Research units are key to independent knowledge system. Photo:TUCHONG

The analytical unit has long been central to methodological discussions in the social sciences. The choice of analytical unit is the methodological basis for conducting social science research. Reflections on analytical units themselves have methodological implications. As Immanuel Maurice Wallerstein stated in The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy, many of the theoretical disputes of our age can, in some sense, be reduced to a dispute over the choice of research units. The emergence of the Modern World-Systems School was initially a reaction against the tripartite analytical framework commonly employed by Western scholars—“the West (nation-states), the East (civilizational empires), and Africa/Latin America etc. (tribal alliances).” This framework, deeply rooted in an a priori Western-centric perspective, was seen by Wallerstein and others as perpetuating clichéd Western centrism. To address this, Wallerstein proposed employing the “world-systems as method” approach to secondary spatial units, such as the “core, periphery, and semi-periphery.”

Units of the 20th century

In East Asia during the 20th century, analytical interests centered on concepts such as “world,” “Asia,” “China,” “ethnic groups,” “regions,” and “micro-communities” imbued various levels of analysis with methodological significance, often carrying a spirit of intellectual resistance. Moreover, the narrative mode of “as method” appears to have increasingly gained traction. For example, historian Sergei Mikhailovich Shirokogorov, in his studies of Northeast Asia, rejected both modern analytical units such as “nation” and “ethnic group” and macro analytical units such as “civilization” and “the world.” Instead, he developed the extremely dynamic and contemporaneous “ethnos” as the basic unit for analyzing regional societies. Gunder Frank, following the “world systems as method” view of Wallerstein, refocused on the East under the lens of globalization, attempting to challenge the historical myths of the Western-centric world system. Declarations of “as method” by almost all dependency theorists can be seen as critiques of the previous Western-centric view.

Throughout the 20th century, in the humanities and social sciences context of East Asia, “Asia as method,” “China as method,” and “Japan as method” emerged as a wave of criticism against the global colonial system and other hegemonic centrism. For example, in 1932, Japanese scholar Takeuchi Yoshimi gave a speech titled Asia as method, arguing that Asia, or the East, should reflect on its internal relations and history introspectively, without relying on inspiration from “Western modernity.” Scholars such as Yuzo Mizoguchi and Sun Ge narrowed the analysis units of “the world” and “Asia” to focus on “China” and “Japan,” seeking to explore the agency of East Asia. For example, Yuzo Mizoguchi’s book China as Method examines East Asia and the world from the perspective of “China.” These scholars, emphasizing subjectivity and heterogeneity, presented a critical “East Asian discourse.” In the Chinese social sciences community, this “as method” expression has surged in usage over the past 20 years.

Agency in the 21st century

In the 21st century, terms such as “region as method,” “territory as method,” and “river basin as method” began to appear frequently in social science research, indicating an attempt to break through the old analytical framework and reframe relationships between various layers of analytical units, such as areas, nations, and the world, to develop a more comprehensive local academic perspective. While influenced by Western scholars, these methodological expressions were also inspired by local or East Asian scholars. Concepts bearing local and socioeconomic history such as “region,” “corridor,” and “belt and road” have been elevated to become core analytical units for observing China. The analytical units, research objects, or analytical dimensions encompass not only geographical units mentioned above. Towns, cities, mountains, markets, and daily life have appeared as basic analytical units in various fields of social sciences. Since 2020, an even broader array of analytical units—spanning the self, people, events, arts, family, grassroots communities, stories, traditions, classics, virtual networks, and various spatial layers—has proliferated within the narrative context of “as method.” These developments go beyond earlier notions like the “world systems as method,” “East Asia as method,” and “regions as method,” i.e., the choice of analytical units is no longer limited to geographical categories. In just a few years, social science researchers have explored nearly every possible object or analytical unit, striving to articulate the unique characteristics of their respective fields while fostering dialogue with others. This growing enthusiasm for methodological innovation reflects an ongoing “as method” fervor in Chinese social sciences, one unlikely to fade until a truly new overarching methodological framework emerges.

