (including Marxism) was about Germany in its age of difficult formation; British empiricism was about the Britons during their period of free trade and primitive industrial hegemony; American pragmatism was about the expansion of U.S. democracy after the closure of the Frontier; French existentialism manifested the stalemate of 1789 Republicanism after its 20th century defeats—and so on. What philosophy was “about” in that sense has never been just “industrialization” (contra Ernest Gellner) but the specific deep-communal structures perturbed or challenged by modernization in successive ethnies, and experienced by thinkers as “the world.”38

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Regarding the question of whether one can develop an indigenous theory, theory has always been a deep structural reflection of the local. But the possibilities of theory are in fact limitless, precisely because it is not limited to the traditional boundaries of cultural thought, even though all concepts are rooted in concrete local social experience. Indigenous academia is a prisoner of its own societal embeddedness, and this is a greater threat to theory. If one can separate the unboundedness of theory from the entangled relationship of academia (as an institution) to the complex hegemony imposed by its relevance to state and society, I would argue that the emancipation of a truly critical theory must to some extent involve liberating oneself from the way in which outside forces have shaped the disciplines in their own interest then in turn condition the role of academics in the production of knowledge. Most academics have unconsciously accepted their role in the institutional production of knowledge and thus are to some extent complicit. Knowledge does not have to be societally complicit, especially in the way it conforms to social sensibilities and political correctness; this complicity inhibits its critical function and affects our ability to define the nature and relevance of theory in practice.

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Clifford Geertz, “From the Native’s Point of View: On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding,” Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 28.1 (1974), pp. 26–45. Clifford Geertz, “Thick Description: Notes toward a Theory of Culture,” in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), pp. 3–30. James A. Clifford and George E. Marcus, eds., Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Renato Rosaldo, “Grief and the Headhunter’s Rage,” in Text, Play, and Story, ed. E. M. Bruner (Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association, 1984), pp. 178–195. Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, “Native Anthropologists,” American Ethnologist 11.3 (1984), pp. 584–586. Following up on Abu-Lughod’s notion of “halfies” (Lila Abu Lughod, “Writing against Culture,” in Recapturing Anthropology: Working in the Present, ed. Richard G. Fox [Santa Fe: School of American Research Press, 1991], pp. 137–162) and Narayan’s questioning of how native a “native” anthropologist really is (Kirin Narayan, “How Native is a ‘Native’ Anthropologist?” American Anthropologist 95.3 [1993], pp. 671–686), Halstead, for example, advocates an ongoing shift between insider and outsider positionings as a viable mode of ethnographic encounter that serves as a constructive basis for writing (Narmala Halstead, “Ethnographic Encounters: Positionings within and outside the Insider Frame,” Social Anthropology 9.3 [2001], pp. 307–321). See also native reflexivity in Lamita Jacobs-Huey, “The Natives Are Gazing and Talking Back: Reviewing the Problematics of Positionality, Voice, and Accountability among ‘Native’ Anthropologists,” American Anthropologist 104.3 (2002), pp. 791–804 and the peculiar “insider” predicaments precipitated by what Behar terms “the vulnerable observer” (Ruth Behar, The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology That Breaks Your Heart [Boston: Beacon, 1996]). Sonia Ryang, “Ethnography or Self-cultural Anthropology? Reflections on Writing about Ourselves,” Dialectical Anthropology 25 (2000), pp. 297–320. Mariza G. S. Peirano, “When Anthropology is at Home: The Different Contexts of a Single Discipline,” Annual Review of Anthropology 27 (1998), pp. 105–128. Not coincidentally, what Messerschmidt (D. A. Messerschmidt, ed., Anthropologists at Home in North America: Methods and Issues in the Study of One’s Own Society [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981]) and Jackson (A. Jackson, ed., Anthropology at Home [London: Tavistock, 1987]) term “anthropology at home” refers really to Western anthropologists studying Western society, an aberration of the norm. However, if that is the case, why do we assume that “native” (non-Western) anthropologists ipso facto only study their own society?

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Paradigmatic works in cross-cultural psychology include John W. Berry, Human Ecology and Cognitive Style: Comparative Studies in Cultural and Psychological Adaptation (New York: Wiley, 1976); G. Hofstede, Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values (Berkeley Hills: Sage, 1980); and Henry C. Triandis, Individualism and Collectivism (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995). The most ardent proponents in cultural psychology are Richard A. Shweder, Thinking through Cultures: Expeditions in Cultural Psychology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), Patricia M. Greenfield, “Culture as Process: Empirical Methods for Cultural Psychology,” and J. G. Miller, “Theoretical Issues in Cultural Psychology,” in Handbook of Cross-Cultural Psychology, ed. J. W. Berry et al., 2nd ed., 5 Vols. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1997), Vol. 1, pp. 301–476 and pp. 85–128, respectively. Representative works advocating indigenous psychology include Uichol Kim and John W. Berry, Indigenous Psychologies: Experience and Research in Cultural Context (Newbury Park: Sage, 1993) and Yang Kuo-shu, “Indigenizing Westernized Chinese Psychology,” in Working at the Interface of Cultures: Eighteen Lives in Social Science, ed. Michael H. Bond (London: Routledge, 1997), pp. 62–76. A collection of essays edited by Uichol Kim, Kuo-shu Yang, and Kwang-kuo Hwang, Indigenous and Cultural Psychology: Understanding People in Context (New York: Springer, 2006) applies indigenous approaches to aspects of cultural psychology. See Allen Chun, “From Text to Context: How Anthropology Makes Its Subject,” Cultural Anthropology 15.4 (2001), pp. 570–595, in particular. A slightly different version of the same argument appeared in Allen Chun, “The Politics and Poetics of Anthropological Area Studies in Postwar Taiwan,” Inter-Asia: An International Journal of Cultural Studies 2.2 (2001), pp. 221–245. Chen Shiwei 陳時偉, “Legitimizing the State: Politics and the Founding of Academia Sinica in 1927,” Papers in Chinese History 6 (spring 1997), pp. 32–38. Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培, “Shuo minzuxue” 說民族 [On ethnology], in Cai Yuanpei minzuxue lunzhu 蔡元培民族學論著 [Ethnographic writings of Cai Yuanpei], ed. Zhongguo minzu xuehui 中國民族學會 [Chinese Ethnological Association] (Taipei: Zhonghua Book Company, 1962), p. 1. Cai Yuanpei 蔡元培, “Shehuixue yu minzuxue” 社會學與民族學 [Sociology and ethnology] (1930) and “Minzuxueshang zhi jinhuaguan” 民族學上之進 化觀 [The evolutionary view in ethnology] (1933), both in Cai Yuanpei minzuxue lunzhu. Prasenjit Duara, Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and the East Asian Modern (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2003), p. 193. Allen Chun, “An Oriental Orientalism: The Paradox of Tradition and Modernity in Nationalist Taiwan,” History and Anthropology 9.4 (1995), pp. 39–41.

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Tang Mei-chun 唐美君, “Renleixue zai Zhongguo” 人類學在中國 [Anthropology in China], Renlei yu wenhua 人類與文化 7.9 (1976). The anthropological literature written in Taiwan is too large to be considered in its entirety here. The relevant questions to be asked are, what tradition of scholarship developed here, and what were the respective influences of theory and empirical study in the cultivation of subsequent generations of academic research in Taiwan? Extensive ethnographic surveys conducted by the Japanese among Han and especially aboriginal populations mirrored the encyclopedic studies of village life done in north China under the auspices of the South Manchurian Railway. One might argue that their intentions were explicitly colonialist, but the data speaks largely for itself. Chen Chi-lu, “The Development of Anthropology in Taiwan during the Past Four Decades,” in Anthropological Studies of the Taiwan Area: Accomplishments and Prospects, ed. Chang Kuang-chih et al. (Taipei: National Taiwan University Press, 1989), p. 12. Li Yih-yuan 李亦園, “Minzuzhixue yu shehuirenleixue: Taiwan renleixue yu fazhan de ruogan qushi” 民族學與社會人類學：台灣人類學與發展的若干趨勢 [From ethnography to social anthropology: Notes on the development of anthropological research in Taiwan], Qinghua xuebao 清華學報 [Tsinghua Journal of Chinese Studies] (Hsinchu) 23.4 (1993), pp. 341–359. Li Yih-yuan 李亦園, “Studies of Anthropology in Taiwan: A Personal View,” paper presented at Conference on the Development of Anthropology in Taiwan, 20–22 March 1997, Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, pp. 3–6. Ibid., pp. 6–12. Ibid., pp. 12–18. Huang Ying-kuei 黃應貴, “Guangfu hou Taiwan diqu renleixue yanjiu de fazhan” 光復後台灣地區人類學研究的發展 [The development of anthropological study in Taiwan, 1949–82], Zhongyang yanjiuyuan minzuxue yanjiusuo jikan 中央研究院民族學研究所集刊 [Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica] 55 (1983), pp. 105–146. Actually, the paper by the sociologist Chen Shao-hsing 陳紹馨, “Zhongguo shehui wenhua yanjiu de shiyanshi—Taiwan” 中國社會文化研究的實驗室─ 台灣 [Taiwan as a laboratory for the study of Chinese society and culture], Zhongyang yanjiuyuan minzuxue yanjiusuo jikan 中央研究院民族學研究所集 刊 [Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica] 22 (1966), pp. 1–14, advocating field research in Taiwan as a venue for the study of Chinese society (as an alternative to mainland China) was influential among scholars as well. Yang Kuo-shu 楊國樞 and Wen Chung-i 文崇一, eds., Shehui ji xingwei kexue de Zhongguohua 社會及行為科學的中國化 [The Sinicization of the Social and Behavioral Sciences] (Taipei: Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, 1982)

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was an interdisciplinary volume of essays by scholars in Taiwan and Hong Kong that influenced mainstream academia. Yang Kuo-shu 楊國樞, “Fa kan ci” 發刊詞 [Preface to the inaugural issue], Bentu xinlixue yanjiu 本土心理學研究 [Indigenous psychological research in Chinese societies] 1 (1993), p. 1. Yang Kuo-shu 楊國樞, Hwang Kwang-kuo 黃光國, and Yang Chung-fang 楊中 芳, eds., Huaren bentu xinlixue 華人本土心理學 [Chinese indigenous psychology], 2 Vols. (Taipei: Yuanliu, 2005). There is an overwhelming scholarly literature on the Chinese concept of face alone. Methodologically, I see little difference in Chinese indigenous psychological analyses except in their “thickness” of description. On the other hand, while appeal to indigenous epistemology can be seen in the first instance as a critique of objectivist social science of various sorts (including Eurocentric ones), I see in an indigenous context little serious attempt to transcend a normative framework of culture, whose systems of morality should be subject to value judgment. Wang Mingming 王銘銘, “The Third Eye: Towards a Critique of ‘Nativist Anthropology,’” Critique of Anthropology 22.2 (2002), pp. 149–174. Hwang Kwang-kuo 黃光國, “Face and Favor: The Chinese Power Game,” American Journal of Sociology 92.4 (1987), pp. 944–974; Hwang Kwang-kuo 黃光國, Renqing yu mianzi: Zhongguoren de quanli youxi 人情與面子：中國人 的權力遊戲 [Renqing and mianzi: The Chinese power game], in Xiandaihua yu Zhongguohua lunji 現代化與中國化論集 [Essays on Modernization and Sinicization], ed. Yang Kuo-shu 楊國樞, Li Yih-yuan 李亦園, and Wen Tsung-i 文 崇一 (Taipei: Guiguan, 1985), pp. 125–153. Allen Chun, “From Culture to Power (and Back): The Many ‘Faces’ of Mianzi (face), Guanxi (connection), and Renqing (rapport),” Suomen Antropologi 27.4 (2002), pp. 19–37. Nicholas B. Dirks, “History as a Sign of the Modern,” Public Culture 2.2 (1990), pp. 25–32; Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Pantheon, 1977). I have expounded in detail the paradoxical collusion between state and academia in Taiwan and Asia, in Allen Chun, “The Institutional Unconscious, or the Prison House of Academia,” boundary 2 27.1 (2000), pp. 51–74. Immanuel Wallerstein, Unthinking Social Science: The Limits of Nineteenth Century Paradigms (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001). Tom Nairn, Faces of Nationalism: Janus Revisited (London: Verso, 1998), p. 17.

Chapter 11

Studying Taiwan: The Academic Politics of Post-Authoritarian Taiwan

in

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“Studying Taiwan” became a catchphrase among student activists in the late 1980s, as student “Taiwan Studies” clubs were established at National Taiwan University and National Tsing Hua University, and then later at National Cheng Kung University and National Chiao Tung University, the nation’s four major universities. Intending to create a new discipline which used to be a political taboo, these college and graduate students opened up a space for experimental academic writing and research, where theory met society and locality. Students believed that in this newlyfound attention lay a chance for a critical intellectual self to emerge. This metamorphosis in self-recognition, they predicted, would eventually generate a blueprint for a new society. Initially desired for the purpose of examining local geography, history, culture, and society, this new intellectual movement called into question the ways in which these concepts could be theoretically employed in the changing politics of democratization, supposedly as an emancipation of thought. Taiwan Studies was seen as a looking glass through which a cultural self that had been concealed in the obscurity of geography and history could and would be (dis)located. Different ways of seeing society and culture were naturally addressed. This problematization of methods and theories in humanities and social sciences had to do with an urge among Taiwan researchers to consider the country as a postcolony where intellectual activities had been troubled by a Eurocentric mode of knowledge production. Arif Dirlik in his “Theory, History, Culture: Cultural Identity and the Politics of Theory in Twentieth Century China” states that “theory, history and culture appear in contemporary thinking in immensely complicated relationships.”1 They both deconstruct and reinforce one another to the extent that “it is no

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longer possible to think of any of these concepts outside of politics, or more specifically, the politics of modernity.”2 Theory, Dirlik argues, has lost its innocence. It claims universalism only to be found to serve as “a cover for different, particularly modern, forms of domination.” 3 Researchers in “societies that have experienced modernity as Euro-American colonialism or domination,” therefore, have sought to question theory. This problematization, Dirlik suggests, finds “a logical conclusion in the breakdown of assumption of universality for theory.” 4 This questioning of theory vis-à-vis culture/history did not suddenly happen in the context of post-authoritarian Taiwan. Dirlik observes a movement of sinicization (Zhongguohua 中國化) or nativization (bentuhua 本土化) of social sciences in Taiwan in the 1980s. This movement interrogated theory in terms of a cultural identity that, according to Dirlik,5 had flourished in a changing geopolitics when the East Asian tiger economies soared and China opened itself up. The politics of theory and identity brought forth a large-scale mobilization in Taiwan academia of social sciences that involved senior scholars of Chinese origin in sociology, anthropology, and psychology who were then positioned across national borders in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the United States. These social scientists worked together, seeking to bring “Chinese” experiences of social structures, value systems, and cosmologies into Eurocentric social sciences in order to produce a “richer, more all-encompassing” theory of society and culture.6 Taiwan Studies in those early years was both a legacy of and a resistance to this sinicization/nativization movement. Dirlik mentions an appropriation of world system analysis by some of the scholars involved in the sinicization movement who argued that “Chinese sociology suffered from a peripheralness vis-à-vis the United States core that paralleled the economic relationships between the capitalist core and the East Asian periphery.” 7 Following this lead, the graduate students searching for a rationale for Taiwan Studies in the late 1980s were very much immersed in an imagination of this unequal exchange and believed that they were unfavorably located in the global division of knowledge labor. On another front, in the political arena these students were witnessing a cultural politics of bentuhua in a dynamic sense, which, while nurturing a changing local and historical consciousness, was damaging the idea of a China and a Chinese culture and finally a Chinese sociology.8 Bentu 本土 (nativism) gained its own life of meanings, drifting away from the thenorthodox representation of sinicization.9 Leading these skeptical students

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to find the concept and practices of sinicization problematically hegemonic, the ripple effects of this nomadic bentu imagination shook academia. This article examines this insurgent bentu discourse in the late 1980s through the 1990s in terms of the theorization of society, culture, history, and locality—issues that were raised and intensively discussed by activist students and their sympathetic teachers during a time of political emergency. Before addressing this bentu quest, I first examine a so-called “nationalist social sciences” question that, triggering a feud between sociology and cultural studies in the mid-1990s, had damaged a version of bentu initiative. This article attempts to restore bentu in an alternative sense and argues that the discourse of bentu has actually helped to breed a discipline of Taiwan Studies in which self-recognition marches hand-inhand with self-critique and inter-subject communication. The article investigates how critical vigor has continued to function and to get disrupted among those former college and graduate students who are now positioned in different institutions of higher education.

Bentu and Its Criticism Bentu politics in the Taiwanese context dates back to postwar martial law times. A form of bentu identity was formed as a negation of official cultural discrimination based on an imagined migrant Chinese traditionalism. Allen Chun points out that the Kuomintang’s nationalism in post-war Taiwan intentionally and selectively employed a sort of traditionalism and reinvention of the past so as to embody a sense of bounded totality and to turn this post-Japan society into a representative of an “authentic” Chinese culture.10 However, Chun disregards resistance and discontent, which were embodied and represented in narratives that told alternative stories about history, nation, people, territory, democracy, modernity, and subjectivity, and which were circulated “intertextually” in the works of anonymous authors through covert channels that official censorship failed to intercept. In many cases, it simply revealed itself orally in small groups, family conversations, and street gatherings, leaving little trace for investigators of the Kuomintang police state. Political scientist Alan Wachman observes the democracy movement in the 1980s and states that “the polarization of the island’s political elite into two groups stems from competing notions of national identity. These factors have been so entwined that it has not been possible to disentangle

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the quest for democracy from the quest for consensus regarding national identity.” 11 This observation is primarily correct in the context of postmartial law politics, but Wachman’s book stops short of a genealogy of bentu politics in post-war Taiwan, a history in which the nationalism question was only a phase. The following quote from the memoir of a widely-known and well-respected exiled Taiwanese independence movement activist, Peng Ming-min 彭明敏, demonstrates this complexity. The three worlds in which I had lived in the past decades came distinctively and simultaneously into my thoughts: The Chinese world of my ethnic heritage; the Japanese world in which I spent most of my youth, received my early education, and which was once politically dominant over Formosa; and the western world to which I had been closely linked ideologically and intellectually and to which I was returning.... I became sharply aware that my experience symbolized the destiny of a whole generation of Formosans— their life and tragedy.12

Being a Taiwanese nationalist, Peng Ming-min confessed that this popular resentment projected through the mass memory of a frustrated self-formation did not so much guarantee the existence of a nation as “bear witness to” the barbarism of the Kuomintang’s nation-state formation in Taiwan. As a result, the nation was no longer indubitably taken for granted, and the narration of it was unavoidably multiple.13 Despite this implication of long-standing anti-authoritarianism, the powerfulness and usefulness of bentu identity were questioned in postauthoritarian times when President Lee Teng-hui 李登輝 worked on engineering a bentu new state. The “RoboCop” group, comprising selfproclaimed urban radical intellectuals, was perhaps the most enthusiastic critic of bentu politics in the 1990s. Nativist identity came under serious attack over the questions of state form, ethnicity, and grassroots democracy. As early as 1991, the group published a book titled Taiwan’s new opposition movement,14 strongly proposing a position of what it called “people’s” democracy—a pluralist view of differentiated people’s groupings connected in an ongoing process of coalition (jiemeng 結盟). In 1993, the group’s affiliated magazine Isle Margin (Daoyu bianyuan 島嶼邊緣) further challenged the then politically correct multicultural narrative about ethnicity—namely, the four major ethnic groups (Fulao 福佬, Hakka 客家, mainlanders, aborigines) and the so-called (often Fulaocentric) bentu identity associated with them. In 1994, the “RoboCop” group published another book, Beware of the nation-state, by Chao Kang

