Anthropology in China undertakes a different mission than its Western counterpart. Since the early 20th century, the basic problem domains of Chinese anthropological studies have included: understanding the basic structure of Chinese society, discussing the modernization pathways of Chinese society, constructing ethnic theories about the Chinese nation and its internal structures, and comparative studies of foreign societies. Although the postmodern trend of fragmentation in Western anthropology has had some influence on current Chinese anthropology, the discipline has still achieved many new theoretical advances in its return to fundamental issues. These theoretical advances are closely related to the efforts to reevaluate existing anthropological theories and have significant implications for overcoming Western-centric views and advancing China’s social sciences.

Civilization & nation-state

The rise of modern nation-states has led to a long-standing trend of anthropological research based on national units. In contrast, Wang Mingming advocates for a research called “civilizational anthropology.” He argues that understanding China from the perspective of a civilization, rather than as a Western-style nation-state, is a more appropriate way to understand the country. To this end, he suggests drawing upon classical studies and treating civilizations as “super-social systems,” to examine “broad-based human relations” and expand anthropological perspectives. Wang emphasizes the importance of moral exemplars of personality as a feature that distinguishes Chinese civilization from European civilization, which centers on religion and law. “Civilizational anthropology” has important implications for addressing the tensions between Western rationalist civilizational theories and extreme nationalist cultural theories.

Unity of Chinese nation

Fei Xiaotong’s theory of “the pattern of pluralistic unity of Chinese nation” is one of the most significant theoretical contributions to understanding ethnic relations in China. The impact of China’s modernization on ethnic issues has driven anthropologists to respond to the topic of “nationalism” and advance academic research on the “national community.”

Interdisciplinary dialogue & Chinese modernization

The theoretical dialogue between Fei’s economic anthropology and British economic historian R.H. Tawney is a key issue in current discussions of Chinese economic anthropology. Yang Qingmei, a professor from the School of Sociology at China University of Political Science and Law, argues that Fei’s series of studies aimed to solve the problem of integrating rural areas with the global system, focusing on three areas: economic practices, social organization, and social mentality. The differing interpretations of society’s position in the modern market formed the basis of Fei’s dialogue with Tawney. Fei’s proposed path for Chinese modernization, rooted in rural industry, reflects a social concern that China must both be wary of the social disintegration that large-scale industry could bring, while also developing new social organizations to modernize people’s intellectual world. Zhang Yahui, a professor from the department of Anthropolgy & Ethnology at Xiamen University, proposed that China’s longstanding identity as an agricultural powerhouse prompted Tawney to advocate for emulating the horticultural reform plans of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Fei, sensitive to the effects of the modern market on China’s coastal areas, proposed a rural industrialization plan inspired by the “proto-industrialization” phase in the UK’s history.

In the past decade, numerous universities and research institutes have made significant efforts to promote ethnographic research abroad, leading to a growing body of academic achievements in this field.

Chinese response to ontological turn

The “ontological turn” in anthropology is a phenomenon that has been widely discussed in both Western and Chinese anthropology, aiming to transcend the nature-culture dualism. Wang believes that after the epistemological turn of postmodern ethnography in the 1980s, which reflected on the power dynamics of ethnographic knowledge, the emergence of diverse ethnographic traditions in different regional contexts since the 1990s has led to a “return of ontology,” emphasizing the ontological articulation of the “object world.” Zhu Xiaoyang, a professor from the Department of Sociology at Peking University, argues that this ontological turn has produced a “non-epistemological (i.e. ontological) relativism” perspective, and in discussions of “geography,” he advocates introducing a “habitat perspective” and “total explanation” as methodological approaches.

Chinese anthropology is making efforts to respond to disasters from its own disciplinary perspective, continuously exploring theoretical and methodological approaches to studying disasters.

Capacity for critique

Summarizing the current development status of the discipline, Chinese anthropology demonstrates a more detailed and in-depth capacity for critique, whether in comparing civilizations and social structures or in updating perspectives and intellectual pathways. As it explores fields related to civilizations, states, nations, societies, economies, and cultures, Chinese anthropology in the new era bears an increasingly important disciplinary mission.

Zhao Tingjian is an associate professor from the School of Sociology at Central China Normal University.