The West in the East Chinese Anthropologies in the Making
The 4th JASCA International Symposium Keynote Lecture 1 The West in the East Chinese Anthropologies in the Making Mingming Wang Peking University Abstract: Focusing upon the disciplinary formations of Chinese anthropology in the pre-war years (1929-1945), the author examines the “contests” between the varied sub-traditions, chiefly including the Yanda school of sociological ethnography and Academia Sinica school of historical ethnology. These scholarly traditions were invented by different groups of newly returned “students studying abroad” (liuxuesheng) who, having learnt sociology, anthropology, and ethnology in different Western nations, brought home different conceptions of the disciplines. As the author argues, the formations were derived from “Westernization”; but neither were they the same, nor were they opposed to “indigenization.” As varied approaches to disciplinary modernity, they were different combinations of Western and Eastern discourses, each of which was in turn internally varied. Despite their origins in “international exchanges,” they did not develop any concept of internationality or, from Marcel Mauss’s perspective, “civilization.” The problem has continued to trouble Chinese anthropologists in the past decades. Key words: Westernization, Disciplinary Formations, Anthropology, Sub-Traditions, Internationality Acknowledgements The piece was presented as a special lecture at the 4th workshop on “The Nationalization and Globalization of East Asian Anthropology” held on 28 December 2017 in Tokyo. I thank the president of the Japanese Society of Cultural Anthropology, Professor Motoji Matsuda, and Professor Hironao Kawai for inviting me. I also thank Professor Yoshio Watanabe for encouragement and Professors Byung-Ho Chung, Zhou Xing, Katsumi Nakao, Liu Zheng’ai, and Takami Kuwayama for the inspiring remarks they made during and after the workshop.
[Show full text]