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Sociology in China: A Brief Survey1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Extract

In the general history of the social sciences we assume that the marriage between sociology and anthropology comes late, having been preceded by a long courtship. China does not fit this pattern. Almost as soon as the social sciences were established there anthropology and sociology were intertwined—to be disentangled in a strange way when the Communists arrived. To avoid a tedious recitation of evidence let me call just one witness, a scholar whose later career in the United States makes his testimony underline the Chinese paradox. Writing in China in 1944 Francis L. K. Hsu says: “In this paper. the word sociology is used synonymously with the term social anthropology. Few serious Chinese scholars today maintain the distinction between the once separate disciplines. Sociologists teach anthropology in our universities as a matter of course, just as scholars with distinctively anthropological background lecture on sociology.”

Type
China and the Balkans
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1962

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References

2 “Sociological Research in China,” Quarterly Bulletin of Chinese Bibliography (English Edition), New series, Vol. IV, nos. 14, 0312 1944 (Chungking), p. 12.Google Scholar The very next sentence shows the Chinese perspective: “The author is of the impression that these two terms are also merging into each other in the U.S.A.”

3 Yü-ch'üan, Wang, “The Development of Modern Social Science in China,” Pacific Affairs, Vol. XI, No. 3, 09 1938, p. 360.Google Scholar I have also been able to consult an unpublished paper, by Dr. Robert M. Marsh of Cornell University, entitled “The Development of Sociology in China.” I am most grateful to Dr. Marsh.

4 The English version of the Ting Hsien materials is Gamble, S. D., Ting Hsien, A North China Rural Community (New York: Institute of Pacific Relations, 1954).Google Scholar

5 See especially his Land Utilisation in China (University of Nanking: 1937; photooffset reprint, New York: 1956).Google Scholar

6 Population in Modern China (Chicago: American Journal of Sociology, 1946).Google Scholar

7 See his “Community Studies in China,” Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol XIV, 1954Google Scholar, and “China,” in. Roucek, J. S., ed., Contemporary Sociology, New York, 1958.Google Scholar I have drawn heavily on these two papers.

8 Country Life in South China (New York: Teacher's College, Columbia Un., 1925).Google ScholarFried, , “Community Studies,” p. 18Google Scholar, seems to me to underestimate the influence exerted by Kulp on later studies.

9 Hsu, , op. cit., p. 13.Google Scholar

10 “An Enquiry into the Chinese Lineage-Village from the Viewpoint of Anthropology,” She-hui-hsüeh Chieh, No. 9, 1936.Google Scholar

11 The Golden Wing (London: Kegan Paul, 1948).Google Scholar

12 See several of the papers in Beasley, W. G. and Pulleyblank, E. G., eds. Historians of China and Japan (London: Oxford Un., 1961).Google Scholar

13 See Gray, J., “Historical Writing in Twentieth-Century China: Notes on its Background and Development,”Google Scholar in Beasley, and Pulleyblank, , pp. 208212.Google Scholar

14 Cf. Fried, , “Community Studies,” pp. 33et seq.Google Scholar

15 Leong, Y. K. and Tao, L. K., Village and Town Life in China (London: Allen & Unwin, 1915).Google Scholar

16 On the literature on these topics see Levy, Marion J., The Family Revolution in Modern China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Un., 1949).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 Tawney, R. H., Land and Labour in China (London: Allen & Unwin, 1932)Google Scholar; and see Institute of Pacific Relations, Agrarian China (London: Allen & Unwin, 1939).Google Scholar

18 See “Peasantry and Gentry: An interpretation of China's social structure and its changes,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. LII, No. 1, 07 1946Google Scholar, and China's Gentry, Essays in Rural-Urban Relations, revised and ed. by Redfleld, M. P. (Un. of Chicago, 1953).Google Scholar

19 Some of these treatises were very naïve. As an example of a good one see You-Ing, Hou, Etude sur la parenté en droit chinois (Paris: 1933).Google Scholar

20 See especially Tung-tsu, Ch'ü, Law and Society in Traditional China (Paris, The Hague: Moutons, 1961).Google Scholar The Chinese original was published in 1947.

21 Cf. Fried, , “China,”Google Scholar Wang Yü-ch'üan, op. cit., and Newell, W. H., “Modern Chinese Sociologists,” Sociological Bulletin, Indian Sociological Society, Vol. I, No. 2, 1952.Google Scholar

22 For a full account see Skinner, G. William, “The New Sociology in China,” Far Eastern Quarterly, Vol. X, No. 4, 08 1951, p. 366et seq.Google Scholar

23 For a Norwegian anthropologist's account of this activity see Gjessing, Cutorm, “Chinese Anthropology and New China's Policy towards her Minorities,” Acta Sociologica, Vol. 2, Fasc, 1, 1956.Google Scholar Gjessing visited China in mid-1954; at that time field research was only in its planning stage, but there was great activity in the Central Institute for National Minorities, Peking. Cf. Hsu, Francis L. K., “Anthropological Sciences,” in Sciences in Communist China (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1961), p. 130.Google Scholar

