Anne F. Thurston - The Social Sciences and Fieldwork in China: Views From the Field

The Social Sciences and Fieldwork in China

Views from the Field

AAAS Selected Symposia Series

Views from the Field

Edited by Anne F. Thurston
and Burton Pasternak

First published 1983 by Westview Press

Published 2019 by Routledge
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Copyright 1983 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science

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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 83-50706

ISBN 13: 978-0-367-29584-4 (hbk)

Following the formation of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1977 and the beginning of a Sino-American scholarly exchange program in October 1978, a small number of foreigners has been able to conduct fieldwork in China after a hiatus of over thirty years. Welcomed though these new opportunities were by potential U.S. field researchers, the initial stage of enthusiasm was shortly overshadowed by both the difficulties foreign researchers faced in China and the imposition, in early 1981, of a temporary moratorium on long-term fieldwork by outsiders. Sober without being pessimistic, realistic without being discouraging, the contributors to this book describe the context in which fieldwork in China became possible, the constraints under which foreign fieldworkers have labored, and the potential rewards of field research to both Chinese and U.S. scholars. They also assess the relative value of fieldwork in China versus fieldwork at its gate, Hong Kong. The book includes substantive reports by U.S. and Chinese scholars (among them Fei Xiaotong, China's preeminent social anthropologist) as well as concrete advice to those contemplating field research in China.

The AAAS Selected Symposia Series was begun in 1977 to provide a means for more permanently recording and more widely disseminating some of the valuable material which is discussed at the AAAS Annual National Meetings. The volumes in this Series are based on symposia held at the Meetings which address topics of current and continuing significance, both within and among the sciences, and in the areas in which science and technology impact on public policy. The Series format is designed to provide for rapid dissemination of information, so the papers are not typeset but are reproduced directly from the camera-copy submitted by the authors. The papers are organized and edited by the symposium arrangers who then become the editors of the various volumes. Most papers published in this Series are original contributions which have not been previously published, although in some cases additional papers from other sources have been added by an editor to provide a more comprehensive view of a particular topic. Symposia may be reports of new research or reviews of established work, particularly work of an interdisciplinary nature, since the AAAS Annual Meetings typically embrace the full range of the sciences and their societal implications.

WILLIAM D. CAREY
Executive Officer
American Association for
the Advancement of Science

Anne F. Thurston, a specialist in Chinese domestic politics, is an associate in research at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University. Formerly professional staff to the China programs of the Social Science Research Council in New York City, she also served as staff to a delegation to China of scholars representing the Joint Committee on Contemporary China (of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies) and the Committee on the Studies of Chinese Civilization (of the ACLS). In 1981-82 she spent nine months in China conducting research on the victims of China's Cultural Revolution. She coedited Humanistic and Social Science Research in China (with J. Parker ; New York: Social Science Research Council, 1980).

Burton Pasternak is professor of anthropology at Hunter College, City University of New York. He has served as chairman of the Joint Committee on Contemporary China and was a member of the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the People's Republic of China 's Committee on Advanced Study in China. In 1981-82 he spent six months in Tianjin, China, conducting demographic research. He has also done social demographic studies in rural Taiwan and is the author of Kinship and Community in Two Chinese Villages (Stanford University Press, 1972), Introduction to Kinship and Social Organization (Prentice-Hall, 1976), and Guests in the Dragon: Social Demography of a Chinese District (Columbia University Press, in press).

Steven B. Butler, a political scientist and fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs based in Hanover, New Hampshire, is currently living and traveling in Asia. He conducted field research in a Chinese village in 1980 on a grant from the Committee on Scholarly Communication with the

People's Republic of China and has just completed, a book on China's rural budgetary and administrative system.

Norma Diamond, professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan, has specialized, in ethnology and economic anthropology. She has written on the ethnography of East Asia, the status of women in Taiwan, and economic development and government policies in the People 's Republic of China. In 1979-80 she was visiting professor at Shandong University in Jinan, China, and conducted field research in Taitou village, Shandong. She is the author of K'un Shen: A Taiwan Village (Holt Rinehart Winston, 1969) and is a member of the editorial board of Modern China.

Helen Fung-har Siu, a specialist in economic anthropology and peasant societies, is assistant professor of anthropology at Yale University. She conducted periodic field research in China from 1974 to 1982 and has written on rural leadership and socialist transformation in the PRC, rural industrialization, and contemporary Chinese literature. She is coeditor of Mao's Harvest: Voices from China's New Generation (with Z. Stern; Oxford University Press, 1983) and is currently at work on another manuscript, "Economic Development and Institutional Change in a Chinese Commune."

Martin King Whyte is professor of sociology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research interests are comparative sociology, sociology of the family, and contemporary China. A former director of the Universities Service Centre in Hong Kong, he was a member of the Social Science Research Council's Joint Committee on Contemporary China and the China and Inner Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies. His publications include Small Groups and Political Rituals in China (University of California Press, 1974) and Village and Family in Contemporary China and Urban Life in Contemporary China (both with W. Parish; University of Chicago Press, 1978 and 1983, respectively).