A Passion for Facts: Social Surveys and the Construction of the Chinese Nation-State, 1900--1949 (2011)
Lam, Tong (Author)
University of California Press
Physical Details: xii + 263 pp.; ill.
Language: English
"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"--Provided by publisher.
...MoreReview Chiang, Howard (2014) Review of "A Passion for Facts: Social Surveys and the Construction of the Chinese Nation-State, 1900--1949". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 456-457).
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