24 See Feuerwerker, Albert and Cheng, S., Chinese Communist Studies of Modem Chinese History, mimeographed (Cambridge, Mass: East Asian Research Centre, Harvard Un., 1961)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Revue Bibliographique de Sinologie (Paris, The Hague), Vols. I and II, 1957, 1959.Google Scholar

25 Ch'en, C. J., “Chinese Social Scientists,” The Twentieth Century, 06 1958, p. 511et seq.Google Scholar

26 Information drawn from China News Analysts (Hong Kong), No. 168, 02 15, 1957, p. 6.Google Scholar See Ta, Ch'en, “New China's Population Census of 1953 and its Relation to National Reconstruction and Demographic Research,” Bulletin de l'Institut International de StatistiqueGoogle Scholar, Tome 36, 2e Livraison, Stockholm, 1958. This paper was sent to the 30th meeting of the Institut in 1957.

27 Informaton drawn from China News Analysis, No. 183, 05 31, 1957, p. 7.Google Scholar

28 C. J. Ch'en, op. cit., loc. cit.

29 Ibid., p. 515. Cf. MacFarquhar, Roderick, ed., The Hundred Flowers (London: Stevens, 1960), p. 113Google Scholar: the Democratic League's academic programme (repotted in the Kuang-ming Dotty, 06 9)Google Scholar, included the following: “Certain subjects have actually been dispensed with, or have ceased to be independent subjects; and a number of people who in the past specialised in sociology, political science and law, have now changed their profession. A number of subjects have been dispensed with just because they do not appear in Soviet Russia's syllabuses.… Our attitude towards the traditional social sciences should be one of reform rather than abolition. Therefore we should take appropriate steps to reinstate these subjects where circumstances warrant it and lay emphasis where emphasis is due.… We deem it necessary to encourage social science research workers to lay stress upon investigation and research work and to submit proposals concerning the government's policies and statutes to further the search for truth.…”

30 See Chen, Theodore H. E., Thought Reform of the Chinese Intellectuals (Hong Kong Un., 1960), p. 191et seq.Google Scholar

31 Chesneaux, Jean, “Les transformations sociales,” in Le régime et les institutions de la République Populaire Chinoise (Brussels: Institut de Sociologie Solvay, 1960).Google Scholar

32 On the present position of the social sciences in mainland China, see Feinberg, Betty, “Report on the AAAS Symposium,” The China Quarterly, No. 6, 0406 1961, p. 93Google Scholar, and Lindbeck, J. M. H., “The Organisation and Development of Science,”Google Scholaribid., p. 132. Cf. Hsu, , “Anthropological Sciences.”Google Scholar The only interesting work of a sociological character which I know to have been published in mainland China after the end of the “hundred flowers” period is contained in the journal Hsia-men Ta-hsüeh Hsüeh-pao, She-hui k'o-hsüeh Pan (Universitatis Amoiensis, Acta Scientiarum Socialium), Amoy. No. 1, 1957Google Scholar, came out during the “hundred flowers” period (it contains an important paper by Chen-ch'ien, Chang et al. , “A Study of the Rural Economy of the Principal Home Districts of the Fukien Overseas Chinese”)Google Scholar, but the two later issues, No. 2, 1957, and No. 1, 1958, fall within the most recent period of relative silence. No. 1, 1958, contains a paper by Wei-chi, Chuang et al. , “Investigation into the History of the Overseas Chinese of Chuanchow,”Google Scholar which is remarkable for its being based upon field research (conducted in 1956–57). The approach is of course cautious. In the discussion on the clan and lineage registers collected in the field various objections which might be raised against using this feudal material (including the argument that reading it might be harmful) are countered. I have to thank Mrs. H. M. Wright for work on this and other Chinese material. A considerable number of publications (mainly articles) have appeared in Communist China dealing with “survey research,” which is largely of an economic character. I am not, alas, in a position to evaluate them, although it is clear from their titles that their sociological content is likely to be very limited. The .people who have done the surveys have not been sociologists but party-men and administrators to some extent following a pattern of practically-oriented rural research laid down by Mao Tse-tung's pre-war studies. Having recently discussed this kind of writing with Professor G. William Skinner and Professor Morton H. Fried (to both of whom I am very grateful for information) I am under the impression that it would be worth somebody's while to collect all this material and submit it to a careful scrutiny.

33 See his papers: “Population Growth and Social Change in Taiwan,” Bulletin of the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology (National Taiwan University), No. 5, 05 1955Google Scholar; “Population Change in Taiwan,” ibid., No. 6, November 1955; and “Social Change in Taiwan,” Studia TaiwanicaGoogle Scholar, Association for the Advancement of Taiwan Culture, No. 1, summer 1956 (all in English). Cf. Fried, , “China,” p. 1002et seq.Google Scholar