A Passion for Facts: Social Surveys and the Construction of the Chinese Nation-State, 1900-1949 Volume 9
(Part of the Asia Pacific Modern Series)
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Book Overview
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 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.
Format:Hardcover
Language:English
ISBN:0520267869
ISBN13:9780520267862
Release Date:November 2011
Publisher:University of California Press
Length:280 Pages
Weight:1.15 lbs.
Dimensions:0.9" x 6.1" x 9.0"
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