| A Passion for Facts: Social Surveys and the Construction of the Chinese Nation-State, 1900-1949 Volume 9 Contributor(s): Lam, Tong (Author) |
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ISBN: 0520267869 ISBN-13: 9780520267862 Publisher: University of California Press OUR PRICE: $84.15 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: November 2011 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | Asia - China - Social Science | Research |
| Dewey: 300.720 |
| LCCN: 2011010281 |
| Series: Asia Pacific Modern |
| Physical Information: 0.9" H x 6.1" W x 9" (1.10 lbs) 280 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - Chinese - Chronological Period - 1900-1949 |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: 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. |