Cultures of knowledge: technology in Chinese history (original) (raw)
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Asian Studies 9/2 (May 2021), 2021
The notion of modernity is a concept which doubtless helped to form contemporary societies, and in this regard, China is no exception. If we want to historically evaluate the Chinese attempts at establishing a “typical Chinese” philosophical basis for modernization, we need to consider the context of the questions linked to Hobsbawm's and Ranger’s (1995) concept of “invented traditions”. In other words, we must consider to what extent are the “past” intellectual “traditions” based on historic assumptions, and to what extent are they merely a product of the (ideological and political) demands of the current period. An important consequence of the current trans-nationalization of capital is that, perhaps for the first time in modern history, the global mode of production appears as an authentically universal abstraction that is no longer limited to its specific historical origins in Europe. Hence, the narrative of modernization is no longer an exclusively European one, and for the first time non-European societies are also making their own claims on the history of modernizationSpecial issue on China's Modernization
WEST VIS-À-VIS EAST.Tradition, Question and Practice in Chinese Historiography
dějiny - teorie - kritika[history-theory-criticism], 2021
According to XiJinping’s speech at the Symposium on the Work of Philosophy and Social Sciences on May 17th,2 Chinese historiography has been establishing a disciplinary system, academic system, and discourse system with Chinese characteristics since 2016. Disciplinary system construction refers to strengthening the construction of emerging disciplines (e.g., digital history, maritime history etc.) and interdisciplinary disciplines (e.g., environmental history, urban history etc.), as well as strengthening the support of unpopular disciplines with the value of Chinese cultural heritage such as the Oracle research which started with Wang Yirong (1845–1900), Liu E (1857–1909), Luo Zhenyu (1866–1940) and Wang Guowei (1877–1927). Academic system construction includes but is not limited to the construction of Marxist academic research, continuing the development of Marxism in contemporary China and in the 21st century. Discourse system construction means primarily refining the representative concepts and theories which explain Chinese practice and have influence in the international academia. Contemporary Chinese historians know that these three systems are influenced by the West but they should be distinguished from it.
Modern Theory and Traditional Chinese Historiography
2001
With the dynamic changes in the composition of all disciplines and recent developments in multicultural studies world wide, interdisciplinary tendency in the humanities needs a cross-cultural dimension (cf. LI You-zheng, 1997(3), 47-48). Not only will this expand domains of research, but it will bring about more original theoretical progress as well. The recent hermeneutico-semiotic turn in comparative studies in the humanities suggests that current theoretical reflections on traditional non-Western scholarship can also expand the theoretical horizon of the humanities in the West, including historiography. This interdisciplinary/crosscultural development will more relevantly and energetically stimulate a further elaboration of present-day Western theoretical practices. The point is not merely in enriching cultural experiences in studies, but rather in the i nt e l l e c t u a l e n c o u n t e r between modern/post-modern Western theoretical approaches and cultural materials in non-Western historical traditions. Needless to say, Chinese is one of the most important cultural strangers for the Western humanities. Western historiography can greatly benefit from examining Chinese-Western comparative historical theories which have three main aspects. One is an effective expansion of the historical experience, namely, a greater knowledge of the characteristic non-Western historiographic tradition. Another is increasing the relevance and precision of theoretical practices in Western historical science. The third is the development of a universal framework to deal with theoretical problems in human history.
IN AND OUT OF THE WEST: ON THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF CHINESE HISTORICAL THEORY
In ancient China, dissatisfaction with the official compilation of histories gave rise, in time, to reflections on what makes a good historian, as well as on such issues as the factuality and objectivity of history-writing, the relationship between rhetoric and reality, and the value of historians' subjectivity. From these reflections arose a unique set of historiographical concepts. With the coming of modern times, the urgent task of building a nationstate forced Chinese historians to borrow heavily from Western historical theories in their effort to construct a new history compatible with modernity. A tension thus arose between Western theory and Chinese history. The newly founded People's Republic embraced the materialist conception of history as the authoritative guideline for historical studies, which increased the tension. The decline of the materialist conception of history in the period since China's reform and opening up in the late 1970s and, with this development, the increasing plurality of theories, have not exactly lessened Chinese historians' keenly felt anxiety when they confront Western theories. For Chinese historians, the current state of affairs with respect to theory is not exactly an extension of Western theories, nor is it a regression to the particularity of Chinese history completely outside the Western compass. Rather, a certain hybridity with respect to theory provides to Chinese historians a way to move both in and out of the West, as well as an opportunity for them to make their own contributions to Western history on the basis of borrowed Western theories.
Introduction: A Chinese century in anthropology?
Social Anthropology, 2009
This special issue comes at the time of an imminent watershed in anthropology. Many decades ago, Maurice Freedman in his 1962 Malinowski Lecture foresaw the coming of a 'Chinese phase in social anthropology' (Freedman 1979). The anthropology of China did undoubtedly grow and develop in the decades that followed, but I believe that it is only now that the anthropology of China is ready for the qualitative leap in its importance that Freedman implied. However, I would contend that this has less to do with the efforts of China anthropologists than with the rise of China as a global power. Suddenly, anthropologists, like other social scientists, for the first time since Japan before the Second World War, have to come to grips with a society outside the Western core that self-consciously and self-confidently seeks a place at the centre of the global stage. With this, the anthropology of China has a unique opportunity to make a lasting contribution to the discipline of social and cultural anthropology. Like China itself, China anthropology already has come a long way. The earliest fieldwork studies were done by Sinologists around the turn of the 20 th century. With the fall of the empire in 1911, such Sinologists mostly turned to textual studies, deeming postrevolutionary China no longer of relevance for an understanding of Chinese culture. In the 1920s and particularly the 1930s, foreign anthropologists, including several big names in the field, certainly were interested in China, spending time there teaching, learning Chinese, or sometimes even embarking on fieldwork. However, the practical problems of doing fieldwork in a country embroiled in warlordism, civil war and the war against Japan proved too much for almost all of them; in the event, only a few foreigners or foreign-trained Chinese completed and published first-hand fieldwork during this period. Curiously, it was only in the final few years before the communist victory in 1949 that a number of mainly US-based anthropologists commenced fieldwork projects in China, too little and too late to establish China as a proper ethnographic area. In China itself, anthropology and sociology had made a decent start, but, with a few notable exceptions, was published quite naturally mainly in Chinese and remained outside the mainstream of international anthropology. After the communist victory, foreign researchers were completely banned from China, while the fledgling native tradition of anthropological research was suppressed together with most other social sciences. Chinese anthropologists either had to stop working altogether or else were put to work on the national project of China's ethnic mapping, becoming 'ethnologists' in the process. Gradually, a reversal of roles emerged