Knowledge Construction and Disciplinary Specialization in Modern China

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel Proposal Application

Abstract

Over the course of the late Qing and Republican periods, Chinese intellectuals came to new understandings of knowledge or “learning” by redefining the content of what counted as knowledge and by reclassifying its forms. Scholars of the period have long noted the decline of classical learning and the rise of so-called Western Learning but are only now examining how specific disciplinary genres were formed. Critical to this process were numerous translation projects. This panel examines the relationships between texts and specialized knowledge, which produced scientific communities organized on the basis of disciplinary standards. Such standards are not handed down from on high but worked out as intellectual work proceeds. Zarrow highlights how the range of orthodox disciplines was established through the evolving official school system from 1902 onward. Shen focuses on the conceptualization of science by the leading translator and reformer of the late Qing, Yan Fu. Zhang examines the processes by which history was transformed from a traditional form of knowledge into a modern discipline. And Chang shows how modern textbooks helped legitimate acupuncture as a modern medical procedure. The discussant is an intellectual historian and political theorist able to put the papers into broader context. Collectively, these papers illustrate how institutions and texts worked together to create both specific modern disciplines and the general disciplinization of knowledge.

Area of Study

• China and Inner Asia

Session Organizer

• Peter Zarrow, University of Connecticut

Chair

• Chaohua Wang, Independent Scholar

Individual Presentations

• Fields of Knowledge Defined by the Late Qing School System - Peter Zarrow, University of Connecticut

• Yan Fu’s Uses of “Gezhi” and “Kexue” (Science) - Guowei Shen, Kansai University

• New Terms in the Knowledge of History and Historiography in Late Qing and Republican China - Qing Zhang, Fudan University

• Reconstructing Acupuncture: Cheng Dan’an and the Birth of Modern Acupuncture Textbooks - Che-chia Chang, Academia Sinica

Discussant

• Chaohua Wang, Independent Scholar