| ID | 135426 |
| Title Proper | Do we need to rethink sinology |
| Other Title Information | view from the Eastern bloc |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Lanza, Fabio |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | This collection of essays on the history of “sinology,” or “China studies” (I will return to this distinction later) is a very welcome and needed addition to our understanding of the global development of our “eld.” For at least four decades American scholars have rightfully been engaged in extensive discussions and continuing introspection on the evolution of area studies in North America, and recent new contributions have dissected Australian and European interests in the PRC during the Maoist and post-Maoist years. The essays in this issue provide a view from the other side of the Iron Curtain—when it still existed—and of the consequences of its demise for China scholars in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Mongolia, and Russia/USSR. From these contributions, we catch glimpses of the lives of academics who were, at times, secluded from the place they were studying (much like their U.S. counterparts), but who were also connected, if not in obvious and linear ways, to each other within the Eastern bloc and to their European and American peers. We receive insights into the traditions of scholarship and modes of intellectual production that, although distinctive, were continuously in uenced by swings in the global political landscape and also by the resilience of certain attitudes (the old European philological tradition), by changes in public opinion (some of the work by China scholars was translation and “popularization”), and by the ideological ebbs and ows within disciplinary approaches (the Asiatic mode of production vs. “feudal remnants”). We learn, for example, that, quite surprisingly, while nan -cial support and state attitudes toward China studies were susceptible to the vagaries in the relationship with the PRC, sinology could also offer a retreat, a somewhat safe intellectual escape, from the political winds that ravaged the Communist bloc. In a sense, immersing oneself in the intri-cacies of Chinese philology—an attitude that in the West has been justiably criticized for embodying the scholar’s separation from reality—
could produce a different and much healthier form of sheltering in the Eastern bloc. |
| `In' analytical Note | China Review Vol.14, No.2; Fal.2014: p.155-158 |
| Journal Source | China Review 2014-12 14, 2 |
| Standard Number | China |