A Passion for Facts Social Surveys and the Construction of the Chinese Nation-State, 1900-1949 |
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Author:
| Lam, Tong |
Series title: | Asia Pacific Modern Ser. |
ISBN: | 978-0-520-95035-1 |
Publication Date: | Nov 2011 |
Publisher: | University of California Press
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Book Format: | Ebook |
List Price: | USD $85.00USD $127.50 |
Book Description:
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In this path-breaking book, Tong Lam examines the emergence of the "culture of fact" in modern China, showing how elites and intellectuals sought to transform the dynastic empire into a nation-state, thereby ensuring its survival. Lam argues that an epistemological break away from traditional modes of understanding the observable world began around the turn of the twentieth century. Tracing the Neo-Confucian school of evidentiary research and the modern departure from it, Lam shows...
More DescriptionIn this path-breaking book, Tong Lam examines the emergence of the "culture of fact" in modern China, showing how elites and intellectuals sought to transform the dynastic empire into a nation-state, thereby ensuring its survival. Lam argues that an epistemological break away from traditional modes of understanding the observable world began around the turn of the twentieth century. Tracing the Neo-Confucian school of evidentiary research and the modern departure from it, Lam shows how, through the rise of the social survey, "the fact" became a basic conceptual medium and source of truth. In focusing on China's social survey movement, A Passion for Facts analyzes how information generated by a range of research practices--census, sociological investigation, and ethnography--was mobilized by competing political factions to imagine, manage, and remake the nation.