The West in the East

Chinese Anthropologies in the Making

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.