Studying Taiwan · 287 趙剛 at Tunghai University in central Taiwan,15 in which the author criti-

cally analyzed the genealogy of the ethnicity question in post-war Taiwan and the Lee Teng-hui regime’s manipulation of Fulao ethnic chauvinism for a project of state-building. Initially operating in public forums, this politics of identity spread to academia in 1994. Chen Kuan-hsing 陳光興, the main spokesman of “RoboCop,” published a controversial article in the journal Taiwan shehui yanjiu jikan 台灣社會研究季刊 (Taishe, hereafter; the journal’s English name is Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies),16 alleging that the new Taiwanese state under Lee Teng-hui had re-established its domination on the ground of Taiwanese nationalism, often with help from co-opted former opposition activists, many of whom were scholars in academia. Chen claimed that, during this process, the bentu identity became part of the ideological base of the new state’s will to power which “sucked in social forces emitted after the collapse of the authoritarian regime.” Publishing in the same journal in 1996, Chao Kang took on Benedict Anderson’s theorization of nationalism and its local appropriations, accusing several heavy-weight sociologists of systematically misrepresenting Anderson in the service of a (Taiwanese) nationalist agenda.17 Compared with the “RoboCop” group’s earlier critiques, which had appealed to a more general public, this Taishe debate around the mid1990s targeted academia in general and sociology in particular. The accusation of the making of a nationalist sociology, which was helping Lee Teng-hui’s nativizing Kuomintang state gain political legitimacy and dominance, led to an open conf lict between sociologists based in Academia Sinica and scholars of “cultural studies” (a diasporic scholarship Chen and Chao were obviously leading). Chang Mau-kuei 張茂桂, a sociologist in Academia Sinica whom Chao severely criticized, talked back and accused Chao of thought-policing and a witch hunt.18 Of course, this debate has to do with the nationalism question in Taiwan, even though the scholars involved, such as Chen Kuan-hsing, Chao Kang, and Chang Mau-kuei, all refused to position their critiques and disagreements only within it and thought themselves to be unjustly accused of one form of nationalism or another. Leaving this for another paper, I wish to point out an unexpected political consequence of this academic feud—namely, the fall of bentu—a collateral casualty of war. The bentu imaginary, only revived in the mid-1980s and reaching its peak in the mid-1990s, was seriously damaged after the “RoboCop” and Taishe incidents. The English versions of Chen’s and Chao’s articles were

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published in 2000 by Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique as part of a special issue on Taiwan’s and Hong Kong’s cultural politics.19 The dubbing of an act of Taiwan’s academic politics in a well-recognized international journal for Anglophone readers shows an extended front over which an inter-Asia project (enthusiastically championed by Chen Kuan-hsing) got the upper hand over bentu. Actually Chen Kuan-hsing, in his “Introduction” to Trajectories: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies where he again confirmed not only a corrupt former opposition but also the appropriation of the bentu identity as part of the state ideology of emerging Taiwanese nationalism, foretold the death of bentu: Nativism, he claimed, was no more than a “by-product” of nationalism.20 Both the “RoboCop” group’s criticism and the Taishe debate reminded activists and scholars of the new socio-political situation—namely, a process of renationalization in an age of globalization and a new politics of ethnicity. Nonetheless, the group’s refusal to examine bentu as a politics of difference and as a position oriented towards an imagined utopian future prevented its associates from concretely understanding its past of dynamic relations between the grassroots, institutions, and the political. Even more unfortunately, the group’s critics mistakenly conflated bentu politics with the ethnic conflict, asserting that the only resolution of the bentu identity lay in state nationalism and, finally, a politics of (ethnic) resentment.21 Although these might be probable results, I believe there is no a priori destiny for the politics of bentu. More troubling is that this rejection and misunderstanding prevented them from understanding bentu as consisting always in an excess beyond state nationalism or beyond any single force’s control. Frantz Fanon, commenting on the national culture, observed this complexity almost half a century ago: The nation is not only the condition of culture, its fruitfulness, its continuous renewal, and its deepening. It is also a necessity. It is the fight for national existence which sets culture moving and opens to it the doors of creation. Later on it is the nation which will ensure the conditions and framework necessary to culture. The nation gathers together the various indispensable elements necessary for the creation of a culture, those elements which alone can give it credibility, validity, life, and creative power. In the same way it is its national character that will make such a culture open to other cultures and which will enable it to influence and permeate other cultures.... The first necessity is the re-establishment of the nation in order to give life to national culture in the strictly biological sense of the phrase.22

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Bentu Social Research The scholarship of Taiwan Studies returned around 2000 in the ruins of this academic battle, when a new generation of scholars came of age and were dedicated to observing and intervening in multiple expressions of cultural identity in a post-democratic time. Many of the scholars were involved in the bentu exploration among college and graduate students in several major universities in the late 1980s prior to the “RoboCop” attack. Back then, a group of postwar baby-boomer professors had come back from abroad to Taiwan’s academia and were greeted in classrooms by a young generation of enthusiastic college and graduate students, many having just experienced a turbulent politics of democracy and protest on the streets. The classrooms immediately turned into a laboratory where the political and the social challenged theory. This classroom renaissance brought these students’ attention to an emerging critical bentu as compared to an eyewitness bentu of the previous stage. Bentu at the time gained its definition from the multiple cultural imaginaries that had arisen since the mid-1980s in response to island-wide mass protests against the Kuomintang’s rule. Growing into a cultural project that was intended to define those political moves, bentu represented a collectivity of localized embodied cultural critiques in an imagined and practical space-time. In the classrooms of the late 1980s, college/graduate students and their professors were fascinated by these local cultural critiques, seeking to work out their own reflexive bentu scholarship in order to come to terms with the developing human stories out there. Resisting generalization, bentu social research, for these acting students and professors, referred to theorization that is put into history, and in many cases, into place. Two periodicals released in the late 1980s best represented the making of this reflexive bentu perspective. The first was the magazine Contemporary (Dangdai 當代), which began publication in 1986 by an alliance of college professors and cultural critics to appeal to the general public. The other was Taiwan shehui yanjiu jikan (Taishe),23 the cross-disciplinary academic journal discussed above whose first issue was out in 1988. As read in the editor’s statement of purpose in the first issue of Contemporary with a special report on Michel Foucault, the magazine was devoted to “observing the global while watching bentu, so a global perspective would materialize in order to scrutinize bentu.” Although this assertion was easily trapped in a cliché of “glocalization”

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that advocates the enclosure of the local into a global system, the editors were serious about a reflexive view about the historicity (shidaixing 時代 性) in which the contemporary was situated. The bentu’s present—that is, the “con-temporary” (against temporality, as the editors punned on the magazine’s name)—was seen not as a fait accompli, but as a modus vivendi with “internal tension and complexity.” 24 Compared with Contemporary’s emphasis on historicity, Taishe focused on locality and advocated its version of “Taiwanese society” studies. The statement in the first issue released in 1988 reads: 25 The “Taiwanese society” inquiry needs to be based upon a civil society full of limitless “life opportunities” (shengji 生機). It had to be critical and to do without a formalism that was implicated in “the sinicization of social and behavioral sciences” of the early 1980s; it had to be foresighted while still paying close attention to concrete problems and deliberating feasible solutions; it would start coping with the reality of Taiwanese society with a historical-structural angle, but would not stop seeking answers to the question of “who we are” in the realm of ethics and praxis. These reflections on time and space in both journals were accompanied by a new mode of teaching that was being experimented with in the classrooms. Its effects were sweeping as far as a bentu research enterprise is concerned. In my university, baby-boomer professors across a wide range of disciplines such as Fu Dawei 傅大為 (history), Liao Ping-hui 廖炳 惠 (literature), Chen Kuan-hsing (cultural studies), Yu Chi-chung 于治中 (psychoanalysis), Chang Mau-kuei (sociology), Lii Ding-tzann 李丁讚 (sociology), Ke Chih-ming 柯志明 (sociology), Wu Nai-Teh 吳乃德 (political science), Hsu Mutsu 許木柱 (anthropology), and Allen Chun 陳奕麟 (anthropology) were either on these two periodicals’ editorial boards or wrote for them. Chang Mau-kuei, Lii Ding-tzann, and Hsu Mutsu taught about the emergent social protests that were attracting social scientists’ attention.26 Wu Nai-Teh brought back his dissertation, completed at the University of Chicago, which was widely said to have the key to the secret of the Kuomintang’s dictatorship—its grassroots base.27 Ke Chih-ming, a former political prisoner’s son, introduced Marx and Marxism, still a taboo topic not long before. Liao Ping-hui, Chen Kuan-hsing, Yu Chichung, and Allen Chun played with concepts in a postmodern vein, challenging and abandoning the empiricist/realist convention of humanities and social sciences. Fu Dawei, a historian of science, examined the minority knowledge of gender and ethnicity, exploring its explosiveness in a revolution against “normal” disciplines.

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The question of theory was addressed in the classrooms for a possible intersection with historicity/locality in an academic endeavor. I, among a group of enthusiastic graduate students, joined numerous lectures and roundtable meetings on campus, where participants discussed and debated about what the concreteness of historicity and locality really meant and would be in a bentu study seen as a borderline between scholarship and local cultural expressions and performances. For many of these young professors, this intersection may have held the answer to the consequences of the meetings between the global and the local. Theory, itself an outcome of these meetings rather than of a dichotomy of the West and the East as deemed in the sinicization movement, in the terms of the opening Taishe statement, had to be put to the test in the cruel reality of “Taiwan society,” which was already deeply caught up within these global/local encounters. As Taishe had pointed out, theory was not an abstract game of concepts, but rather an interpretive construction of these engagements as ethical-practical questioning. Both admiring and challenging their young professors, these graduate students established their own clubs of Taiwan Studies where they began to develop an idea of on-site research intended to assess and practice their reflexive theoretical learning in the classrooms. The team work focused on a collective experiencing of history, literature, landscape, and locality with reference to theoretical multiplicities in the textual form. We as a group read novels written under Japanese colonialism and Kuomintang “white” terror and secretly watched films made by Chinese fifth-generation directors such as Zhang Yimou 張藝謀 and Chen Kaige 陳凱歌 at a time when publications from China were still banned. These historical and literary quests were part of the reason that my master’s thesis delved so far into the “distant” past, examining the aboriginal people’s encounters with the Dutch and Chinese in 17th-century Taiwan for a self-confessed investigation of colonial contradiction, along with plenty of others who began to see history as barbarism instead of a chronicle of glory as the textbooks told us. Even more far-reaching was the fact that this group of graduate students began to seek outside connections with a sense of political urgency, which was still a dangerously sensitive move at that time since the Kuomintang had a history of seeing any grassroots activity as being subversive. This advance of the bentu scholarship led these students (followed by their teachers, interestingly) to step out of the classrooms. As early as 1985, college and graduate students at the leading National

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Taiwan University involved themselves—under the guise of a “scholarly” investigation—in an anti-DuPont protest in Lukang, a historic town in central Taiwan, helping the residents to successfully stop the construction of a chemical plant near their neighborhood. In 1987, my cohorts at National Tsing Hua University in Hsinchu also stood with residents in nearby Shuiyuanli, which ended up forcing a pollution-causing chemical factory to move out. The lifting of martial law in July 1987 and the death of Chiang Ching-kuo 蔣經國 in January 1988 emboldened the students, making this trend of social engagement more politicized. Anti-Kuomintang democracy activists (usually called dangwai renshi 黨外人士 at the time) were brought onto campus and students openly showed their faces at antigovernment demonstrations or in small reading groups. The meaning of the grassroots widened and deepened during these processes of participation. Students began joining different kinds of social activities regarding the rights of workers, farmers, women, and consumers aside from the environmental rows mentioned above. This “new engagement” enthusiasm peaked in 1990 when thousands of college and graduate students gathered in the national capital of Taipei to demand democracy and freedom immediately. The next year, in protest of a government crackdown, students clashed with police just before a huge shakeup. In 1991/1992, both parliaments28 were re-elected for the first time—two notable events that paved the way for Taiwanese democracy in the next decades. These social and political engagements caused a new scholarship to sprout. Among different forms of publishing at the time, Taishe accommodated most of these printed achievements. Looking through the Taishe issues before 1995, the year when the nationalist debate broke up the journal’s editorial board (Chen Kuan-hsing and Chao Kang vs. Ke Chihming, who stood with Chang Mau-kuei and then left), readers can find articles written by young engaged graduate students, mostly from National Taiwan University (NTU) in Taipei and National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) in Hsinchu. One major topic these articles took on was the dialectics of domination/resistance, mainly concerning the Kuomintang’s hegemony and its disintegration. NTU’s Lin Chia-lung 林佳龍 published an article about a sociopolitical analysis of the still young Democratic Progressive Party,29 while his schoolmate Kuo Cheng-liang 郭正亮 was working with DPP

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politicians and co-authored the book On the road towards ruling (Dao zhizheng zhi lu 到執政之路) in the same year.30 Lin and Kuo later became DPP heavyweights after they both received PhD degrees in political science from Yale University. NTU’s graduate students had another realm of influence. Two early special issues of Taishe were dedicated to the topics of architecture, urban planning, and spatial politics, and edited by Hsia Chu-joe 夏鑄九 , a pioneer in critical geography and architecture at NTU. Hsia’s colleagues and graduate students have since become important advisors both to Presidents Chen Shui-bian 陳水扁 and Ma Ying-jeou 馬英九. Chang Jingsen 張景森, Hsia’s younger colleague and Chen Shui-bian’s top economic advisor throughout his presidency, published an article in Taishe in 1988 discussing post-war urban studies in Taiwan.31 Hsia’s student Lin Zhengshiu 林正修, who investigated urban-rural relations in his master’s thesis at National Taiwan University, 32 later served in Ma Ying-jeou’s city government, and is now the President’s main advisor on the issues of urban and regional change. In contrast to the NTU students’ political connections, graduate students from the NTHU in Hsinchu were more focused on the space of civil society. They wrote about the cultural politics of sexuality, history, and popular music, 33 foreseeing extended fronts of bentu research that would be digging into a fast-evolving civil society in the next decade.

The Institutionalization of Bentu People in academia commonly believe that the official recognition and establishment of Taiwan Studies programs at universities were due to Chen Shui-bian’s taking over the central power after being elected President in 2000. Public universities were encouraged and funded to create Taiwan Studies programs. Although Academia Sinica built its Taiwanese History Institute as early as 1993, the first program of Taiwanese literature at a public university was formed in August 2000 in the first year of Chen Shui-bian’s presidency, at National Cheng Kung University in the southern city of Tainan. During President Chen Shui-bian’s eight-year tenure, about a dozen Taiwanese history, literature, and language programs were started under the policy of Taiwanization (Taiwanhua 台 灣化), now an official representation of bentu in the name of ethnic multiculturalism.

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The formation of these programs, which mostly broke away from universities’ Chinese and history departments, has caused internal conf licts in humanities. In addition to the first program at National Cheng Kung University, six of the thirteen other major national universities established either a Taiwanese literature or history program, or both, during Chen’s eight years in office. These new programs, albeit relatively small, have stirred the field of humanities. A controversial but prosperous research topic to arrive with these new programs is the re-examination of Taiwan under Japanese colonialism from 1895–1945. This revision of colonial history, a history which used to be seen as a time of deviation by the official ideology of a Chinese nation during the Kuomintang’s rule, has had enormous academic and political impacts. Lin Rui-ming 林瑞明, a pioneering historian at National Cheng Kung University, published a groundbreaking book on Lai He 賴和 (an important novelist under Japanese colonialism) in 1993 and proposed the independence of Taiwanese literature.34 However, it took almost a decade before a younger generation of historians and literary scholars overcame the linguistic, psychological, and political difficulties and managed to gather in these new programs. In the new century, these scholars at Academia Sinica, National Taiwan University, National Tsing Hua University, and National Cheng Chi University, who have a better command of Japanese, have intensively published in Chinese on the question of colonial modernity, daring the ambiguity of this uncharted territory. The existence of this modernity was officially denied in authoritarian times, but meanwhile, clandestinely glorified as a progressive force. Facing antagonism in the politics of memory, this new scholarship explores colonialism as a space of both power/resistance and production/ destruction. The Kuomintang’s denial of this complexity is outright rejected. Japanese colonialism is seen as a state-led social revolution that made possible a realm of modern “governmentality” through the introduction of a new order of knowledge and classification, as Lü Shao-li 呂紹 理 at National Cheng Chi University convincingly demonstrates in his study of the spatial and visual representation of colonial Taiwan.35 Historians at Academia Sinica delve into a powerful colonial educational system that was set up and consolidated throughout the colonial times and deemed crucial for this total transformation.36 Literary scholars have argued that the making of this new society, however, created a local intelligentsia who suffered an identity crisis in which resistance to this

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colonial system could no longer be separated from a subsequent undertaking of subject formation.37 Taiwan Studies as a discipline nevertheless came into existence beyond this government’s intervention in redefining a national history. The graduate students’ bentu initiative in the late 1980s/early 1990s continued to evolve, albeit in foreign countries. While their teachers were divided and destroying each other at home, many of these students in the 1990s were working on their doctorates abroad, mostly in the US. Bentu imaginations met the US scholarship of Asian Studies and other (cross-) disciplinary critical theories. This rendezvous, despite the feeling of déjà vu, helped to re-delineate bentu and form a long-distance Taiwan Studies agenda in a cross-cultural context. Discourses and actions in teaching and researching at home out of this diasporic experience have helped to constitute another phase of Taiwan Studies. This institutional mobilization has been strategically more multifarious and widespread in social sciences than in humanities. The stronger belief in a “universal” theory helps to hold together the departments of sociology and anthropology, but these returnees, most of whom have first-hand experience of the social turbulence of the late1980s, now disperse across the island and call attention to a notion of self-reflection, resisting the powerful convention of positivism and the principle of political neutrality deeply fixed in the disciplines. This enterprise of self-criticism politicizes social research, shaking up the hegemony of scientism, and also encourages scholars to take firm positions in sociopolitical debates. In comparison with the pressing battle for a national past conducted by Taiwan Studies scholars in humanities, their counterparts in social sciences are concerned with the democratic present. Political scientists’ theory of the consolidation of liberal democracy through a burgeoning representative political system is challenged. Instead, they observe power and meanings in the domains of civil society. Highly politicized young researchers have gathered into numerous issue-oriented alliances, testing themselves in various social groupings across the boundaries of academia. The recent years of democracy have been characterized by a sense of ambiguity, an outcome of an over-mobilized and terrified public feeling itself disposable and in jeopardy of being left behind. Civil society was rapidly evolving into a space saturated with intimidating exaggerations, often mass-circulated, and the public was baff led as to whether the democratic change of the past two decades was worth defending.