The expressional significance of “as method” lies in its stronger pursuit for agency, but it also carries potential discursive risks. Since the advent of the world-systems school, the narrative significance of “as method” has stemmed not from the grandeur of its units of analysis, but from its critical temperament, a self-summarizing consciousness, and experience-sensitive awareness of diverse social and cultural practices. The convergence of various texts on “as method” not only represents the competitive presentation of analytical units or research objects in various fields of Chinese social sciences, but also embodies the discursive crisis of methodology in contemporary social sciences. That is, the absence of an overarching framework to guide qualitative research in Chinese social sciences allows researchers to adopt their own analytical units and extend cases based on their own analytical units or research object, and explore with diverse qualitative research logic, without the constraints of a single disciplinary methodology. Consequently, “as method” becomes more than a method for case narrative or case expansion, it serves as the medium of expression of the researcher’s subjectivity. Once various analytical units can be presented in the grand narrative or ideological space, the qualitative experience and the subjectivity of the expresser (whether their attitude is critical, dependent, or innovative) can be revealed. If such analytical units can both realize self-presentation and be sensitive to other analytical units, they can be said to possess both methodological significance and sensitivity to experience.

Independent knowledge system

The dynamic nature of the empirical world means that not all analytical units are inherently, homogeneously, and timelessly suited to serve “as method.” If the qualitative features of the analytical unit itself do not extend beyond their meaning, and when they cannot present the characteristics of the changing society or articulate multi-dimensional interrelationships, then the significance of the analytical unit serving “as method” is naturally limited. It is under such circumstances that the current proliferation of analytical units serving “as method” in contemporary Chinese social sciences takes on a dimension of discursive competition: Only those analytical units capable of sensitively connecting the empirical with the theoretical, the micro-level cases with global contexts, and local experiences with overarching realities can stand out in the ongoing methodological debates. In particular, analytical units theoretically neither too abstract nor too trivial, neither rushing to claim universal human significance nor limited by their own particularities, are more sensitive to special meaning and can respond more effectively to reality in the social sciences, presenting the characteristics of serving “as method.”

The construction of China’s independent knowledge system requires a continuous excavation of sensitive analytical units within the local society and the gradual accumulation of its methodology based on the inherent logic of Chinese civilization or a community for the Chinese nation. At present, the meso-level analytical units with a moderate degree of abstraction, such as regions, events, spaces, and corridors, are insufficiently mined. China’s history and contemporary reality offer a wealth of local time- or space-specific analytical units or research objects. Micro-level local community units are countless, and meso-level units such as counties, river basins, and ethnic border regions, as well as significant analytical objects such as the Great Wall, the Yellow River, the Yangtze River, the Grand Canal, and all the carriers of Chinese civilization, can all be research objects and analytical methods for China’s independent knowledge studies. In addition to being conscious of specific spatial units, we should also raise greater awareness of any action entities or civilizational elements in China’s history, civilization, and modernization. It is suggested to capture China’s indigenous analytical units to build a sensitive awareness of historical and real-life experiences.

A research location is not synonymous with the research object, nor is the research object necessarily confined to the analytical level in which it exists. If empirical researchers fail to expand their specific research locations and research objects for analysis, or only use concrete empirical analysis units to drive empirical research, it may be difficult to achieve genuine autonomy in pursuit of China’s knowledge system, let alone true insights into the special and universal issues concerning the human world. From this perspective, however, the emergence of a trend in Chinese social sciences to treat analytical units “as method” reflects an evolving intellectual self-awareness within China’s academic discourse. This self-awareness of contemporary China’s internal analysis is a methodological prerequisite for achieving an independent understanding of Chinese social sciences. We should encourage using local analytical units “as method” to build an independent knowledge system for understanding, studying, and building China, thus fully displaying China’s unique characteristics, style, and ethos from the perspective of methodology.

Zhang Liang (associate professor) and Huang Zhihui (professor) are from the School of Ethnology and Sociology at Minzhu University of China.