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The students of Taiwan Studies in social sciences face up to this intricate situation, and their tactics of engagement strongly affect their choices of topics. Over the past decade, organized forms of activism have been intensively investigated. These investigations provide not only a chance to conceive of a full-fledged democracy but also a point of intervention in a transforming civil society. Scholars in sociology at National Taiwan University work on social movements over labor, gender, and environmental issues, locating them as new central players in the formation of a highly-differentiated civil society. Influenced by the pioneering works of Hsiao Hsin-huang 蕭新煌 and Chang Mau-kuei on the grassroots protests and social movements in the 1980s, Fan Yun 范雲, Ho Ming-sho 何明修, and Liu Hwa-jen 劉華真 pay attention to social movements in the making and how these new social forces have been brought forth, developed, and organized along the faultlines of gender, class, and nature/human throughout the past two decades. 38 Ho Ming-sho, who has published intensively in Chinese and English on Taiwan’s labor and environmental movements, points out in his Green democracy 39 that Taiwan’s political democracy needs to be furthered so as to enter into the phase in which the contradiction between capitalism and environmentalism could and would be addressed. His book indicates that this contradiction can only be resolved once activists and scholars have begun to understand the complexities of the highly-diversified civil society in Taiwan. Ho’s colleagues Lin Kuo-ming 林國明 and Chen Dong-sheng 陳東升 have been involved in an NGO-centered deliberative democracy initiative that is intended to enhance this understanding by design and to present regular occasions for a face-to-face conversation, discussion, and debate among scholars, activists, and average citizens in an inclusive manner.40 In dialogue with their Taipei counterparts, sociologists and anthropologists in Hsinchu (where two major national universities, Tsing Hua and Chiao Tung, are located side by side) focus on cultural explanations of these social organizings. The concept of culture is approached in different ways. C. Julia Huang 黃倩玉 at National Tsing Hua University has recently published a book concerning the religious group Tzu Chi 慈 濟, using the Buddhist “three bodies” terminology to examine how charismatic Master Cheng Yen 證嚴法師 has led this faith-oriented organization into becoming a powerful NGO capable of implementing a global mission.41 Lii Ding-tzann and his student-colleague Lin Wen-yuan 林文 源 at National Tsing Hua University seek to understand the cultural

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origins of the self-help anti-pollution movements in the 1980s, drawing on a symbolic interpretation of the victimized bodies in pollution incidents.42 Discovering that a notion of locality was prevailing in these incidents in particular and in collective actions in general, Lii Ding-tzann and another colleague Wu Jie-min 吳介民 and their students have followed a community-based mobilization in Hsinchu for years, diving into a sea of emotional expressivity and connectivity which they comprehend as a prerequisite for a Habermasian public to surface.43 The anthropologists at neighboring National Chiao Tung University, where I teach, get serious with this notion of place. Scrutinizing a critical sense of place, my colleague Lu Hsin-yi 呂欣怡 and I consider a strategic significance for a form of shequ 社區 (community) revival that has been in operation across the island since the mid-1990s. As a translation of the English term community in the first place, shequ has developed into a concept (as well as a practice) that emphasizes locality, heterogeneity, and spatiality. Often cited as a state of empowerment, senses of shequ reveal a very particular representation of place. In the context of post-authoritarian Taiwan, this changing mode of mobilization about the complexity of life-world has gained strength, as many people have come to believe that local differences have been ignored and devastated in the course of a universalistic plan for modernization. I have written articles in English and Chinese about neighborhood organizing and local politics in a Taipei neighborhood where residents mobilized themselves to save a park from demolition in 1995.44 Lu Hsin-yi’s book compares two small towns which have struggled to attract visitors for revitalization in this new politics of locality and eco-tourism.45 We also work closely with scholars in the Institute of Anthropology at Chi Nan International University in Puli in central Taiwan, where a killer earthquake in 1999 destroyed the town and villages in its vicinity. Jung Shaw-wu 容邵武, a legal anthropologist there and our long-distance ally, has worked on towns and villages in this area, examining the borderland between legality and locality where communities have strived to rebuild from the ruins.46

Bentu at the Crossroads The bentu examination of democracy in the everyday sense has evolved into a multiplicity of social inquiries in the past decade. What these collective efforts will achieve is still to be seen. One major hindrance is

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within the institutions. While the Ministry of Education (MOE) and universities are trying to set up an evaluation system, this Taiwan Studies scholarship of self-criticism, though only a decade old, has undergone its own reorganization. Surveillance and controls are being re-institutionalized, this time in the name of scholarly excellence. On the one hand, natural sciences and engineering are extending their dominance into the territory of humanities and social sciences through an imposition of standards arbitrarily set by universities often dominated by engineering people. The MOE has backed up this absurdity with a large-scale campaign to complete a review of all the programs by the end of 2010 with a threat of unknown consequences for those that fail. On the other hand, within the disciplines, young assistant professors are being told to get promoted by the end of their sixth year on the job or they will lose their positions without the promise of lifelong employment, while the old guard has enjoyed guaranteed job security and has no need to go through any review process whatsoever. This generational gap has caused internal hatred and conflicts. For bentu Taiwan Studies, which is dedicated to bringing justice and theory together, an unfinished job is located within these institutional measures. For better or for worse, institutionally speaking, academia as an apparatus of knowledge production has largely stayed intact during the two decades of democratization. Another challenge comes from within critical circles. The bentu appraisal of democracy in its everyday sense makes the students of Taiwan Studies obsessed with an anatomy of the social body, bringing their attention to different actors that have been implicated and included in the political processes. However, this multicultural approach has its limits. Criticisms have poured in from the scholars who observe the cultural emergents that are not easily “included” in the bentu agenda. Queer and sexuality studies were brought into existence in the late1990s.47 Tension immediately mounted between this new field and bentu gender studies over the issue of the legalization of sex work. Josephine Chuen-juei Ho 何春蕤 led the sexuality camp, claiming that the women scholars’ opposition to legalization proved that the discipline of gender studies was hypocritical and conservative. Ho later created the Center for the Study of Sexualities in National Central University in Chungli in northern Taiwan.48 On another front, immigration issues grab scholars’ attention, showing a hidden world of exception.49 Hsia Hsiao-chuan 夏曉 鵑 introduced this subject matter to academia and the public, explaining

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a global/local structure which has made possible this transnational ethnoscape. 50 Lan Pei-chia’s 藍佩嘉 well-received book analyzes how guest workers f rom Southeast Asia have struggled in a state of semi-slavery.51 The last, but not the least, significant difficulty for bentu social research is the revival of the ethnicity question. The multicultural arrangement in the mid-1990s that categorized the population into “four major ethnic groups”—Fulao, Hakka, mainlanders, and aborigines—and sought mutual understanding and respect temporarily defused tensions that had materialized after decades of discriminatory ethnic policies. However, over time, the ethnic imagination has re-emerged as a new minority problematic in which ethnicity is dreamt into a multiplicity of expressions and in which democracy is seen as a space for unorthodox creativities to come to the fore. This creation of ethnicity as imagined alterity moves democracy into the phase of what Charles Taylor calls the “politics of recognition,” which in today’s minority or subaltern politics “designates something like a person’s understanding of who they are, of their fundamental defining characteristics as a human being.” 52 In other words, ethnicity still matters. There has been a high-profile pan-aboriginal mobilization that advocated return of lands to tribes, despite the fact that aboriginal people are still very much prevented from being heard in the general public because of economic difficulty, cultural estrangement, and the destruction of the homelands. In this century, room has been made for a discipline of new aboriginal studies that would critically converse with age-old ethnological and anthropological inquiries.53 Aboriginal scholars who advocate a new constitutional setting for an indigenous autonomous status as well as rights to lands and tribal knowledge are being hired.54 The other front is a Hakka consciousness whose recent formation shows the heterogeneity of Han Chinese identity. Hakka is a major Han Chinese sub-group in Taiwan, often seen as a Chinese version of Jews, whose members have migrated to many places throughout China and overseas. Hakka people began to move into Taiwan in the 18th century, mostly from the province of Guangdong in China, and, since then, have become a competing minority group to the majority Fulao Chinese, most of whom came from the province of Fujian a little earlier. Both Hakka and Fulao were politically suppressed during the Kuomintang’s long rule. This history makes post-martial law Hakka identity a double

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consciousness-awakening which has to cope with a past shadowed both by an enduring ethnic rivalry with Fulao and by the postwar political and linguistic repression. Since the early 2000s, Hakka research institutes supported by Chen Shui-bian’s central government have been established islandwide. 55 My department, the first undergraduate program ever created for critical Hakka research and education, is dedicated to bringing the concept of ethnicity back into social theory and cultural criticism. In a recent article I present ethnicity as dream, 56 where the politics of recognition is a process of daily reinvented acknowledgement of a shadowed tradition under the effects of unrecognizable cultural confrontations. There are always unspoken and unexperienced forces out there that need to be dealt with. The ethnic dream seeks to encounter and locate these unrecognizable forces of identity politics. With this search, the sense and sensibility of bentu also multiplies.

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Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6

7 8

9

10

11 12 13 14 15

16

Arif Dirlik, Postmodernity’s Histories: The Past as Legacy and Project (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), p. 93. Ibid., p. 94. Ibid., p. 91. Ibid., p. 92. Ibid. Ibid., p. 102. Also cf. Guoshu Yang 楊國樞 and Chonggyi Wen 文崇一, eds., Shehui ji xingwei kexue yanjiude Zhongguohua 社會及行為科學研究的中國化 [The Sinicization of Social and Behavioral Science Research in China] (Taipei: The Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, 1982). Arif Dirlik, Postmodernity’s Histories: The Past as Legacy and Project, p. 103. Cf. A-chin Hsiau, “Epilogue: Bentuhua—An Endeavor for Normalizing a Would-be Nation-State,” in Cultural, Ethnic, and Political Nationalism in Contemporary Taiwan: Bentuhua, ed. John Makeham and A-chin Hsiau (New York: Palgrave, 2005), pp. 261–276. Although the sinicization movement in the early 1980s was sometimes labeled as nativized (bentuhua 本土化), the bentu exploration in the late 1980s resisted the ideologically generalized Chinese cosmology as implied in the idea of sinicization. Stephen Murray and Keelung Hong’s article critically sketches the politics of this generalized concept of Chinese culture in the American anthropological literature, which justif ies “ignoring Taiwanese culture” and subordinates “consideration of its specific features to writing about Chinese civilization.” See Murray and Hong, “American Anthropologists Looking through Taiwanese Culture,” Dialectical Anthropology 16 (1991), p. 289. Allen Chun, “From Nationalism to Nationalization: Cultural Imagination and State Formation in Postwar Taiwan,” The Australian Journal of China Affairs 31 (1994), pp. 49–69. Alan M. Wachman, Taiwan: National Identity and Democratization (Armonk: M. E. Sharpe, 1994), pp. 3–14. Ming-min Peng, A Taste of Freedom: Memoirs of a Formosan Independence Leader (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972), pp. 1–2. Cf. Homi Bhabha, Nation and Narration (London: Routledge, 1990). Jiqi zhanjing 機器戰警, ed., Taiwan de xinfandui yundong 台灣的新反對運動 [Taiwan’s new opposition movement] (Taipei: Tangshan, 1991). Kang Chao 趙剛, Xiaoxin guojiazu: Pipan de sheyun yu sheyun de pipan 小心 國家族：批判的社運與社運的批判 [Beware of the nation-state: Critical social movements and criticism of social movements] (Taipei: Tangshan, 1994). Kuan-hsing Chen 陳光興, “Diguo zhi yan: “Ci” diguo yu guozu—guojia de wenhua xiangxiang” 帝國之眼：「次」帝國與國族— 國家的文化想像 [The imperialist eye: The cultural imaginary of a sub-empire and a nation-state], Taiwan shehui yanjiu jikan 台灣社會研究季刊 17 (1994), pp. 149–222.

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18

19

20 21

22 23

24 25 26

27

28

Kang Chao, “Xinde minzuzhuyi, haishi jiude?” 新的民族主義，還是舊的？ [New nationalism, or old?] Taiwan shehui yanjiu jikan 21 (1996), pp. 1–72. This article mainly targets sociologists in Academia Sinica who contributed to a collection about ethnicity and nationalism (Mau-kuei Chang 張茂桂, Nai-Teh Wu 吳乃德, Fu-chang Wang 王甫昌, and Chung-cheng Lin 林忠正, eds., Zuqun guanxi yu guojia rentong 族群關係與國家認同 [Ethnicity and national identity] [Taipei: Yeqiang, 1993]). Mau-kuei Chang, “Shi pipan yishixingtai, yihuo liesha wupo?” 是批判意識型 態，抑或獵殺巫婆？ [Critique of ideology, or witch hunt?], Taiwan shehui yanjiu jikan 23 (1996), pp. 255–269. Kang Chao and Marshall Johnson, “Nationalist Social Sciences and the Fabrication of Subimperial Subjects in Taiwan,” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 8.1 (2000), pp. 151–177; Kuan-hsing Chen, “The Imperialist Eye: The Cultural Imaginary of a Subempire and a Nation-State,” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 8.1 (2000), pp. 9–76. Kuan-hsing Chen, ed, Trajectories: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 15. See Kang Chao, “Tiaochu duhen de rentong zhengzhi, jinru jiefang de peili zhengzhi—chuanlian Nichai han gongyun” 跳出妒恨的認同政治，進入解放的 培力政治—串聯尼采和工運 [Out of resentment and into empowerment: Nietzsche and the labor question], Taiwan shehui yanjiu jikan 30 (1998), pp. 117–161. Also see Kuan-hsing Chen, ed, Trajectories: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, p. 19. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books, 1967), p. 197. Prior to the Taishe incident, which ended up breaking the journal apart, the journal had accommodated scholars with very different political positionings on the board. This statement (fakanci 發刊詞) appeared in Contemporary 1 (1986), pp. 4–5. This statement appeared in Taiwan shehui yanjiu jikan 1.1 (1988), pp. 3–6. Many of their observations were included in the book edited by Chengkuang Hsu 徐正光 and Wen-li Song 宋文里, eds., Jieyan qianhou Taiwan xinxing shehui yundong 解嚴前後台灣新興社會運動 [Taiwanese new social movements around 1987] (Taipei: Juliu, 1990). Nai-Teh Wu, “The Politics of a Regime Patronage System: Mobilization and Control within an Authoritarian Regime” (PhD diss., The University of Chicago, 1987). The previous bodies of the Lifayuan 立法院 and Guomindahui 國民大會 (the two parliaments under the ROC Constitution) were assembled in China in 1947 before the Kuomintang was defeated by the Communists. Ever since the Kuomintang was exiled to the island of Taiwan, representatives in these two bodies had never been re-elected, with only additional seats granted for the voters in Taiwan.

Studying Taiwan · 303 29

30 31

32

33

34 35

36

37

Chia-lung Lin 林佳龍 , “Weiquan shicong zhengti xia de Taiwan fandui yundong: Minjindang shehui jichu de zhengzhi jieshi” 威權侍從政體下的台灣 反對運動：民進黨社會基礎的政治解釋 [Taiwan’s opposition under authoritarian political patronage: A political analysis of the social base of the Democratic Progressive Party], Taiwan shehui yanjiu jikan 2.1 (1989), pp. 117–144. Jun-hong Chang 張俊宏, ed., Dao zhizheng zhi lu 到執政之路 [On the road towards ruling] (Taipei: Nanfang, 1989). Jing-sen Chang 張景森, “Zhanhou Taiwan dushi yanjiu de zhuliu fanxing— y ige chubu de huig u” 戰後台灣都市研究的主流範型— 一個初步的惠顧 [Mainstream urban studies as a paradigm in postwar Taiwan: A critical review], Taiwan shehui yanjiu jikan 1.2/3 (1988), pp. 9–31. Zheng-shiu Lin 林正修, “Taiwan zhanhou chengxiang guanxi zhi zhengzhi fenxi” 台灣戰後城鄉關係之政治分析 [A political analysis of urban-rural relations in postwar Taiwan] (Master’s thesis, National Taiwan University, 1992). See Mei-hui You 游美惠, “Taiwan seqing haibao de jiedu fenxi” 台灣色情海報 的解讀分析 [Interpretations of poster ads for erotic floor shows in Taiwan], Taiwan shehui yanjiu jikan 14 (1993), pp. 77–99; Ya-Chung Chuang 莊雅仲, “Zaixian gaizong yu zhimin kangzheng: Shiqi shiji Helan tongzhi xia Taiwan de zhimin zhuyi yu chuanjiao gongzuo” 再現改宗與殖民抗爭：十七世 紀荷蘭統治下台灣的殖民主義與傳教工作 [Representation, conversion, and colonial struggle: Colonialism and missions in 17th century Taiwan under the Dutch], Taiwan shehui yanjiu jikan 15 (1993), pp. 131–166; Chao-wei Chang 張釗維, Shei zai nabian chang ziji de ge? 誰在那邊唱自己的歌？[Who is over there singing their own songs?] (Taipei: Shibao, 1994). Rui-ming Lin 林瑞明, Taiwan wenxue yu shidai jingshen 台灣文學與時代精神 [Taiwanese literature and the spirit of the times] (Taipei: Yunchen, 1993). Shao-li Lü 呂紹理, Zhanshi Taiwan: Quanli, kongjian yu zhimin tongzhi de xingxiang biaoshu 展示臺灣：權力、空間與殖民統治的形象表述 [Exhibiting Taiwan: Power, Space and Image Representation of Japanese Colonial Rule] (Taipei: Rye Field Publications, 2005). See Wan-yao Chou 周婉窈, Haixing xi de niandai: Riben zhimin tongzhi moqi Taiwanshi lunji 海行兮的年代：日本殖民統治末期臺灣史論集 [The time of navigation: Taiwanese history in the late years of Japanese colonialism] (Taipei: Yunchen, 2002); Pei-feng Chen 陳培豐, Tonghua de tongchuang yimeng: Rizhi shiqi Taiwan de yuyan zhengce, jindaihua yu rentong 同化的同床異夢：日治時期 臺灣的語言政策、近代化與認同 [The dissonance of assimilation: Language policies, modernization, and identity in colonial Taiwan] (Taipei: Rye Field Publications, 2006). See Mei-e Huang 黃美娥, Chongceng xiandaixing jingxiang: Rizhi shidai Taiwan chuantong wenren de wenhua shiyu yu wenxue xiangxiang 重層現代性 鏡像─日治時代台灣傳統文人的文化視域與文學想像 [Mirrors of multiple

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38

39 40

41 42

43

44

modernities: Cultural visions and literary imagination of traditional Taiwanese literati under Japanese rule] (Taipei: Rye Field Publications, 2004); Shu-qin Liu 柳書琴, Jingji zhi dao: Luri qingnian de wenxue huodong yu wenhua kangzheng 荊棘之道：旅日青年的文學活動與文化抗爭 [A thorny path: The literary activities and cultural struggles of Taiwanese in Japan] (Taipei: Lianjing, 2009). See Hsin-huang Michael Hsiao, “Emerging Social Movements and the Rise of a Demanding Civil Society in Taiwan,” The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 24 (1990), pp. 163–180; Mau-kuei Chang, Shehui yundong yu zhengzhi zhuanhua 社會運動與政治轉化 [Social movements and political transformation] (Taipei: Yeqiang, 1993); Yun Fan 范雲, “Zhengzhi zhuanxing guochengzhong de funü yundong: Yi yundongzhe jiqi shengming zhuanji beijing wei hexin de fenxi quxiang” 政治轉型過程中的婦女運動：以運動者及其生命傳記背 景為核心的分析取向 [The women’s movement in Taiwan’s political transition: An approach focused on the biographical backgrounds of activists], Taiwan shehuixue 台灣社會學力 5 (2003), pp. 133–194; Ming-sho Ho 何明修, Lüse minzhu: Taiwan huanjing yundong de yanjiu 綠色民主：台灣環境運動的研 [Green democracy: A study of Taiwan’s environmental movement] (Taipei: Qunxue, 2006); Hwa-jen Liu 劉華真 , “Chongxin sikao ‘yundong guiji’: Taiwan, Nan Han de laogong yu huanjing yundong” 重新思考「運動軌跡」：台 灣、南韓的勞工與環境運動 [Rethinking “movement trajectories”: Labor and environmental movements in Taiwan and South Korea], Taiwan shehuixue 16 (2008), pp. 1–47. Hsin-huang Michael Hsiao 蕭新煌 supervised Ho’s PhD dissertation and Liu’s master’s thesis. Ming-sho Ho, Lüse minzhu, p. 359. Guo-min Lin 林國明 and Dong-sheng Chen 陳東升, “Gongmin huiyi yu shenyi minzhu” 公民會議與審議民主 [Citizens’ meetings and deliberative democracy], Taiwan shehuixue 6 (2003), pp. 61–118. C. Julia Huang, Charisma and Compassion: Cheng Yen and the Buddhist Tzu Chi Movement (Cambridge: Havard University Press, 2009). Ding-tzann Lii 李丁讚 and Wen-yuan Lin 林文源, “Shehui li de wenhua genyuan: Lun huanjingquan ganshou zai Taiwan de lishi xingcheng, 1970– 86” 社會力的文化根源：論環境權感受在台灣的歷史形成, 1970–86 [The cultural origins of social forces: The historical formation of the perception of environmental rights in Taiwan, 1970–86], Taiwan shehuei yanjiu jikan 38 (2000), pp. 133–206. Jie-min Wu 吳介民 and Lii Ding-tzann, “Chuandi gongtong ganshou: Linhe shequ gonggong lingyu xiuci moshi de fenxi” 傳遞共通感受：林合社區公共領 域修辭模式的分析 [Channeling Sensus Communis: An Analysis of the Rhetorical Models in the Public Sphere of the Lin-he Community, Taiwan], Taiwan shehuixue 9 (2005), pp. 119–163. See Ya-Chung Chuang, “Place, Identity, and Social Movements: Shequ and Neighborhood Organizing,” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 13.2 (2005), pp. 379–410; and also my “Xunshou shequ: Quanli, chongtu yu dushi difang

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45 46

47

48

49 50

51 52 53

54

zhengzhi” 巡守社區：權力、衝突與都市地方政治 [Neighborhood Watch: Power, Conflict, and Urban Local Politics], Taiwan renleixue kan 台灣人類學刊 3.2 (2005), pp. 79–114. Lu Hsin-yi, The Politics of Locality: Making a Nation of Communities in Taiwan (London: Routledge, 2002). Shaw-wu Jung 容邵武, “Shequ de jiexian: Quanli yu wenhua de yanjiu— Taizhong dongshi de ge’an fenxi” 社區的界限：權利與文化的研究—台中東勢 的個案分析 [Boundary of a Community: A Study of Rights and Culture in Dongshih, Taichung], Guoli Taiwan daxue kaogu renleixue kan 國立台灣大學 考古人類學刊 62 (2004), pp. 93–121. Antonia Chao 趙彥寧, teaching in Tunghai University in central Taiwan, has fashioned a way of ethnographic research of gay and lesbian identities. See Antonia Chao, “US Space Shuttle Shooting to the Moon: Global Metaphors and Local Strategies in Building Up Taiwan’s Lesbian Identities,” Journal of Culture, Health, and Sexuality 2.4 (2000), pp. 377–390. This bentu women’s studies can be best represented by Liu Yu-hsiu’s 劉毓秀 edited volume, Nüxing, guojia, zhaogu gongzuo 女性．國家．照顧工作 [Women, the state, and care-giving] (Taipei: Nüshi wenhua, 1997). This volume explores women’s voices which have contributed to the making of a gendersensitive democracy. For the criticism made by scholars affiliated with the Center for the Study of Sexuality, see Naifei Ding, “Prostitutes, Parasites, and the House of State Feminism,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 1.2 (2000), pp. 305–318 and Hans Tao-Ming Huang, “State Power, Prostitution, and Sexual Order in Taiwan: Towards a Genealogical Critique of ‘Virtuous Custom,’” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 5.2 (2004), pp. 237–262. Cf. Aihwa Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006). Hsiao-chuan Hsia 夏曉鵑 , Liuli xun’an: Ziben guojihua xia de “waiji xinniang” xianxiang 流離尋岸：資本國際化下的「外籍新娘」現象 [The “foreign bride” phenomenon in the context of the internationalization of capital] (Taipei: Taiwan shehui yanjiu zazhishe, 2002). Pei-chia Lan, Global Cinderellas: Migrant Domestics and Newly Rich Employers in Taiwan (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006). Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” in Multiculturalism, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 25. For the most recent anthropological work on indigenous rights and the nation-state in Taiwan, see Shu-yuan Yang, “Imagining the State: An Ethnographic Study,” Ethnography 6.4 (2005), pp. 487–516 and Kun-hui Ku, “Ethnographic Studies of Voting among the Austronesian Paiwan: The Role of Paiwan Chiefs in Contemporary State System of Taiwan,” Pacific Affairs 81.3 (2008), pp. 383–406. See Awi Mona (Chih-wei Tsai 蔡志偉), “International Perspective on the Constitutionality of Indigenous Peoples’ Rights,” Taiwan guoji yanjiu jikan 臺灣國際研究季刊 3.2 (2007), pp. 85–139.

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Its scholarly achievement over a decade is summed up in the collection edited by Cheng-kuang Hsu, Taiwan Kejia yanjiu gailun 台灣客家研究概論 [Introduction of Taiwanese Hakka Studies] (Taipei: Nantian, 2007). Ya-Chung Chuang, “You ‘meng’ zuimei: Zuqun rentong yu chengren zhengzhi” 有「夢」最美：族群認同與承認政治 [Dreaming Ethnicity in the Politics of Recognition], Taiwan renleixue kan 8.2 (2010), pp. 3–35.

Chapter 12

On the Practice of Market Transition Sun Liping

Based on an analytical review of the recent scholarship on market transition, this chapter intends to suggest a new sociological approach to analyze the practice of market transition. As I argue in this chapter, to achieve a thorough understanding of the reasons for and the dynamics of market transition, an in-depth study should scrutinize how market transition is practiced under different circumstances. In this sense, the Chinese experience provides an excellent case to examine the practice of market transition.

Social Sciences’ “Black Friday” and the Quest for New Theories A series of drastic social transformations that has occurred in the Eastern European countries and China since the 1980s has fundamentally transformed these societies. The study of these transformations will probably provide a novel source of inspiration and stimulation for the development of the social sciences. Its importance resembles the birth of capitalism that inspired the establishment of a number of new social science disciplines several centuries ago.1 However, what has largely embarrassed contemporary social scientists is their lack of sensitivity and their failure to predict these social transformations at the time when they were taking shape. For instance, embracing the hypothesis of social stability, political scientists focused on specific political issues within these societies. Before the 1980s, economists had exaggerated the capability of socialist countries to plan and control their economies. Sociology was preoccupied with the questions that exclusively originated from the West and thus paid little attention to the social reality at the eve of the social transformations. To some extent, the tremendous social transformations that occurred in the Eastern

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European counties and China have posed serious challenges to social sciences. This spurs some scholars to call it social sciences’ “Black Friday.” 2 This lack of sensitivity and the failure to predict such tremendous social transformations is mainly due to social scientists’ preoccupation with some mainstream theoretical paradigms. Before these social transformations occurred, totalitarianism and modernization were the two dominant paradigms for the study of socialist countries in Eastern Europe. Market transition and its corresponding social transformations in the Eastern European countries and China have fully exposed the theoretical predicament of these two dominant theoretical paradigms. Apparently neither could provide a convincing explanation for these major changes. On the one hand, according to the theory of totalitarianism, after a totalitarian regime is established, totalitarianism would enhance itself, leaving little room for future changes. However, in the process of market transition and social transformation, rather than strengthening the totalitarian system, socialist countries fundamentally made over their established social order. On the other hand, as argued by modernization theory, contemporary socialist countries are mainly concerned about whether or not their social elites possess the values of modernity. However, in reality, the core question in this process of market transition is how to restructure economic and social organizations and systems. In short, these large-scale social transformations have posed unprecedented theoretical challenges to the totalitarianism and modernization paradigms.3 Under these circumstances, the quest for a new theoretical paradigm began. Ideally, a new paradigm could not only explain and reinterpret economic, political, and social life within these socialist countries, but also resolve the theoretical challenges posed by market transition and social transformations since the 1980s. János Kornai, a distinguished Hungarian economist, is a pioneering figure who lays out some fundamental work for a new paradigm. Kornai’s solid empirical analysis and sharp insight enabled him to detect the rich theoretical implications of the “economics of shortage,” a unique economic phenomenon within the socialist countries. From there, he further developed the concept of “soft budget constraint,” a unique guiding principle for the economic operation of the socialist countries. “Economics of shortage” and “soft budget constraint” thus become the

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cornerstones of Kornai’s economic theory. Moreover, Kornai convincingly explains why the same mechanism in a planned economy (such as soft budget constraint) promoted rapid economic growth in the first place, but later caused periodic economic shortages that directly blocked economic development. Kornai’s discovery of these economic phenomena and their operating principles demonstrated that the socialist economy is a distinctive institutional arrangement. As pointed out by David Stark and Victor Nee (Ni Zhiwei 倪志偉), Kornai’s most important contribution is his convincing explanation of the “institutional mechanism of economic reproduction in the state socialist economy.” His concepts such as “shortage” and “soft budget constraint” are critical for the understanding of the unique operation of socialist economies. Furthermore, in addition to producing a convincing paradigm, Kornai’s economic model also established a high level of formalization, which brings the study of socialist economy into mainstream economics.4 If Kornai’s main focus is the socialist economic system and its operating principles, Ivan Szelényi, a Hungarian-American sociologist and another major figure in the “Budapest School,” launches the study of market transition and its social effects in Eastern Europe. (It was because of Kornai and Szelényi’s outstanding work that the so-called “Budapest School” came into being.) Szelényi’s theory of market transition raises some fundamental questions about the relationship between market transition and social inequality, and the formation of new social elites within this process. By rejecting the established wisdom that socialist societies are very equal, Szelényi points out that within socialist countries, although salary is relatively equal, housing and some other aspects of social welfare exhibit a great deal of inequality. In the field of comparative social policies, Szelényi contributes to a theory that in a society in which inequality is caused by the free market, state redistribution could effectively reduce the level of inequality, but in a socialist country where state redistribution is already an established economic practice, reduction of inequality has to rely rather on market mechanisms. By expanding Szelényi’s theory of economic redistribution and its basic hypothesis, Victor Nee brings forward the “theory of market transition.” Nee argues that the transition from a redistribution economy to a market economy within socialist countries will lead to the transfer of power and privileges from the former redistribution class to the direct producers. In a similar fashion, Szelényi and Nee agree that market transition has some equalizing effects. 5 This conclusion has incurred wide criticism within

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academia. For instance, some empirical studies actually reach the opposite conclusion. One highly relevant issue here is the formation of social elites during and after market transition. To some extent, market transition has transformed the power configuration and social stratification. This effect is clearly manifested by the new patterns of the replacement of old social elites and the creation of new ones. The analysis of these new patterns is further related to the question of how market transition influenced the former opportunity structure. That is to say, who would benefit from market transition and thus become social elites? The study and debates on the patterns of the formation of new social elites were first conducted by scholars from Eastern Europe. One of their central questions is the destiny of cadres during market transition. Was their social standing degraded after they lost political power? Or did they take advantage of their possession of power and social resources and obtain more opportunities in a market economy? In other words, did their former status grant them more advantages during market transition? In East European Alternatives, Elemér Hankiss argues that power does not immediately lose its privileges during the process of market transition. Cadres could utilize their power to transform themselves into the “propertied class.” 6 In Dynamics of the Breakthrough, Jadwiga Staniszkis, a Polish economist, deploys a new concept to describe the same process. Staniszkis argues that Eastern Europe experienced a process that can be defined as “political capitalism.” The key feature of this process is that the previous official positions were utilized by the elites to accumulate private profit.7 Both theories thus agree that, in terms of elites’ social status, there was no fundamental break before and after the political transformation. By successfully transforming themselves from political elites in the redistribution economy into economic elites in the market economy, they managed to maintain the status quo. Staniszkis names her model of elite formation as the “theory of elite reproduction.” This theory emphasizes the continuity of social elites before and after the reform and how the same group of people transformed themselves from one type of elite into another. Unlike the “theory of elite reproduction,” according to Staniszkis, the “theory of elite circulation” does not advocate the continuity of social elites but emphasizes the rupture before and after the reform. The recent publication of Making Capitalism without Capitalists, authored by Gil Eyal, Iván Szelényi, and Eleanor Townsley, brings forward a new development within the “Budapest school.” This book, along with

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The Postsocialist Pathways, authored by David Stark and László Bruszt, are the two books that won the name for the “Budapest school.” 8 In Making Capitalism without Capitalists, the “Budapest school” shifts its theoretical concerns from social inequality and elite formation to an overview of the development of postcommunist or postsocialist societies. This study makes special efforts to connect the new study of social conditions with classical sociological theories. According to these Eastern European scholars, if the study of classical capitalism gave birth to classical sociology, in a similar fashion, their study of “capitalism without capitalists” in Central Europe would thus contribute to the emergence of neoclassical sociological theories. They argue that neoclassical sociology challenges the basic hypothesis of classical sociology, that is, private capital and the capitalists who possess it are the necessary conditions for the birth of capitalism. This is the most important foundation of classical capitalism. Unlike classical sociology, neoclassical sociology aims to explain the formation of a totally different capitalism in Central Europe. Because these societies did not contain the private proprietor class before the reform, technological-intellectual elites had to adopt an innovative strategy to develop capitalism—“making capitalism without capitalists.” This unique transition to capitalism thus gave birth to “neoclassical sociology.” It is important to note that their analysis of the transition to capitalism is not only different from Adam Smith and Karl Marx’s classical social economics, but also distinguishes itself from the theories of postcapitalism in the twentieth century, such as “corporatism” and “managism.” Pierre Bourdieu, a distinguished French sociologist, provides the theoretical foundation of their analysis. According to Bourdieu, capital can be categorized into economic, political, social, cultural, and symbolic capital. Sometimes Bourdieu even uses the concept of academic capital. Based on Bourdiueu’s theory, the “Budapest school” argues that classical capitalism was established by an economic bourgeoisie which possessed material resources, but capitalism in postcommunist countries was created by intellectuals who supported bourgeois society and its capitalistic economic system. More importantly, as far as I am concerned, as a new form of capitalism, “capitalism without capitalists” has already spilled out of its original regions to other countries (such as China). As a matter of fact, in the absence of private capitalists, technological-intellectual elites who did not possess private capital in a classical sense successfully created capitalism.

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This will inevitably solicit new explanations of this key question for classical sociology: What is capitalism?

The Continuity and Rupture of the Political Polity: Market Transition under Different Circumstances As I pointed out earlier, the study of market transition in Eastern Europe has formed an influential school or a research group. Generally speaking, the “Budapest school” exhibits four key features in the study of market transition in the former communist countries. 1)

In the study of market transition and post-communist society, the “Budapest school” mainly focuses on the structural features of the official systems and organizations. 2) Large-scale questionnaires are the major tool to conduct research on the social and political structure of the former communist countries. Ivan Szelényi’s study on the elite transformation in Centra l Europe is one of t he outstanding examples. 3) The “Budapest school” commonly holds a top-down approach. This perspective is particularly prominent in their emphasis on social elites. 4) The “Budapest school” mainly focuses on the countries in Eastern Europe, particularly Hungary in Central Europe. It is important to note that market transition within these countries was often accompanied by rupture of the polity. The fourth point is particularly important and, to some extent, serves as the premise of the others. It is no exaggeration to argue that the preoccupation with market transition in Eastern Europe ref lects some major theoretical concerns of the school. As noted by the “Budapest school,” market transition was closely associated with political upheaval. In other words, the transformation of the polity and guiding ideology actually occurred before large-scale market transition. Political change thus created a precondition to initiate a large-scale, state-directed, and legitimate procedure to legalize and justify market transition. During this process, within a very short time, major political and social systems underwent fundamental transformations. For this reason, the “Budapest school” devotes their main energy to comparing the official organizational structure before and after the reform. During this process, former

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political elites lost their power resources due to the political disturbance, while new economic elites had not formed yet. This situation created the conditions for intellectual elites to play significant roles. This top-down approach thus designates top-level elites as the major focus of the “Budapest school.” Without doubt, the large-scale questionnaires contain many advantages to study drastic transformations of the official systems and organizations. In contrast, the market transition in China is very different. I would like to devote some space to elaborate three major differences below. 1) Gradual reform with the continuity of polity. In comparison with Eastern European experiences, this difference is so vast that it defines two distinctive types of market transition. In Eastern Europe, violent social and political changes almost completely broke the continuity of political system and ideology. Although these countries varied in their societal development after the reform, the massive privatization and the transition to the market economy all occurred in an environment completely free of the constraint of (communist) politics and ideology. The large-scale legislation to validate the market economy thus replaced the previous underground discussions under the cover of metaphor and allusion. In the case of Hungary, the country that attracts the most research interest from the “Budapest school,” the large-scale privatization started in the 1990s. Before that, the Corporation Law (the No. 6 Law), issued in 1988, already permitted individuals to establish corporations and allowed foreign companies to invest in Hungary. The 1989 No. 8 Law defined in detail the change of the ownership system in Hungary. In 1989, the No. 14 Law specified the protections for foreign investment: A) The law prohibits the nationalization of corporations under foreign investment; B) Foreign exchange can be freely remitted abroad; C) Profits can be returned to the native countries of foreign investors; D) Foreign financial companies are permitted to be used for financial auditing and asset appraisal. The Constitutional Amendment in 1989 further declared the equality of all ownership systems. Some Hungarian economists even argued that as early as the period from 1989 to 1990 Hungary had already eliminated the legal obstacles to develop the private economy. In 1990, large-scale privatization began. In that year, the Hungarian congress passed the No. 17 Law and established the National Property Bureau (later abolished in 1995) for the purpose of protecting and managing state

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properties. The 1990 No. 16 Law declared the privatization of the enterprises of small-scale commerce, service, and tourism. This created the first peak of issuing the privatization laws that were accordingly named as the pre-privatization laws. In 1992, the Antall Administration formulated the systematic strategic plans to privatize the state enterprises. Many laws were issued particularly for this purpose. For example, the Cooperative Law, the State Property Law, and the Labor Law were issued to dictate the enforced privatization of state enterprises, economic corporations, and agricultural production cooperatives. These laws also aimed to perfect the organizational system of privatization by establishing the standard procedure and agendas of privatization. Identified as the privatization laws, these laws created the second peak of privatization in Hungary. In December 1994, the congress determined to accelerate the process of privatization by reviewing the previous procedure. The third climax emerged with the issuing of more privatization laws. The 1995 No. 39 Law, the so-called Privatization Law, defined the goals of privatization, specified the property structure of the private ownership system, clarified the authority boundaries between the property trust companies and the state treasury committee in charge of compensation, and stipulated the principles of transferring state properties. In particular, the No. 39 Law specified which enterprises were eligible for privatization, and for which ones the state had to maintain ownership. The 1997 Corporation Law further defined the principles of establishing and managing corporations of various forms. A complete legal system of privatization was thus established.9 In contrast to Eastern European countries, Chinese economic reform is normally defined as a “gradual reform.” In the Chinese context, this notion contains multiple and even ambiguous connotations. In terms of reform strategies, Chinese “gradual reform” is distinctively different from the aggressive “shock therapy” employed by the Eastern European countries. In terms of its guiding principles, the Chinese government stressed that the “gradual reform” is China’s means of self-improvement which must obey the basic socialist principles and system (and suggests that the Eastern European countries have already deflected from the fundamental goals of socialism). As Chinese economist Lin Yifu 林毅夫 describes the characteristics of the “gradual reform,” “directed by the Chinese Communist Party and Government, China’s economic reform is carried out under the precondition of sustaining the basic socialist system. This

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assures that the reform approaches and goals are not aggressive.” 10 In this sense, one of the most distinctive features of China’s economic reform is to maintain the continuity and integrity of China’s political system. Wang Xiaoqiang 王小強, an important member in the think tank of China’s economic reform, holds a similar view. According to Wang, the “gradual pattern” is not a “slow pattern” (manmanlai moshi 慢慢來模式). For instance, China’s agricultural reform in the 1970s was very drastic, far more aggressive than the one in Eastern Europe. As suggested by Wang, the primary feature of China’s “gradual reform” is to work for the goal of economic development. China’s reform is not the reform of “-ism” (zhuyi 主義). Its sole aim is to increase the GNP.11 “Incremental reform” (zengliang gaige 增量改革) is another expression of this kind of gradual process. The primary goal of the reform is to create a system that is not only able to incorporate the new elements, but also sustain the fundamentals of the old system. In other words, the integrity of the old principles must be kept to the greatest extent possible. No matter which concept Chinese scholars deploy to characterize this gradual reform, the reform is carried out under the condition that the basic social structure (particularly the political system) and the guiding socialist ideology would remain intact. This is a very unique market transition that is different from Eastern European experiences. In the next section, I would like to turn to the characteristics of social transformations motivated by this unique type of market transition. 2) Elite formation under the condition of power continuity. Chinese “gradual reform” created a unique process of elite formation. Ivan Szelényi’s theory of elite formation is based on two key concepts: “capital type” and “capital transfer.” Szelényi’s model contains two basic working hypotheses. First, different types of capital are relatively independent; second, they are intertransferable. However, there are some preconditions for these two hypotheses. In Eastern Europe, the rupture of the polity created independent capital of various forms. Because market transition simultaneously occurred with regime transfer, this largely weakened the control of political capital over other types of capital. Consequently, weakened political capital created the condition for the emergence of other kinds of independent capital. In contrast, in China, the transition from the redistribution economy to the market economy was not concomitant with power transfer. Therefore,

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political capital was not impaired at all. Consequently, even when the market economy already dominated the entire economic system, political power in China still maintained its status quo. Under such circumstances, it became difficult for the various types of capital to achieve their independence. Due to the control of political power, the available capital was not independent but was organized into highly undivided total capital (zongtixing ziben 總體性資本). Unlike the elites in Eastern European countries, Chinese elites were not inter-transferable. As we point out in an article, “The Short- and Long-Term Trends and Hidden Problems of China’s Transformation of Social Structure,” 12 China’s reform produced an elite clique (jingying jituan 精英集團) that controlled cultural, political, and economic capital. The original capital of this elite clique came from the political or administrative power held by themselves or their families. During the reform, the so-called never-missed (buluokong 不落空) phenomenon is most typical. In other words, the elites were always the winners at every turn of capital transfer and resource appropriation, such as the reopening of the university admission examination in the late 1970s, studying abroad in the early 1980s, “official engaging in speculation” (guandao 官倒) in the middle 1980s, the “third echelon” (disan tidui 第三梯隊) in the late 1980s, “descending into the open sea of business” (xiahai 下海) in the early 1990s, and “buying diplomas” (mai wenping 買文憑) from the middle 1990s on. These were the significant channels for the elites to accumulate the total capital. By monopolizing social resources, the total capital encroached on the interests of many other social groups. Because the resources that were supposed to be possessed by the middle class were seized by the total capital, this situation was partially responsible for the difficulties in forming China’s middle class. Meanwhile, the resource monopoly by the total capital also accelerated social disparity. In an article analyzing elite formation in China, “Total Capital and Elite Formation in the Transitional Period,” 13 I periodize Chinese elite formation into three stages. The first stage: “the dual-track system” (shuanggui zhi 雙軌制) and “guandao.” In the middle 1980s, due to the complexity and difficulty of the market reform, the Chinese government implemented the “dual-track system” to introduce market as a new element to determine price and promote market development. However, due to the existence of two price systems within and outside the planned economy, this opened the door for political power to seek profit from

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market activities. As a consequence, in the middle 1980s, “guandao” emerged as a unique phenomenon in China. This was a crucial step to form the total capital. The second stage: the “third echelon” and returning to the power center. Although large-scale “guandao” led to the integration of power and wealth, with the further expansion of the market-determined price system, the commodity speculation from the official power gradually diminished. Consequently, under the changed conditions, “guandao” was restrained to a certain extent. However, at this time (the late 1980s), another opportunity appeared in the political domain. From the middle and late 1980s, the Chinese government started to implement the so-called Third Echelon Plan. In theory, the criteria to recruit new officials into the “third echelon” in the party were junior status and professional knowledge. In reality, senior cadres’ children were often favored. The third stage: “xiahai” and the aggregation of political, economic, and cultural capital. In the early 1990s, after Deng Xiaoping 鄧 小平 delivered his talks during the southern tours to Shenzhen, the reform of the economic system was reinitiated. “Xiahai” became a major trend among officials and provided a greater opportunity for the exchange of political power for economic capital. The so-called “enclosure movement” created the first opportunity and accelerated capital accumulation. Some of today’s large-scale collective-run enterprises (minying qiye 民營企業) actually originated at this time. More interestingly, in recent years, a great number of entrepreneurs and government officials have started to purchase academic degrees. To resolve their funding problems, Chinese universities established a variety of “degree programs” (wenping ban 文憑班), particularly offering master’s and PhD degrees. For entrepreneurs and government officials, paying high tuition allows them to obtain admission to these programs, which normally have classes during the weekend. Through this channel, the elites who previously possessed political or/and economic capital now acquire cultural capital. This type of elite formation in China, particularly the emergence of total capital, is a very different case from the Eastern European experiences. 3) “Unofficial operation” under the condition of continued official ideology. As I pointed out earlier in this paper, under the circumstances of dramatic political rupture, market transition occurred mainly through legislation and the establishment of a new political system. During this process, although many controversies emerged, few of them actually

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concentrated on ideology. Debates tended to focus on governmental policies and the consequent effects on vested interests. Therefore, the official system continued to play the fundamental role in directing market transition. However, China’s market transition occurred under very different circumstances. Market transition in China was entangled with the continued controversies on ideological issues, such as the early debate on the validity of the market economy and the later controversy on the jointstock company. Even today, privatization is still a sensitive issue. Ideological disputes thus became a heavy burden and raised costs for China’s market transition. To reduce this cost, Chinese reformers adopted two strategies. The first one intended to incorporate new reform policies or market elements into the existing ideology. The invention of the “socialist market economy” (shehuizhuyi shichang jingji 社會主義市場經濟) is one excellent example. The other strategy is “no debate” (bu zhenglun 不爭論). In practice, this strategy often means that the new reform policies can be put into practice, but the authorities do not allow open discussion. Many reform policies in China were substantially carried out through such flexible channels. In “The Flexibility to Operate and Transform the Official System,” I fully analyze the concept of “f lexibility” (biantong 變通) as a unique mechanism for China’s market transition. As far as I am concerned, “biantong” is neither a fully official nor completely unofficial strategy to implement the market system. Instead, it falls in between. To be more precise, “biantong” enabled the official system to operate in an unofficial way. Under these circumstances, official institutions operated as the major agents to issue flexible policies. These official agents were either local governments, or official offices within the government, or relevant corporations and companies that exercised the governmental functions of social control and management. As I argue in this article, interestingly enough, “biantong” tended to maintain, but in reality subtly transformed, the old system. In other words, on the surface, the new system did not violate the old principles and goals, but in reality, the new goals were fundamentally different and even ran counter to the old system. Chinese market transition produced several common means to issue flexible policies. First, redefining the operating boundaries of old policies. In China, many fundamental regulations are defined by ideological language with only a vague connection to reality. Consequently, the

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precise meaning of these regulations has to rely on the explanations from decision makers or policy administrators. The reinterpretation of ideological language in the policies thus created opportunities to issue flexible policies whenever there was a need to do so. Very often, the redefinition of some key ideological concepts became the most effective way to validate the new policies. For instance, by redefining some fundamental key words in the official system such as “socialism,” “public ownership,” and “distribution according to labor,” new interpretations could effectively soften the ideological constraints, expand the policy boundaries, and thus reconfigure and revalidate the new system. In this way, market transition in China produced a new set of ideological discourses, such as “socialism with Chinese characteristics” (you Zhongguo tese de shehuizhuyi 有中國特色的社會主義), “focusing on the central task of economic development” (yi jingji jianshe wei zhongxin 以經濟建設為中心), “three advantages” (sange youliyu 三個有利), “development” (fazhan 發展), “socialist market economic system” (shehui zhuyi shichang jingji tizhi 社會 主義市場經濟體制). In comparison with the old language, these new discourses were applicable to the new situation and could create more opportunities to implement the flexible policies. Second, adjusting the structural configuration of the old system to issue f lexible policies. The Chinese official system contains multiple layers. The nature of this system is often determined by the configuration of its composing parts. In this sense, authorities could use flexible policies to reconfigure the composition structure of the system and thus transform its basic organizational nature. The rearrangement of the Chinese ownership system often followed this procedure. In the early stage of the market reform, the Chinese central government arranged the private economic sectors to be secondary, supplementary, and supportive to the public ownership. However, once the central government acknowledged the validity of multiple economic sectors (including the private economy), some local governments started to actively promote the private economy. In the name of developing diverse economic forms, the local governments indeed fundamentally transformed the key structure of China’s ownership system. Some local governments called this “making full use of new policies” (ba zhengce yongzu 把政策用足). Third, taking advantage of blind spots within the current regulations to issue flexible policies. As a common practice, Chinese governmental operation relies on the orders and decrees sent down from the central

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government. Very often these decrees only define the goals and the “spirit,” leaving out the specific means of implementation. Even if some decrees do stipulate the means, they only emphasize what should be done, without clearly defining what is unlawful. This practice thus creates many blind spots regarding “what is supposed to be done” and “what is not supposed to be done.” Before the economic reform, when policy administrators acted absolutely according to the state regulations, these blind spots were often ignored. Many believed this universal principle— nothing could be accomplished without a “red writ” (hongtou wenjian 紅 頭文件) from above. However, after the economic reform, policy administrators started to interpret writs as a kind of regulation, and now they could freely move into the areas that were not clearly regulated by the law. This drastically changed the situation. In order to reconfigure the official system, local governments took advantage of these blind spots to issue flexible policies. Many officials often defended their policies like this: “We can do anything unless the central government prohibits it by law.” In a country with a strong legal tradition, it is very common that one can do whatever the law does not forbid. However, in China, for a long period of time, this type of behavior was regarded as a legal violation and was thus punishable. Even today the Chinese government still hesitates to legalize this practice. It remains as a flexible means to issue new policies. Finally, taking advantage of gray areas in the system to issue flexible policies. Gray areas enable policy makers to identify (often weak) support from old regulations. But in reality the newly issued policies often deflect from or even violate the original policy goals. As a common practice, when local policy makers are ready to issue new policies, they always strategically search for support from the old system. In this sense, the new policies are issued under the name of implementing the old regulations. This type of behavior shows a strong tendency to trial new measures rather than definitively implement them. If new policies met strong obstacles or incurred punishment from above, local policy makers would move to temporarily cancel the controversial policies. It is important to point out that “biantong” is not just a technique. Most importantly, biantong plays a significant role in partially transforming the old system. Whether or not biantong will initiate wider social transformations depends on a set of complex elements. The two most important factors are the regularization and the expansion of flexible policies. Through the regularization of flexible policies, a new semi-official system will be established. With the intensified regularization of

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flexible policies, the semi-official system will finally turn into an official one. As I demonstrate in my research, the development of township and village enterprises serves as a perfect example to demonstrate the mechanism through which a semi-official system could develop into an official economic policy. As a matter of fact, the flexible policies not only worked for the development of township and village enterprises, but also played a significant role in developing both rural and urban areas.14 In “Institutions, Social Ties, and Commitment in China’s Corporatist Transformation,” Victor Nee and Su Sijin 蘇思進 analyze China’s unique process of informal privatization. According to Nee and Su, informal privatization defines a process in which the ownership of public property transfers to the private hand via public recognition. However, this type of informal transfer is neither recognized by the Constitution nor protected by the law. Due to the fact that the Chinese government opposes large-scale privatization, (private) entrepreneurs have to adopt the tactics of informal privatization. These activities directly lead to ownership redistribution, particularly in the industrial economic sectors. Because public recognition is the primary means to establish informal private ownership, informal privatization thus solely relies on the existing social relations. As the basic regulation that guides resource use, informal ownership has to rely on social forces for its supervision and management. In other words, informal ownership is deeply embedded in wider social customs and obligations. Not unlike power in a family, which is defined through mutual understanding and consensus, supervised by the community members and enforced by social punishment, the violation of informal ownership will also lead to punishments like social reprobation, sometimes even resulting in social conf licts. Generally speaking, the more deeply the informal ownership is imbedded into the social network, the fewer ownership disputes will occur, and the more secure the ownership. Consequently, informal ownership motivates people to invest in the social networks that sustain economic stability. Nevertheless, because informal ownership lacks legal protection, the request for single ownership often leads to disputes that absolutely increase the cost of maintaining or transfering informal ownership. Moreover, because of the vagueness of informal ownership, it becomes extremely difficult to divide the ownership among its multiple claimers. Finally, informal ownership is difficult to transfer, no matter whether the transfer occurs through inheritance or via market purchase. Nevertheless, when society is

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accustomed to such resource use, social customs will emerge as a strong force to sustain informal ownership. In time, informal ownership creates a strong foundation to obtain formal ownership. For instance, the informal land privatization is one typical type of informal ownership in China. Meanwhile, because informal ownership is often vague, there exists a tendency for profit sharing. For instance, in private corporations or enterprises that operate according to market principles, Chinese entrepreneurs nowadays increasingly raise bonus and other non-salary benefits. If the distribution economy before the reform always stimulated “free riders” to gain profit, the market economy after the reform largely increased productivity and reduced production costs by totally redefining the rules of the game for profit seeking.15

Market Practice and Social Transformation From the analysis above, we may conclude that China’s market transition is very unique when compared with the Eastern European experiences. First of all, Chinese market transition maintains political and ideological continuity. The previous polity and ideology have remained dominant for more than twenty years after the economic reform. Second, due to the continuity of the socialist polity and ideology, many significant reforms have to adopt flexible means. Third, in the process of adopting flexible means, especially in the initial stage, new elements emerge and expand unofficially. Fourth, the unofficial system grows and develops within the operation of the official system. This requires us to pay attention to the unofficial elements, particularly within the operation of the official system, in our study of China’s market transition. In its early studies, the Budapest school touched upon the roles played by the unofficial system, especially the relationship between economic and social elements in the process of market transition. The Budapest school defines this new approach as “new institutionalism” in the study of state socialism. According to David Stark and Victor Nee, “new institutionalism” is based on the assumption that economic behaviors are deeply embedded in noneconomic social relationships. This new approach focuses on the question of how social institutions, such as the family and kinship groups, dominate the cultural tradition of economic transaction, and of how official organizations, such as the government, labor unions, and factories, shape the market. As suggested by Stark and

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Nee, “new institutionalism” is based on the assumption that state socialism represents a unique social configuration, which contains its own organizational principles and momentum. According to “new institutionalism,” state socialism does not develop out of capitalism. It is neither the contradiction of capitalism as the totalitarianism diagram argues, nor a stage of capitalism as modernization theory believes. The existence of the “mixed economy” in the Eastern European countries demonstrates the uniqueness of this socialist system. As noted by Stark and Nee, “new institutionalism” expresses two theoretical attempts: First, any theory that attempts to explain the process and effects of the formation of state socialism must address its unique organizational arrangement. Second, the study of market transition should not constrain itself to the party and state elites, but must address the relationships among economy, society, and state. Therefore, in the new institutionalist paradigm, subordinate groups, popular culture, social networks, market, entrepreneurs, system innovation, political alignment, local administration, and the new forms of interest expressions are the important analytical categories. However, recently new institutionalism seems to have lost its strong focus on the informal elements. This is probably due to the fact that the economic reform in Eastern European countries is currently developing from the erosive stage (qinshi jieduan 侵蝕階段) into the transition stage (zhuanxing jieduan 轉型階段). By moving beyond the organizational and structural analysis of market transition, this essay intends to suggest a new approach that emphasizes the practice of market transition. Recently, our research has advocated a kind of practical sociology. Practical sociology neither emphasizes the practicability of sociology as a social science discipline, nor advocates the usefulness of sociological knowledge for social life. Instead, practical sociology takes social practices as the subject matter. So what is practice? What is social practice? Generally speaking, rather than using a static approach to analyze social phenomenon, such as social relationships and social structure, practical sociology deploys a new perspective to reconsider the practical operation of social phenomena. To some extent, this new perspective is associated with a new assumption about social phenomena or social reality. According to Durkheim, sociology analyzes social reality. But what is social reality? And what are the key features of social reality? Conventionally, people think social reality contains a static and solid structure (for Durkheim, social reality is

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collective representation). In contrast, practical sociology believes that social reality is dynamic and floating, not unlike air and light in the eyes of an impressionist. In other words, social reality is always revealed in practice. In the late 1990s, we conducted a series of case studies on the relationship between the state and the peasantry. A major characteristic of these studies is to take this relationship as a practice of market transition.16 The relationship between the state and peasantry/society is a major research topic within sociology. However, the previous scholarship is preoccupied with the structural characteristics of this relationship. From this perspective, scholars intend to understand the different patterns of this relationship, the reasons that contribute to these patterns, its different implications, and its structural characteristics. Other studies tend to focus on the comparative force on the two sides (the most typical is the paradigm of a strong state versus a weak society, and vice versa), or emphasize the question of peasant independence from the state (this is especially true of studies by historians and political scientists). Some scholarship conceptualizes the state-peasantry relationship as a principalagent one, while others take this relationship to be a structure (such as corporatism in local governments) that has shaped rural society. However, previous scholarship has overlooked some important aspects of the state-peasantry relationship. For example, how is this relationship practiced in rural life? What are its major forms of expression? How do new practices introduce novel elements into the official system? Not unlike other social phenomena, the state-peasantry relationship is “active” and “lively.” As we demonstrate in our case studies, this kind of relationship is not abstract but is involved with concrete practices, such as state grain purchasing, “forcing peasants into business” (bimin zhifu 逼民 致富), “appealing to higher authorities” (shangfang 上訪), and so on. The state-peasantry relationship primarily resides in these concrete and practical activities. By focusing on the state-peasantry relationship, we intend to answer one question that has perplexed us for a long time: After the implementation of the household-responsibility system (lianchan chengbao zeren zhi 聯產承包責任制), did the state in the countryside retain its powerful position or become weaker and weaker? The reality shows an inexplicable paradox. On the one hand, it seems that the state power in the countryside was weakened and started to collapse. Some scholars call it the

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retreat of the state from the countryside. A number of scholarly and media reports indicate the collapse and paralysis of the rural governmental organizations. On the other hand, under such circumstances, the state did not completely lose control over rural life. Surprisingly, state policies were still largely successful in the countryside. As we all know, the lowest-level town governments have three major goals: to purchase grain from farmers, collect miscellaneous taxes, and carry out the One Child Policy. These policies are the concrete accomplishments of state power, because through these goals the state can achieve rural control. It is important to note that these are not easy jobs. For the town governments, these are the imperative administrative responsibilities. For rural cadres, these jobs do not bring them any benefit. Very often, they have to offend their fellow villagers. Sometimes peasants even launched collective resistance. Even though many problems occurred in the process of imposing these state policies (for example, peasants rebelling against governmental oppression—sometimes even with loss of life), overall, the government has successfully levied the grain, collected the taxes, and controlled the rural birth rate. If we believe that the rural government is weak, how can we account for this result? Given the difficulty of these jobs, this cannot be an easy task accomplished by a weak government. However, does that mean the state power is very strong because all the policies have been relatively successful? This is probably not true either. As a matter of fact, the Chinese governmental organization is very weak in the countryside. For this kind of paradox, only looking at social life in practice could provide an answer. For instance, in the case of grain purchasing, our study decodes a process through which official power operates unofficially. Through this process, the official power could obtain extra resources that often resided outside of the official domain. In other words, the unoff icial power operation increased the state power resources, hence enhancing the state power. In the case of planting foreign cantaloupes, our study indicates that the state could effectively create, enhance, and reproduce its mobilization ability during the process of rural mobilization. This process of power management exhibits a dynamic power operation through which the state power could be produced and reproduced. In the case of “appealing to higher authorities,” our study demonstrates a concrete and deeply intertwined statepeasantry relationship. As we argue, peasant actions that were motivated

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by rural problems brought a number of new elements into the state-peasantry relationship. By studying this type of relationship, we manage to achieve a new understanding of Chinese rural society.

The “Everyday Life” Perspective and the Emphasis on Subordinate Society In Making Capitalism without Capitalists, Gil Eyal acknowledges that the perspective of the Budapest school is from top down. This perspective is closely associated with the market transition in Eastern Europe. As I pointed out earlier, the main characteristic of market transition in Eastern Europe is the political and ideological rupture created by the economic reform. This creates a broad space for the interplay between politics, the official system, and social elites. For this reason, the study of market transition in Eastern Europe tends to focus on the various roles played by social elites, the elite formation, and the relationship between elite transformation and the capital they possess. In contrast, market transition in China is very different. Because many Chinese reform policies are implemented through flexible means, this opens up many opportunities for lower officials or even common people to make innovative reforms. Consequently, the study of China’s market transition has to pay close attention to the roles played by lower officials and commoners. In a similar fashion, practical sociology proposes to scrutinize everyday life to reveal the practical logic of market transition. But the question is how to conceptualize everyday life. Theoretically speaking, the “everyday life” approach differs from either top-down or bottom-up perspectives. In the study of Chinese society, two theoretical paradigms have dominant influence, namely the comprehensive (zhengti lun 整體論) paradigm and the indigenous (bentuxing 本土性) paradigm. By focusing on the state, the comprehensive paradigm emphasizes the overwhelming power of the state and party machines and the comprehensive control of social life by the official system. The comprehensive paradigm does not recognize the existence of an independent social life and popular social power. This paradigm tends to represent a passive populace whose resistance is often negligible. In a similar fashion, under the control of the towering party and the state, social life is disciplined and orderly. Therefore, the motivation for reform has to come from the state. Before the 1980s, social studies in China largely reflected this theoretical orientation. The indigenous paradigm originates from the critique of the

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comprehensive paradigm. By arguing that local knowledge is deeply grounded in lineage networks and local religions, the indigenous paradigm emphasizes the independence of local knowledge from the state and believes that everyday life is independent and free of intervention from the outside power. In contrast, the “everyday life” approach is different from either paradigm. This approach does not take everyday life as a totally independent domain, but rather as a stage to interact with the state. In this sense, the “everyday life” approach is not completely a bottom-up perspective, but an integration of the top-down and bottomup approaches. Moreover, the “everyday life” approach calls for attention to the formation of a subordinate society in the process of market transition. If China is experiencing the same social transformations as Karl Polanyi’s “Great Transformation,” a thorough understanding of this process has to address the issues of common people’s everyday life. In other words, market transition and its associated social transformations are not only related to the formation of social elites, but also have a great impact on the common people’s everyday life. In “The Politics of Working-Class Transitions in China,” Ching Kwan Lee 李靜君 suggests incorporating the study of working-class transition into the general study of market transition. Based on the empirical data she collected in China, Lee examines three different types of labor resistance: resistance from urban peasant laborers, which is often organized through rural native networks; resistance from workers in the state-run factories, such as idling at work and seeking a second profession; and the more drastic resistance from unemployed laborers. As noted by Lee, the centralized organizations in the former massive state-run factories actually facilitate labor mobilization. Generally speaking, in addition to the more formal social resistance from workers and peasants, most of the social resistance is a kind of “informal resistance” as defined by James Scott.17 However, this type of informal resistance is not insignificant. These collective movements play significant roles in shaping our economic and social systems. The study of subordinate society will thus enhance our understanding of the complexity of market transition and the concurrent social transformations.

Practical Sociology: Theory and Methodology It is Pierre Bourdieu who brings the concept of practice to our notice.18 Bourdieu inspires us to pay attention to the urgent nature of practice.

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According to Bourdieu, urgency is the unique feature of practice, which does not exhibit itself on the static level or before practice. However, Bourdieu is preoccupied with quantitative and structural analysis and does not examine the mechanism of practice. As far as I am concerned, Bourdieu is deploying an unpractical spirit to deal with practice since his theoretical framework takes practice as an abstract concept and therefore invalidates practice. Although Bourdieu’s concepts, such as “habitus” and “field,” are meaningful when applied separately, these concepts have no direct connection with practice. Practice is alive and active, a process of regenerating social phenomena. If there does exist what Claude LéviStrauss calls “code” in social life, many of these codes must exist in social phenomena’s practical condition. We would like to propose an approach of “process-event analysis” (guocheng-shijian fenxi 過程—事件分析). The purpose of this analysis is to approach a social phenomenon in its practical condition. Bourdieu’s failure in applying practical sociology in his study is largely due to his inability to identify an approach to analyze social phenomenon in practice. To some extent, “process-event analysis” intends to reactivate practice by scrutinizing the practical process and its related events. Moreover, the “process-event” approach deploys social events to examine practice’s creative mechanism—how practice interconnects and reproduces social phenomena. More importantly, this analysis provides a possible means to re-approach practice. Nevertheless, the “process-event” approach only intends to move closer to the practical conditions of social phenomena. The true analysis of social phenomena has to rely on some other means (such as case studies). Based on a series of case studies we conducted recently, we propose that the study of social phenomenon in its practical condition should achieve four goals—understanding a social phenomenon’s process, mechanism, technique, and logic. The analysis of a social phenomenon’s process is the starting point which enables us to move closer to its practical condition. We particularly emphasize the importance of social events through which we can detect the logical development of social phenomenon. Attention to a social phenomenon’s mechanism is also important to anatomize its functions. For instance, in the case of state grain purchasing, by analyzing the mechanism of the unofficial operation of the official system, we gain insight into how the unofficial elements play significant roles in expanding official power. Techniques refer to the

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tactics and strategies employed by the actors in the social events. We particularly highlight the agency of these actors because through practice these actors demonstrate their active roles in shaping this process. Finally, our goal is to understand the logic of a social phenomenon. By offering interpretations of the social phenomenon’s logic, we can answer the questions in which we are interested. For example, the issue of state mobilization has attracted great scholarly interest. Previous scholarship has provided three types of answer to this question: How effectively could the Chinese local governments mobilize the rural populace? The first answer believes that the state’s capacity for mobilization is very limited. This conclusion is largely based on research done in China’s underdeveloped areas. The second answer proposes that, although the people’s communes have already been dismantled, the Chinese government is still capable of effectively mobilizing people. This claim is based on research done in eastern China, where township and village enterprises flourish. The third answer believes that, because of China’s massive size and enormous regional difference, the mobilization ability varies for different local governments. To question the common tendency among these studies to believe that the ability to mobilize is unchangeable, our study shows that it is not invariable but can be reproduced in the process of mobilization. This logic is crucial for us to understand the Chinese government’s mobilization ability. In order to fully address these four goals, an in-depth case study is necessary. To be sure, large-scale questionnaires are still the dominant methodology in contemporary sociology to study social phenomena. However, any methodology has its own limits. As far as I am concerned, the case study enjoys some obvious advantages in the study of social life. Case studies can take us deep into a social phenomenon and detect its concealed dynamics. For this reason, we propose an in-depth case study which is not speculation about but rather the revelation of the logic of practice.

A Brief Conclusion The “market transition theory” about the economic transformation in Eastern Europe shows four characteristics: First, its main focus is the structural transformation of the official system and organizations. Second, the large-scale questionnaire is still the dominant means to study

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these structural transformations. Third, its basic theoretical perspective is from top down. Fourth, the Budapest school mainly focuses on Eastern European countries, especially Hungary in Central Europe. In these countries, market transition occurs with the rupture of the polity and state ideology. Recently, the study of market transition by Chinese mainland scholars is forming into a new methodology. This paper conceptualizes this new methodology as “the study of the practice of market transition.” By focusing on the process, dynamics, techniques, and logic of market transition, this new methodology aims to bring forward a new understanding of market transition in China. By deploying the case study as the major analytical tool, this approach also synthesizes the top-down and bottom-up perspectives. Translated by Guannan Li

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Sun Liping 孫立平, “Cong gongchang toushi shehui” 從工場透視社會 [Society as seen from the factory], Zhongguo shuping 中國書評 1 (1995). Klaus Mueller, “East European Studies, Neo-Totalitarianism, and Social Science Theory,” in The Totalitarian Paradigm after the End of Communism: Towards a Theoretical Reassessment, ed. Achim Siegel (Amsterdam; Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1998), p. 56. David Stark and Victor Nee, “Toward an Institutional Analysis of State Socialism,” in Remaking the Economic Institutions of Socialism: China and Eastern Europe, ed. Victor Nee, David Stark, and Mark Selden (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), pp. 1–31. Ibid., pp. 9–11. Victor Nee, “A Theory of Market Transition: From Redistribution to Markets in State Socialism” American Sociological Review 54 (1989), pp. 663–681; Victor Nee, “Social Inequalities in Reforming State Socialism: Between Redistribution and Markets in China,” American Sociological Review 56 (1991), pp. 267–282. Elemér Hankiss, East European Alternatives (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 234–265, esp. pp. 253–259. Jadwiga Staniszkis, The Dynamics of the Breakthrough in Eastern Europe: The Polish Experience, trans. Chester A. Kisiel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). Gil Eyal, Iván Szleényi, and Eleanor Townsley, Making Capitalism without Capitalists: Class Formation and Elite Struggles in Post-Communist Central Europe (London and New York: Verso, 1998); David Stark and László Bruszt, Postsocialist Pathways: Transforming Politics and Property in East Central Europe (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998). Ji Jun 紀軍, “Xiongyali siyouha de shinian” 匈牙利私有化的十年 [Hungary: A Decade of Privatization], online at , 2001. Lin Yifu 林毅夫, Cai Fang 蔡昉, and Li Zhou 李周, “Lun Zhongguo jingji gaige de jianjinshi daolu” 論中國經濟改革的漸進式道路 [On the gradual path of China’s economic reform], Jingji yanjiu 經濟研究 9 (1993), pp. 3–12. Wang Xiaoqiang 王小強, “Chaoyue siyouhua luoji” 超越私有化邏輯 [Beyond the logic of privitization], Canyue wengao—weilai yu xuanze 參閱文稿─未 來與選擇 5 (1995). Zhongguo Zhanlüe yu guanli yanjiuhui shehui jiegou zhuanxing ketizu 中國 戰略與管理研究會社會結構轉型課題組, “Zhongguo shehui jiegou zhuanxing de zhong jinqi qushi yu yinhuan” 中國社會結構轉型的中近期趨勢與隱患 [The short- and long-term trends and hidden problems of China’s transformation of social structure], Zhanlüe yu guanli 戰略與管理 5 (1998), pp. 1–17. Sun Liping, “Zongtixing ziben yu zhuanxingqi jingying xingcheng” 總體性 資本與轉型期精英形成 [Total Capital and Elite Formation in the Transitional Period], Zhejiang xuekan 浙江學刊 3 (2002), pp. 100–105.

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Zhidu yu jiegou bianqian yanjiu ketizu 制度與結構變遷研究課題組, “Zuowei zhidu yunzuo he zhidu bianqian fangshi de biantong” 作為制度運作和制度變 遷方式的變通 [The flexibility to operate and transform the official system], Zhongguo shehui kexue jikan 中國社會科學季刊 21 (winter 1997), pp. 45–68. Victor Nee and Sijin Su, “Institutions, Social Ties, and Commitment in China’s Corporatist Transformation,” in Reforming Asian Socialism: The Growth of Market Institutions, ed. John McMillan and Barry Naughton (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), pp. 111–134. See the special issue of Qinghua shehuixue pinglun 清華社會學評論 (2000), which includes the following articles: Sun Liping, “‘Guocheng-shijian fenxi’ yu dangdai Zhongguo guojia-nongmin guanxi de shijian xingtai”「過程─ 事件分析」與當代中國國家─農民關係的實踐形態 [“Process-event analysis” and forms of practice in state-peasant relations in contemporary China], pp. 1–20; Sun Liping and Guo Yuhua 郭于華, “‘Ruan ying jian shi’: Zhengshi quanli feizhengshi yunzuo de guocheng fenxi” 「軟硬兼施」：正式權力非正式 運作的過程分析 [“Carrot and stick”: A process analysis of official power and unofficial operation], pp. 21–46; Ma Mingjie 馬明潔, “Quanli jingying yu jingyingshi dongyuan—yige ‘bimin zhifu’ de anli fenxi” 權力經營與經營式動 員— 一個「逼民致富」的案例分析 [Power management and managerial mobilization—a case study of “forcing peasants into business”], pp. 47–79; and Ying Xing 應星 and Jin Jun 晉軍, “Jiti shangfangzhong de ‘wentihua’ guocheng—Xi’nan yige shuidianzhan de yimin de gushi” 集體上訪中的「問題 化」過程—西南一個水電站的移民的故事 [The process of “problematization” in collective appeals—a story of migrants from a hydroelectric power station in the southwest], pp. 80–109. Ching Kwan Lee 李靜君, “The Politics of Working-Class Transitions in China,” paper presented at the conference of “Conference on Globalization and Labor Problems” 全球化與勞工問題, Research Center for Contemporary China, Tsinghua University (Beijing), 24–25 December 1999; James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985). Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. by Richard Nice (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977); Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990).

Chapter 13

Narratives of the “Sufferer” as Historical Testimonyi Guo Yuhua

This chapter begins with an analysis of the social roots and social character of suffering, and explores the question of how peasants’ narratives of their experiences become history. Narratives of personal histories of “bitterness” told by peasants who refer to themselves as “sufferers” (shouku ren 受苦人) occupy a significant place in oral accounts of rural life in China in the second half of the twentieth century. They constitute both an important academic resource and an independent field of knowledge production. The social dimensions of “suffering” establish an organic link between the everyday lives of ordinary people and broader social history, such that the deep roots of “suffering” can only be apprehended from the perspective of social structures and power relationships. Seeing the everyday practices of ordinary peasants as an integral part of “civilisation” links peasants’ life histories with the macro processes of social history. It gives the mundane, even trivial, experiences and accounts of peasants’ lives an extraordinary significance as organic components of the grand historical narrative. Reflecting on peasants’ everyday lives as part of this broader process also makes an important contribution to discussions of interdisciplinary methodology.ii i

ii

This essay is part of the introduction to a work in process, which I am writing on the basis of about ten years of conducting oral history research in Ji village, northern Shaanxi. I have had rich exchanges with Sun Liping 孫立平 and Shen Yuan 沈原 during and since the course of this fieldwork; my thanks to them for their many valuable ideas. Thanks also to Prof. Harriet Evans for translating the paper into English. In Chinese, the different words for “suffering” are often used interchangeably. However, there are some slight distinctions between them. Ku’nan 苦難 generally refers to suffering and disasters that are large-scale, social, and common or universal; tongku 痛苦 emphasizes feelings (ganjue 感覺) towards and about suffering, including bodily and emotional experiences; jiku 疾苦 mostly refers to bodily suffering and sickness.

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In 1993, one of the world’s greatest thinkers, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, produced La misere du monde, in which he examined the diverse everyday sufferings of ordinary people in contemporary society. In 1999, this large-scale investigation of social suffering appeared in English as The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society. Over three years, Bourdieu and his twenty-two researchers carried out interviews mainly with ordinary people of low social status, including migrants, unemployed workers, the homeless, fema le employees, laid-off company directors, peasants and farmers, high school students, temporary workers, foremen, street drifters, small managers, social workers, police, and so on, to reveal life trajectories, stories, and experiences of suffering through an “exploratory examination of social suffering, painful circumstances, and dissatisfactions and complaints that are difficult to articulate.” 1 Bourdieu and his collaborators’ work in listening to these people’s stories and entering their lives can be seen as a fulfilment of the sociologist’s political and moral mission—to reveal the deep roots of the social suffering of ordinary people.

The Social Character and Roots of “Suffering” Suffering as Social Fact Bourdieu and his colleagues’ research for The Weight of the World began with individual interviews about everyday life. Through numerous and apparently trivial accounts of suffering, the researchers used their imagination and sensitivity to discover the complex nexus linking individual conditions and structural transformations of society, and thus tried to transcend the binary opposition between micro and macro characterising conventional social science research. For example, a comparison of interviews with young temporary workers and the “old guys” at a Peugeot plant revealed that the differences between them were not only generational but included a series of structural differences in social position, labour relations, personal experience, and political attitude (for example towards strikes). The formal distance between the two generations of workers depicted the profound transformation of the working class coming, as it were, to “the end of a world.”2 Interviews with ordinary state workers and social workers demonstrated that difficulties at work stemmed from the “inertia of a fragmented and fragmenting

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administration” in which workers possessed no more than symbolic resources—for example, the capacity to get on well with neighbours, trustworthiness and advice—but lacked public resources and a systematic foundation. With no alternative but to struggle between the onerous and endless tasks the state assigned them and their own limited capacities, the responsibilities the state demanded of them became an “impossible mission.” 3 Bourdieu also called this “institutional bad faith”—when the state’s right hand does not know what its left hand is doing, or even worse, when its “right hand does not [even] want to know what gets done by its left hand.” 4 Or, for example, interviews with ordinary high school students all revealed the structures linking their individual lives and the educational system into which they were drawn, the structure and history of the school and education system as a whole, and particularly the mechanisms reproducing social inequality.5 In bringing to light the social character of individual suffering, Bourdieu and his colleagues made a significant methodological assertion, namely that the individual is simultaneously social. What appears to be the most individualised is at the same time the most de-individualised. Difficulties in individual circumstance may be seen as subjective anxieties and conf licts, yet what they invariably reveal are the structural contradictions embedded in the stratifications of the social world. “Many dramatic scenes of the greatest personal intimacy may obscure the deepest dissatisfaction and most singular suffering. Men and women are all living creatures, but the roots of their experiences can always be traced to circumstances produced by objective contradictions, constraints, and dilemmas. These objective, external elements are universally found in the structures of the labour market, the property rental market and inscribed in the mechanisms of economic and social inheritance.” 6 “Social suffering” is also a key term for the medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman. “Social suffering … brings into a single space an assemblage of human problems that have their origins and consequences in the devastating injuries that social force can inflict on human experience. [Such] grouping of human problems defeats the categorization of … issues as principally psychological or medical and, therefore, individual. Instead, it points to the often close linkage of personal problems with societal problems. It reveals too the interpersonal grounds of suffering: in other words, that suffering is a social experience”.7 Kleinman’s research attempted to break through established divisions—for example, those

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that separated the individual from analyses of social stratification, health from social problems, expression from experience, and suffering from intervention. The dualism of these divisions in fact impedes our understanding of how the multiple forms of human suffering are simultaneously both individual and collective, and how modes of individual suffering and trauma are simultaneously local and global.8 Here, we can again appreciate the force of C. W. Mills’ The Sociological Imagination—his capacity to link individuals’ troubles in concrete circumstances to the public issues of the social structure, and to move back and forth between the micro data of individual experience and the macro history of society.9 Mills argued that “in so far as the economy is so arranged that slumps occur, the problem of unemployment becomes incapable of personal solution. In so far as war is inherent in the nationstate system and in the uneven industrialization of the world, the ordinary individual in his restricted milieu will be powerless … to solve the troubles this system or lack of system imposes upon him.” The day-today troubles and anxieties that people across the world are incapable of resolving are created by structural transformations of society that they are powerless to control. In this sense, “The history that now affects every man is world history.” 10 The social interpretation of suffering can also be traced back to Durkheim’s classic social theory of suicide. In Durkheim’s view, suicide is an individual act but is powerfully influenced by the social environment, making suicide a social fact. The conclusion he reached from his research on suicide was that some human behaviour is moulded by the social environment—family, organisation, community, race, and historical moment. In On Suicide, Durkheim refuted the idea that suicide could be attributed to asocial factors, including suicides supposedly caused by psychological factors (mental abnormalities, hereditary factors, and racial characteristics), and natural factors (climatic, seasonal, and diurnal), and using extensive factual and statistical data, he argued that “suicide does not arise from innate characteristics but from the external factors controlling individual behaviour”—in other words, the external environment, social trends, and public moral standards. Suicide thus emerges as a particular form of the collective malady, and as such helps explain its character.11 All these ideas come together in explaining how individual concerns, anxieties, and suffering, such as unemployment and suicide, are “social suffering.” The research on which they are based offers important evidence about the “history of suffering” of ordinary people. It also

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provides a methodological basis for the study of a “history of suffering.” Bourdieu especially emphasised that “there is no more real or realistic way of exploring communication in general than by focusing on the simultaneously practical and theoretical problems that emerge from the particular interaction between the investigator and the person being questioned.” 12 By collecting the oral histories of ordinary people and engaging in a close mutual exchange with those who are subjects of their histories, we can establish a link between individual experience and narrative and the macro processes of social history, and thus understand and explain the relationship between individual suffering and changing social structures.

Revealing the Deep Sources of Suffering A task even more important for the social sciences than bringing to light the unknown and invisible aspects of “social bitterness” is that of exposing the basic roots of social suffering and the hidden mechanisms creating it. The essays in Social Suffering, as Kleinman, Das, and Lock pointed out in their introduction to the volume, critically explore the ways our historically and culturally shaped commitments to particular versions of modernisation construct moral quandaries and how our usual practices of casting social experience as “natural” and “normal” obscure the “greatly consequential workings of ‘power’ in social life.” They also noted that “politics and professional processes powerfully shape responses to types of social suffering. These processes involve both authorized and contested appropriations of collective suffering.” 13 As a result, the even more interesting and significant issue that research has to confront concerns how suffering is produced in society, and how recognition of suffering as a cultural process is acquired and regulated. Bourdieu went even further in transforming the notion of “social suffering” from a pathological metaphor into a sociological concept, through which he clarified his research objectives: “transforming sicknesses that are difficult to define into utterly clear and explainable diseases facilitates the use of politics to manage them.” He wanted to break through the multiple screens shielding social suffering and to mobilise people to control the social mechanisms breeding immorality and degeneration, for, in his view, it was precisely these mechanisms that incited negativity, anxiety, and despair.14

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In The Weight of the World, social suffering is present in all the main spheres of life—in race and neighbourhood relations, the ghettos and “problem suburbs,” the fate of the working class, the education system, and family and generational relations. Bourdieu attributed its source to the “dual retreat of state and market” that occurred at the same time as the expansion of market ideology and neoliberal globalisation.15 This can be seen, for example, in the withdrawal of the state from the supply of public goods and the draining of public services, the “systematic selfdeceit” of the state system, the breaking up of the working class and the dissolution of the labour movement brought about by the adjustments of the industrial system, the social exclusion and collective disappointment bred by the education system, the ruptures in family and cross-generational relations that encapsulate the contradictions of society as a whole. The “positional suffering” experienced by being situated in particular structures and the individual disasters that parallel collective decline can all be summed up as the political roots of suffering—the diminishing parameters of the social, the increasing atomisation of the individual, and the operations of state. Bourdieu saw that the new suffering and the endlessly accumulating sense of injustice had already lost the means of public expression. Understandably, suffering leads to hatred, and “hatred is the deepest and most universal form of human suffering; it is the most contorted thing that those in control force on the bodies of those they control.” 16 As a result, the aims of his research were precisely to clarify the discourses that remain unexplained and suppressed, through a method involving talking to different kinds of people: Those who because of their positioning in particularly sensitive areas of social space can be truthful chroniclers of their own diseases, those officially occupied with “social problems,” and those “practical experts” who occupy strategic positions in the social world. The rich understanding and spontaneous knowledge these “practical experts” have of the workings of society make them a living treasure. After gaining a full understanding of the individual’s social experience and background, we can go on to carry out detailed, highly interdynamic, and in-depth interviews to help the interviewees discover and articulate the hidden rules behind the bitter tragedies in their lives and in their everyday misfortunes, so as to help them throw off the constraints and harassments of such external realities, dispel occupation of their inner lives by external forces, and overcome the expropriation of people’s innate

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creativity by external realities in the monstrous appearance of the dissident.17 From this we can see what Bourdieu meant by combining science and politics. “As a social scientist, if you don’t intervene, interfere, and appropriately recognise the limitations of each discipline, this is a betrayal of compassion; it is to choose the unacceptable.” 18 “Because of this, in my view, sociology is an instrument of emancipation, and hence an instrument of generosity.” 19 I have set out Bourdieu’s analysis here at such length because he and his colleagues’ investigations, explanations, and searches for the causes of social suffering demonstrate “sociology’s capacity to shatter myths” as well as their great compassion. Their articulation and analysis of social suffering also represent an important line of thought for the analysis of the oral history of rural life in China in the second half of the twentieth century. The reflections and discussions Bourdieu’s analysis opens up are grounded in an attempt to link the life histories of ordinary peasants with the broad contours of social history—narratives of social suffering thus become historical evidence, experienced by countless numbers of people at the bottom of the social hierarchy.

“Disciplinary” Reflections on Social Suffering Apart from its intrinsic academic value, as well as its value as an aspect of the academic’s social responsibility, recording and analysing the history of suffering is also significant for its methodological contributions to social science research. Just as Bourdieu and his colleagues found in The Weight of the World, telling stories of ordinary individuals’ everyday lives and establishing links between individual destinies and systemic transformations defeat the false antagonism between the micro and the macro. A text that is grounded in the life histories of ordinary people appears, in the view of the English translator of The Weight of the World, as a collection of small ethnographies. Moreover, its method—of close interactions and deep interviews with informants—is the most basic work method of anthropological fieldwork. Alongside the analytical insights of his “social character of suffering,” his methodological approaches are inspirational in breaking through the disciplinary divisions between anthropology, sociology, and history. Braudel once characterised the relationship between sociology and history as a “dialogue of the deaf.” Trained and “socialised” in its own

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disciplinary fashion, each has developed its own language, value system, and mode of thinking. The emphasis sociologists are trained to give to summarising general rules often obscures the exceptional and different; historians investigate the concrete detail at the cost of the general. Each finds fault with the other; many historians see sociologists as people who use crude methods and obscure language to explain the obvious without “any sense of time or place, squeez[ing] individuals without mercy into rigid categories, and … describ[ing] these activities as ‘scientific.’ Sociologists, for their part, have long viewed historians as amateurish, myopic fact-collectors without system or method, the imprecision of their ‘data base’ matched only by their incapacity to analyse it.” 20 However, this disciplinary antagonism has abated recently with a “theoretical turn” in history and an “historical turn” in sociology. Oral history can be seen as a bridge between the two. Ever since the rise of the French “chronologists,” the existential condition of traditional historiography and traditional history has been the target of repeated challenges and queries. The official, political, military, and elite histories that dominate the field are not comprehensive histories, for they cannot incorporate the economic, social, cultural, and psychological dimensions of human activity. Oral history—the opposite to the written form, the existential form of dominant and traditional histories—often does not exist or, if it does, exists at the inferior margins of the main forms. But without its survival, history is neither comprehensive nor true. We know from past history that, whether textual or oral, written histories are a construction of power and control. Paul Thompson put it very simply: Any history is determined by its historical aims. The challenge of oral history arises in part because of its links with this notion of history’s aims. Exploring the language of people who have created and experienced their own history is to give them a central position in history. Their historical evidence is the evidence of the lower strata, the disadvantaged, and the failures. Oral history can offer a more realistic and just construction of the past and can contest established narratives. In this way, oral history has radical implications for the social mission of history. Oral history thus emerges as a historical construction that emphasises ordinary people. It gives history its vitality and broadens its parameters. 21 Practice also demonstrates that people experience history in the process of reconstructing the past. Oral history returns history to the people in their own language, and at the same time

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it spreads out the past; it helps people take the initiative to construct their own futures.22 Faced with the bitter experiences of ordinary people’s narratives, we need to develop the imaginative capacity of sociology into ethnographic insights; in other words, we need to apply our capacity to understand and reflect on our research across the boundaries between micro facts and macro constructions, detailed descriptions and theoretical formulations, and structures and historical processes. It is necessary at this point to mention another important “turn” in anthropology. We all know that the two basic modes of collecting data in anthropological fieldwork are “participant observation” and “ethnographic interview,” and researchers have invariably put “what is seen” before “what is heard.” However, some researchers have found in the course of conducting surveys that “what the eye beholds” is neither completely nor generally effective. This is because there is no way to directly observe many aspects of practical activities and processes. For example, no businessman would bring an ethnographer to the dining table for negotiations with officials, and their exchanges are not witnessed by a third party, so all the ethnographer can hear comes from the stories of those involved. 23 Or anthropologists need those present to explain their behaviour. The author of NISA: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman, now a classic of feminist anthropology, once explained her research in the following way: “In the first few months of fieldwork, I can see how close the interdependence is between people, but I have no means of understanding how they are affected by their mutual relationships and lives. I need the information that cannot be observed, I need the !Kung people to begin to narrate their own stories. I asked the women what being a woman meant to them, and what were the important things in their lives.” 24 On the other hand, and even more importantly, this shift in focus from the seen to the heard, from the observed to the listened, not only arises from the limitations of the survey itself, but is “linked to a larger theoretical concern that takes narrative as an essential feature of human experience.” Considering the significance of narratives “transforms the focus of ethnographic description from the actual experience of a people to an account of the stories that they tell about themselves and others…. [T]he stories people [tell] the ethnographer may enable an understanding of how they conceive of themselves and society at large.” 25 This signifies a methodological transformation from ethnographic observation to ethnographic understanding—an explanation of explanations.

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As the core interest of oral history, the telling and explanation of stories brings to light the essential unanimity between ethnographic narrative and oral history, and the form in which this relationship appears is an exploratory kind of historical ethnography. Anthropological fieldwork and ethnographic writing are a process of theoretical construction through structured descriptions of society and culture. At the core of this method is that classic of anthropological research—“from the native’s point of view.” Mills’ “sociological imagination” could be called “ethnographic insight”—the capacity to see beyond conventional ethnographic description and to relate it to bigger theoretical questions. Research into the stories told by those involved in them may establish links between the small detail of individual lives and the bigger picture of historical processes, between individual and social memories, and between grass roots formulations and dominant accounts. Just as Mills pointed out, whatever the moment or time, neither individual life nor social history can be understood in isolation from each other; an understanding of each depends on an understanding of both. Ethnography is not only a descriptive report of a local society or culture, but should be an analysis and explanation of social and cultural structures and their links with the big processes of social history. The basic purposes of oral history are the narratives and explanations that those involved give of their own experiences, and it is this feature that elucidates the internal unanimity between ethnographic narrative and oral history. It is precisely this insight that links the memories of individual experience with the big changes of social history; it is through this that ethnography acquires its historical perspective and dimension. Traditional anthropological research has been challenged for its frequent lack of a sense of history, and indeed, its structural and functionalist analysis has been unable to deal adequately with social and cultural change. Oral history can compensate for this lack, and in this way the narratives of ordinary people become indispensable to knowing the processes of social history. Conversely, in the process of gathering the oral narratives of ordinary people, anthropology’s basic method of in-depth grassroots field work, looking at questions from the local people’s point of view, and the close exchanges between interviewers and interviewees in participant observation and interviews are all extremely important. Without these, the tasks of oral history would be impossible to accomplish. Combining

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the methods of ethnography and oral history can break through the limits of each discipline, with benefits to each.

How Can “Suffering” Become History? The history of ordinary peasants is a history of suffering, a history of the quest for survival, and a history of the struggle to overcome this suffering. Rural society in twentieth-century China has seen fundamental and radical changes; peasants and the Republic together have endured trials and hardships for more than half a century. However, peasants’ experiences and peasants’ evaluation and explanations of their own experience are absent from the historical record. The elite’s control of the power of expression, discourse, and explanation enables it to control social fact (such as the social surveys of the so-called social magic to which Bourdieu referred) and change the historical record (such as the accounts and descriptions of the Red Army leaders in the Jinggang Mountains). One of the ways to defeat the hegemony of official texts and official discourse is to write the history of ordinary people, the history of the “sufferers.” In attempting to do this, this research explores the possibilities of transforming the existential condition of history.

The Concept of the “Sufferer” The peasants of Ji village where we have been carrying out fieldwork for many years refer to themselves as “sufferers.” This is not a term that we as researchers have imposed on the subjects of our research; rather it is the definition that villagers give to themselves. In the region surrounding Ji village, “sufferer” is a traditional term that peasants continue to use today to refer to those who farm the land. In local language, the “sufferers” are those who “make a living” on the land; it is a local term that is popularly accepted and conveys no sense of discrimination. When you ask a local person what he is doing, the common response is “zai jia shouku” 在家受 苦 (lit. “suffering at home”); in other words, making a living farming the land. The concept of the “sufferer” (shouku ren 受苦人) may be a key to understanding how peasants characterise their lives, both historically and now. In the first instance, this idea of the “sufferer” is distinct from the ideological category of the “exploited and oppressed classes.” The

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“sufferers” in Ji village are those who cultivate the land, in contrast to carpenters, entrepreneurs, and migrant labourers; it is a concept that refers to employment and the division of labour. However, a detailed analysis reveals that the idea of the “sufferer” labouring on the land is not completely unrelated to the ownership of land and wealth, since historically, Ji peasants have contrasted the term “sufferer” to the “rich man” or “moneybags” and the “boss.” This demonstrates the subtle classifications Ji villagers used before the arrival of “class consciousness,” in particular how the two categories of labour and ownership of wealth are conceptualised with reference to each other. The criteria for defining the “rich man” is ownership of wealth (land), and the criteria for defining others in relation to the “rich man” are the types of labour (cultivating the land and physical labour).26 It is clear that the traditional idea of the “sufferer” is very close to a class classification, but the formation of class categories was the product of revolutionary power entering the village. The basis of the traditional classification was principally the division of labour. Up until today, the concept of the “sufferer” still retains its main implications. The most important thing is that the “sufferer” is a term villagers use of themselves, embodying their life experience and evaluations across the generations, and constituting their history. In local life, people may describe someone who works until exhausted, or a task that is onerous, as “suffering too heavily” (ku tai zhongle 苦太重了). Someone who is very hardworking and able they will describe as “suffering well” (ku hao 苦好), in other words able to endure a lot. “That suffering is too big” (nei ku da de e le 那苦大的惡了) is a common term for too great a hardship. Many of the local terms villagers continue to use to talk about events and people date back a long time. “Suffering” thus refers both to bodily effects and psychological experiences; it is a critique of objective phenomena and, more importantly, the articulation of individual and collective identity. “Bodily suffering” (shenti de ku 身體的苦) and “spiritual suffering” (xinling de ku 心靈的苦) constitute the basis of their everyday lives, and thus—of course—their history. In sum, the history of ordinary peasants is the history of suffering. Suffering takes on many different forms in the everyday lives of farmers and peasants, and most villagers we know describe themselves as “sufferers.” Recalling their past lives, nearly every interviewee had endless stories of suffering. Life’s multiple pressures and difficulties appeared as the suffering of poverty, labour, family and marriage, gender issues, and

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physical disabilities. Famine is the most acute expression of poverty, and to this day it continues to occupy a prominent place in the accounts of those villagers who experienced it.27

Explaining and Dealing with Suffering As I have already noted, suffering is manifest in all aspects of life. Whether the effect of the cruelties of survival or of bad family circumstances, the “sufferers” of the land are the descendants of “ancestors who failed to make any savings.” Someone with a physical disability who can’t find a wife (poyi 婆姨) is “very pitiful” (kexi huang le 可悽惶了). The suffering that women tell of is even less “reasonable,” for simply being women, wives, and mothers subjects them to the “suffering” of having their feet bound, giving birth, labouring on the land, and enduring a lower status. Their suffering is fixed by birth and by fate. “Sufferers” have their own ways of dealing with and explaining their hardships. Those who are at the bottom of the social hierarchy have no choice but to struggle for a means of existence. In the day-to-day vocabulary of Ji villagers, there are various terms for the ways people deal with their suffering. Sheng 生 (to live) and shengxia 生下 (to live on) are common words denoting survival or “living” (huozhe 活著), and shou 受 (to endure) is used to mean shouldering a burden, or enduring hardship. Someone who can endure extremes of suffering is “really tough” (ke shou jieshile 可受結實了). Ao 熬 (to endure, to bear) refers to the suffering of endurance, so “enduring hard and bitter labour” is ke’aole 可熬了 (enduring a lot). Enduring hardship, struggling with and living with suffering is a significant part of peasants’ daily lives. Villagers’ most common explanation for the causes of their suffering is a “bitter fate” (ming ku 命苦). On the one hand, they explain wealth and prosperity and the “capacity to struggle through” (renjia you benshi zhengxia de 人家有本事掙下的) as the result of their ancestors’ morality and frugality, sagacity and ability, or they identify their own situation with an unhelpful fate, with “no smoke rising from the ancestors’ graves.” Such explanations have often been condemned as signs of peasants’ fatalism and used as evidence of peasants’ “ backwardness” and “stupidity.” They can just as well be seen as the classic product of the controls of an ideological system which before the revolution identified peasants as a subordinate group without class consciousness, with no

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more than a “false consciousness.” 28 At the same time, it is also necessary to point out that the classifications created by the social relations grounded in ownership of land and wealth describe the objective condition of village society and are categories that villagers can recognise. Peasants’ routine forms of everyday life converge in the ways they obtain and accumulate wealth, and whether in their attempts to obtain and accumulate wealth, or in the unforeseen catastrophes of individual and family life, the kinds of fatalistic expressions that peasants use neither necessarily nor invariably express their attitude to real, social life. For example, when the fortunes of a wealthy clan decline, people may explain this as the ancestors’ failure to “accumulate virtue” (ji de 積德). But it would be better to describe this explanation as an emotional response conveying complex ideas about gloating over someone else’s misfortune. On the other hand, villagers will say that the misfortunes of those who deserve their sympathy are fixed by fate (mingzhong zhuding 命中注定). But this kind of explanation for the causes of misfortune would be better articulated as the search for a kind of “peace of mind,” both for the individual and for the group. What appear to be fatalistic explanations should be thought of not as realistic judgments or guides to behaviour but, rather, as skilful means of dealing with social relationships and assuaging anxieties. Fatalistic explanations represent peasants’ cognitive and classificatory understanding of the social world. However, before land reform, such economic and social classification was not a class classification; renting land and employing labor were not seen as relations of exploitation. The turn towards the class analysis of peasants’ daily suffering only began with the arrival of revolutionary political power in the village. Nevertheless, despite this, peasants still had no alternative but to deal with the different kinds of suffering in their everyday lives and to mobilise all their courage, energies, and wisdom to survive. This history of struggle to survive suffering is precisely what gives meaning to the idea that ordinary people propel and create history, for they have no other choice. Suffering thus describes the daily lives of the ordinary and disadvantaged. Their accounts reveal an experience of suffering that permeates their destinies, that cannot be associated with any particular cause, and that inevitably is often coloured by essentialist and fatalistic explanations. The reinterpretation of their individual physical and psychological

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sufferings into the sufferings of class exploitation and oppression, and hence the incitement to class hatred and class consciousness, only came about with the arrival of revolutionary politics in the village. It was precisely through introducing new techniques of power in “speaking bitterness” and “digging out the roots of suffering” that the new ruling class “excavated” the peasants’ class consciousness and could thus give a cause to their suffering.

“Revolution”—“Rescuing” Peasants from Suffering “Suffering” is intimately connected to the political construction of state power and peasants’ notion of the state.29 In explaining the formation of the modern nation-state and the transformation of rural society, the historian Prasenjit Duara described how political power entered the village in the first half of the twentieth century. He used two important concepts—“state-making” and the “cultural nexus of power”—to analyse the complex historical relationship between the state and social relations in China’s countryside, thus moving beyond the modernisation paradigm of much western social scientific research. He clearly realised that the fundamental reasons explaining the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) success in establishing state power were that “the Communist Party understood peasant bitterness, and so could mobilise the revolutionary enthusiasm of the masses.” One aspect of their bitterness originated in the relationship between state and society at any given moment—fleecing the people with extortionate taxes and levies, a coercive dictatorship, rural public office becoming the means to serve self-interest, and so on. On the other hand, Duara also recognised that when revolution occurred in the village, it was difficult to mobilise people through using the concept of class, because peasants’ dependence on the landlord elite was extremely limited, due to the fact that the absentee landlords who controlled the village lived in towns and cities. It was therefore difficult to light the “prairie spark” of revolution in the village by means of class struggle.30 While Duara clearly grasped the implications of “suffering” for state-society relations and the importance to the revolution of mobilising a consciousness of suffering, he did not fully take on board the enormous potential of exploring and steering “suffering” for social transformation as a whole. In particular, in not grasping the links between experiences and understandings of suffering and class, he did not pay

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enough attention to the crucial significance of the “consciousness of suffering” for his main topic—the construction of state power and the nation-state. The oral history of Ji Village peasants illustrates the Communist Party’s conscious deployment of a series of techniques of power to mould peasants’ experiences of ordinary suffering within class and nation-state frameworks. Through such techniques as “speaking bitterness” (su ku 訴 苦), “digging out the roots of bitterness” (wa ku gen 挖苦根), and “recalling bitterness and thinking of sweetness” (yi ku si tian 憶苦思甜)—used during the revolutionary period and particularly after the establishment of revolutionary state power—the CCP condensed and refined the different kinds of “natural” suffering of peasants’ everyday life as “class suffering.” Articulating peasants’ experience and understanding of suffering as a process of “class suffering” was basic to the subsequent class struggle and, just as significantly, to shaping the relationship between peasants and the state within peasants’ internal worlds. Managing “suffering” emerged as a technique of power aimed at launching a social experiment to “rescue peasants from suffering” in what was a profound and extensive revolution transforming both objective and subjective worlds. This experiment in social engineering led by the state and promoted in the form of a revolutionary movement thus transformed the lives and fates of ordinary peasants alongside the transformation of society as a whole. The goal of the revolution was to rescue the labouring masses; revolution was hailed as a process to deliver the masses from their suffering. However, a revolution launched in the name of salvation may have unintended consequences in the form of new experiences of suffering. In Seeing Like a State, the issue Scott explored was “how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed.” He summarised the logic of the failure of the twentieth century’s utopian social engineering projects as the “fatal combination” of four elements: the management system of nature and society—the simplification of the tools of the modern state for remoulding society; the “high modernist” ideology of the strategists of the new system; states that are willing and capable of using coercive power; and a weak civil society that lacks the capacity to resist the afore-mentioned. 31 In his analysis of collectivisation in the former Soviet Union and Nyerere’s “villagisation” project in Tanzania, he suggested that such large-scale efforts to redesign village life and production have invariably been described as a “civilising process,” but he “would

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rather see them as an attempt at domestication, a kind of social gardening … a ‘sedentarisation,’ ‘concentration,’ and ‘radical simplification’ of both settlement and cultivation.” 32 “Social gardening” deprives subjects of their agency, treating them as fruit and vegetables and thus without feeling, without thought, and without consciousness. In its focus on confirming and promoting the (state’s) capacity to rule, it disregards the value and feelings of ordinary citizens, very possibly constituting a fatal threat to human life, with disastrous consequences for ordinary people. How do ordinary people protect themselves in their response to such enormous projects of social engineering? How do ordinary peasants at the bottom of the social ladder survive, experience, and challenge such processes? What kinds of changes occur in their material and spiritual worlds as a result of these processes? We can only understand their answers to these questions if we listen very closely. Understanding the processes of revolution and the logic of civilization through the narratives of ordinary people is also one of our motives in exploring and writing a history of “sufferers.” iii

Constructing History from Narratives of Suffering of Those at the Bottom of Society The sufferers—the vulnerable at the bottom of society—are those without name, voice, or face in history. There are at least two main reasons explaining their silence and invisibility in historical narratives. The first is that elite historiography erases the political attributes of the lower classes as agents of their own history and actions; the subaltern classes are those without political effectiveness, and their depoliticization

iii

The notion of “communist civilisation” refers to the specific operational logic of social life in China, in contrast to that of “capitalist civilisation.” This logic includes the forms of social organisation, modes of controlling resources, and the basic modes of life and value orientations. For more on “communist civilisation,” see Guo Yuhua 郭于華, “Shehuixue de xinzhi pinzhi yu dongcha nengli” 社會學的心智品質與洞察能力 [The psychological quality and penetrative insights of sociology], Shehuixuejia chazuo [Teahouse for Sociologists] 1 (2006); Sun Liping, “Shehui zhuanxing: Fazhan shehuixue de xin yiti” 社會學 轉型：發展社會學的新議題 [Social transformation: Developing new topics in sociology], Shehuixue yanjiu 社會學研究 [Sociological Studies] 1 (2005), pp. 1–24, 246.

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results in their complete disappearance from the histories created by the elite. The second is that the characteristic actions that Scott summarised as the “weapons of the weak” and “hidden transcripts” obscure from view the singular traces of the subaltern’s actions. We could say that the logic of the politics of the disadvantaged is not to leave any trace of their passage. Covering over their tracks diminishes the danger they confront and also destroys much of the evidence that would enable social scientists and historians to believe in their contemporary political reality.33 Foucault’s insights about power suggest that the historical appearance of the disadvantaged can only be illuminated for a brief moment by the rays of power. “There has to be a beam of light, or at least a brief moment that illuminates them. This beam of light comes from another place. These lives at root want to protect themselves in the darkness, and at root, they should stay there. Freeing them from darkness is none other than their encounter with power. There is absolutely no doubt that without the impact of this encounter no note of their brief lives would remain.” “All these lives are at root destined to live at the lowest social levels beyond the reach of discourse, to the point that never having been noted, they leave no trace. They can only succeed in leaving a trace through this fleeting contact with power, very brief and very profound, just like a riddle.” “These lives that seem as if they have never existed only have the opportunity to survive because of their encounter with power, but this power only seeks to destroy them, or at least destroy all trace of them. These lives can only re-appear with us today because of the combination of a multiple chance encounters.” 34 Subaltern studies scholars share common ground with British Marxist historians in seeking to write a “history from below,” but they do not agree with the latter in including the history of the subaltern in the elite narratives of Western modernity. In their view, the so-called history from below makes the narratives of Western modernity more detailed, and more complete, but no “history from below” can challenge the basic existence, stability, and legitimacy of capitalist modernity. Because of this, subaltern history is not the same as “history from below.” In her famous essay, Spivak pointed out that the “people” or “citizens” written into the books of bourgeois history are the elite. The idea that the subaltern can acquire a voice through the books that historians write is simply a myth, and in fact is no more than the description of the subaltern written by the historian. From this perspective, the subaltern can never have a voice.35 The ahistorical methods of elite history “clearly omit the

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politics of the people,” a sphere of agency and autonomy that neither is the product of elite politics nor depends on elite politics for its existence.36 Affirming the “autonomous” existence of subaltern politics and subaltern consciousness constitutes the basis and premise for compiling their history. In contrast to elite historiography, subaltern historiography argues that history is not characterised by all-encompassing roles and actors governing consciousness. If it were possible to resolve the problem of “how the subaltern is described,” the entire sphere of modern knowledge would open up to subaltern history, and all established research topics, such as the expansion of colonial rule, religious and social reform movements, the rise of nationalism, education, the press, and particularly the public system of the modern state would all become the research topics of subaltern history and subaltern research. One of the important tasks into which the subaltern studies group has put energy in its critique of elite historiography is compiling a history of the subaltern. In the preface to Selected Subaltern Studies, Guha pointed out that “the historiography of Indian nationalism has for a long time been dominated by elitism—colonialist elitism and bourgeois-nationalist elitism.” 37 The objective of subaltern history is to oppose these two forms of elitism. Subaltern studies scholars have paid considerable attention to the history of peasant uprisings at different periods, and in the process have discovered some materials enabling them to hear the stories that subalterns told of their own lives. But there is too little of this kind of material. A more effective approach is to read traditional (official) documents about peasant rebellions in new ways. Subaltern historians have therefore created some new methods and read the accounts of peasant uprisings established by oppositional official structures from the position of the peasant, shedding new light on research into what constitutes the “rebellious consciousness.” 38 A point that needs to be stressed is that while subaltern history seeks to rescue subaltern history from elite history, it should not be seen as a separate or isolated sphere: it intersects with and is interdependent on elite history. Just as Spivak suggested, the alternative history of the subaltern is integrated knowledge because it unequivocally clarifies history’s ruptures, failures, and neglect. With this, it becomes possible to conduct a more just examination of the comprehensive experience of anti-colonialism in India.39 In the already existing histories of rural society in China there is a narrative absence of the ordinary peasant. The rural subaltern is excluded

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from the narratives of official discourse; whatever the narrative, the subaltern classes are denied an independent political position. To complete these narratives, or to provide a new narrative, is an epistemological task of subaltern studies—to produce a new knowledge that will become a field for the independent accumulation of knowledge. The birth of this sphere depends in significant measure on the narratives ordinary people tell about their own experiences, and not on the narratives of historians. The history of “suffering” constitutes a significant part of the narratives of Chinese peasants who have witnessed more than half a century of social change. In the process of China’s socialist revolution, the authorities launched activities to construct a history of the people under terms such as “speaking bitterness” (su ku 訴苦), “recalling bitterness and longing for the sweet” (yi ku si tian 憶苦思甜), and the “four histories campaign” (si shi yundong 四史運動). However, though these campaigns appeared to position peasants as the main subjects, they were in fact historical campaigns led by the authorities, the aim of which was to reconstruct social class and transform the spiritual world of the peasants.iv They were the product of the ruling ideology and were oriented to completely different interests to those of our current research project on peasants’ oral history. Subaltern history and subaltern studies constitute a rich academic resource for exploring the history of rural social life in China over the past half century. We need to approach and understand history afresh from the perspective of the subaltern. Duara pointed out that the historical consciousness of modern society is totally and unequivocally dominated by the nation-state. National history has produced a unitary national community—the effect of an evolutionary process. However, the nation is in fact characterised by difference, and its history is by no means a linear process of evolution. Duara proposed the notion of “bifurcated history” to replace the view of linear history, in order to complete the task of “rescuing history from the nation-state.” 40 The aim to “rescue history” is still highly significant, but Duara’s achievement in producing a iv

For the function of campaigns such as “speaking bitterness” in constructing peasant-state relations, see Guo Yuhua and Sun Liping, “Su ku: Yizhong nongmin guojia guannian xingcheng de zhongjie jizhi” 訴苦：一種農民國家觀 念形成的中介機制 [Speaking bitterness: An intermediary mechanism for creating the concept of a peasant state], Zhongguo xueshu 中國學術 2 [China Scholarship] no. 4 (2002), pp. 130–157.

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“bifurcated history” has not been able to fulfil its promise. As Li Meng has pointed out, bifurcated history seeks to serve as the mouthpiece of the oppressed, but can Duara’s bifurcated history really help (or even hope to help) us understand those who have no history? Li Meng argued in his analysis of peasants’ oral history that the contrast to linear history is not the bifurcations of historical narratives but the stratifications of historical lives. Peasants, settled at the subaltern depths of history, whose memories make no distinction between armies that have come and gone, and whose day to day lives are almost impossible to describe as historicised, have not proposed a historical formulation, or a counter-narrative, as an alternative to the linearity of national history. Even if there is something that contrasts with Duara’s linear history, it is no more than a “countermemory” that rejects narrative, a “corporeal memory.” 41 From this we can see that the important task of oral history is not “to put together the fragments of history” nor to “fill the gaps in history” or to “cure history of its sicknesses.” Subaltern history does not seek to make good the omissions and deficiencies of official and elite history. The tasks of oral history are elsewhere—to listen to the voices of those at the bottom of society, to record histories of “suffering” in ordinary everyday life, and to write the history of survival and resistance which has not been written. For ordinary subalterns who have neither the means to write their own history nor even to raise their voices, our oral history does not aim to create a history on their behalf, nor to write their history for them. Rather it is an attempt to open up a space of “narration” in which ordinary peasants can narrate their own experiences, understandings, and historical evaluations.v Apart from recording their histories, the researcher also has to articulate these through an analysis that draws on social theory. In contrast with “rescuing history from the nation-state,” our efforts are to make history from the everyday lives of ordinary people, recording and bringing to light the “suffering” of ordinary people, and through this to clarify the shifting logic of civilisation.42 Experiences of suffering and the narratives of the experience are, of course, individual; they are life stories told by many individuals or by groups constituted by individuals. It is precisely because individual

v

During the course of ten years of research, we discovered that ordinary peasants are both able and willing to narrate their own history, as long as the researcher is a sincere, respectful, serious, and understanding listener.

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suffering is invariably the product of structural contradictions embedded in the socia l world— or, simply put, of the “socia l character of suffering”—that the individual narrative acquires a significance that transcends the individual. This also explains why the individual “narrative of suffering” can become history. In the past, the reason why the sufferings and narratives of sufferings of ordinary people have been hidden from view is because of the power relations embedded in historical writing—history has always been the history of the rulers and the elite, excluding the voices of the subaltern. This analysis shows us that “social suffering” establishes an organic relationship between the daily lives of ordinary people and the history of society as a whole. It also shows the need to bring to light the deep roots of suffering from the perspective of the social structure and the power relations embedded in it. The history of revolution and reconstruction over half a century has been an enormous project of social engineering led by the Communist Party, but it is a historical project that concerns not only an elite minority, but also the lives and destinies of ordinary people. Hundreds of millions of ordinary people have experienced this project, and they have a visceral and emotional tie with it. We should be able to understand and analyse this period in the history and transformation of a civilisation from the experiences and common sense of ordinary people. To see the daily lives of ordinary people as the process of civilisation gives their mundane and fragmented experiences and stories extraordinary significance as dynamic parts of the bigger narrative. The sufferer who may or may not share the same fate as others is without doubt a small paving stone in the process of social change, but is this to say that he or she should not be considered, attended to, recorded, and described? After all, the lives and destinies of hundreds of millions are involved, and they are the real creators and promoters of history. Linking civilisation and the everyday life practice of ordinary people is what gives meaning to theme of “history created by the people.” Translated by Prof. Harriet Evans, Contemporary China Centre, University of Westminster, United Kingdom

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Notes 1

2

3 4 5 6

7 8 9

10 11

12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

Pierre Bourdieu et al., The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society, trans. Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson et al. (Oxford: Polity Press, 1999). Bi Xiangyang 畢向陽, “Shijie de ku’nan: Ta de yuanqi, guandian, yu fangfa”《世界的苦難》：它的緣起、觀點與方法 [The Weight of the World: Its origins, concepts, and methods], in Dangdai Zhongguo shehui fenceng: Lilun yu shizheng 當代中國社會分層：理論與實證 [Social Stratification of Contemporary China: Theory and Evidence], eds. Li Youmei 李友梅, Sun Liping 孫立平, and Shen Yuan 沈原, Zhuanxing yu fazhan 轉型與發展 1 (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2006), pp. 282–297. Stéphane Beaud, “The Temp’s Dream,” in Bourdieu, Weight of the World, pp. 282–296, and Pierre Bourdieu, “The End of a World,” in Weight of the World, p. 317. Pierre Bourdieu, “An Impossible Mission,” in The Weight of the World, pp. 189–202. Pierre Bourdieu, “Institutional Bad Faith,” in The Weight of the World, pp. 204–205. Pierre Bourdieu and Patrick Champagne, “Outcasts on the Inside,” in Bourdieu, The Weight of the World, pp. 421–426. Budi’e 布迪厄 (Pierre Bourdieu) and Huakangde 華康德 (Loïc Wacquant), Shijian yu fansi—fansi shehuixue daoyin 實踐與反思：反思社會學導引 [An Invitation to Ref lexive Sociology], trans. Li Meng 李猛 and Li Kang 李康. (Beijing: Zhongyang bianyi chubanshe, 1998), pp. 263–265 (hereafter cited as Bourdieu and Wacquant). Arthur Kleinman, Veena Das, and Margaret Lock, eds., Social Suffering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), p. ix. Ibid., pp. ix–xxv. Mi’ersi 米爾斯 (C. Wright Mills), Shehuixue de xiangxiang 社會學的想像 [The Sociological Imagination], trans. Zhang Junzheng 張君政 and Liu Qianyou 劉 鈐佑 (Taibei: Juliu tushu gongsi, 1996). Ibid., pp. 4–10. Aimie’er Du’erkaimu 愛米爾．杜爾凱姆 (Émile Durkheim), Zishalun 自殺論 [On Suicide], trans. Zhong Xuhui 鍾旭輝, Ma Lei 馬磊, and Lin Qingxin 林慶 新 (Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 1988), pp. 257–280. Pierre Bourdieu, “Understanding,” in Weight of the World, p. 607. Kleinman et al., Social Suffering, pp. xi– xii. Bourdieu and Wacquant, pp. 262–280. Loïc Wacquant, “Inside ‘The Zone,’” in Bourdieu, The Weight of the World, p. 153. Bourdieu and Wacquant, p. 278. Ibid., pp. 263–264. Ibid., p. 265. Ibid., p. 278.

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21

22 23 24 25 26

27

28

29 30

31

32 33

Fernand Braudel, “History and Sociology” (1958), quoted in Bide Boke 彼得． 伯克 (Peter Burke), Lishixue yu shehui lilun 歷史學與社會理論 [History and Social Theory], trans. Yao Ming 姚明 and Zhou Yupeng 周玉鵬 et al. (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2001), p. 3. Baoluo Tangpuxun 保羅．湯普遜 (Paul Thompson), Guoqu de shengyin 過去 的聲音 [Voice of the Past], trans. Qin Fangming 覃方明, Qu Dong 渠東, and Zhang Lüping 張旅平 (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 1–18. Ibid., p. 247. Liu Xin, The Otherness of Self: A Genealogy of the Self in Contemporary China (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2002), pp. xii–xiii. Marjorie Shostak, NISA: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 5–6. Liu Xin, The Otherness of Self, pp. xi–xii. Guo Yuhua 郭于華 and Sun Liping 孫立平, “Su ku: Yizhong nongmin guojia guannian xingcheng de zhongjie jizhi” 訴苦：一種農民國家觀念形成的中介機 制 [Speaking bitterness: An intermediary mechanism for creating the concept of a peasant state], Zhongguo xueshu 中國學 [China Scholarship] no. 4 (2002), pp. 130–157. Guo Yuhua 郭于華, “Xinling de jitihua: Shaanbei Ji cun nongye hezuohua de nüxing jiyi” 心靈的集體化：陝北驥村農業合作化的女性記憶 [Spiritual collectivization: Women’s memories of agricultural cooperativisation in Ji village in northern Shaanxi], Zhongguo shehui kexue 中國社會科學 [Social Science in China] 4 (2003), pp. 48–61. James C. Scott, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1976), pp. 225–234. Guo and Sun, “Su ku.” Du Zanqi 杜贊奇 (Prasenjit Duara), Wenhua, quanli, yu guojia 文化、權力與國 家 [Culture, Power, and the State], trans. Wang Fuming 王福明 (Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin chubanshe, 1994), pp. 238–241. Zhamusi Sikete 詹姆斯．斯科特 (James C. Scott), Guojia de shijiao: Naxie shitu gaishan renlei zhuangkuang de xiangmu shi ruhe shibai de 國家的視角： 那些試圖改善人類狀况的項目是如何失敗的 [Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed], trans. Wang Xiaoyi 王曉毅 (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2004), pp. 1–9. Ibid., p. 184. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); Guo Yuhua 郭于華, “‘Ruozhe de wuqi’ yu ‘yincang de wenben’— yanjiu nongmin fankang de diceng shijiao” 「弱者的武器」與「隱藏的文 本」—研究農民反抗的底層視角 [“Weapons of the weak” and “hidden transcripts”: studies of the underlying perspective of peasant resistance], Dushu 讀書 [Reading Review] no. 7 (2002), pp. 11–18.

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35

36 37 38 39 40

41

42

Fuke 福柯 (Michel Foucault), “Wumingzhe de shenghuo” 無名者的生活 [The Life of Infamous Men], trans. Li Meng 李猛, in Shehui lilun luntan 社會理論論 壇 [Social theory forum] 6 (1999), pp. 59–68. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988), pp. 271–313. Ranajit Guha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, eds., Selected Subaltern Studies (Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 39–40. Ranajit Guha, “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial India,” in Selected Subaltern Studies, eds. Guha and Spivak, p. 37. Chateji 查特吉 (Partha Chatterjee),“Guanzhu diceng” 關注底層 [Pay attention to the lowest levels], Dushu 讀書 8 (2001), pp. 13–21. Edward Said, “Foreword,” in Selected Subaltern Studies, ed. Guha and Spivak, pp. v–x. Du Zanqi 杜贊奇 (Prasenjit Duara), Cong minzu guojia zhengjiulishi: Minzu zhuyi huayu yu Zhongguo xiandaishi yanjiu 從民族國家拯救歷史：民族主義話 語與中國現代史研究 [Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China], trans. Wang Xianming 王憲明 (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2003), pp. 1–16. Li Meng 李猛, “Zhengjiu shei de lishi?” 拯救誰的歷史？ [Rescuing whose history?], from 北大新青年中国学 城, online at . Nuobeite Ailiyasi 諾貝特．埃利亞斯 (Norbert Elias) Wenming de jincheng: Wenming de shehui qiyuan he xinli qiyuan de yanjiu 文明的進程：文明的社會起 源和心理起源的研究 [The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations], Vol. 1, trans. Wang Peili 王佩莉 (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1998); Vol. 2, trans. Yuan Zhiying 袁志英 (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1999); Makesi Weibo 馬克斯．韋伯 (Max Weber), Xinjiaolunli yu zibenzhuyi jingshen 新教倫理與資本主義精神 [The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism], trans. Yu Xiao 于曉 and Chen Weigang 陳維綱 et al. (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1987).