Schmalzer, Sigrid (Author)
This is a history of two faces of the "popular science" of paleoanthropology in twentieth-century China. The first, science dissemination, has entailed the spread of knowledge produced by scientific experts to the general population. The second, mass science, was a far more radical, bottom-up approach that in the Mao era sought to make science itself more "popular" through mass participation in scientific work. In examining the dissemination of knowledge about human evolution and popular participation in paleoanthropological research. I approach from a new angle many established themes of twentieth- century Chinese history for example, modernity, imperialism, nationalism, ethnic identity, class struggle, and authoritarianism. I also raise two issues that have been much less well explored: popular science and human identity. Through a detailed investigation of the production of knowledge about human origins, this dissertation sheds new light on the changing ways Chinese people in the twentieth century saw themselves as natural, social, local, national, and global beings. Without disregarding forms of identity that have defined some people in contrast with others, I encourage scholars not to overlook the potential for more inclusive kinds of human identities. And without denying the enormous implications of discourses that blur the boundary between humans and others, I insist on the need to take seriously the continuing, though changing, attempts to define what it means to be human. The dissertation further demonstrates that none of the questions that occupied scientists and science policy makers in socialist China--questions of class or social identity, religion, utility, and objectivity, to name a few--were simple; none were mere fictions of the state or party; and none are resolved in the West today. Most importantly, I propose that Mao was right to think the masses had something to offer science, but that his commitment to seeing them simultaneously as "superstitious" precluded their full and meaningful participation in the production of scientific knowledge about human origins. Nonetheless, paleoanthropology in China has never been estranged from popular culture, but rather has depended on it in myriad unacknowledged ways. In popular paleoanthropology, we see seeds of the true promise of mass science.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 65/06 (2004): 2325. UMI pub. no. 3137238.
Article
Harrison, Henrietta;
(2013)
Popular Responses to the Atomic Bomb in China 1945--1955
(/isis/citation/CBB001200327/)
Book
Schmalzer, Sigrid;
(2008)
The People's Peking Man: Popular Science and Human Identity in Twentieth-Century China
(/isis/citation/CBB000970011/)
Article
Goulden, Murray;
(2007)
Bringing Bones to Life: How Science Made Piltdown Man Human
(/isis/citation/CBB000831461/)
Article
Hochadel, Oliver;
(2013)
A Boom of Bones and Books: The “Popularization Industry” of Atapuerca and Human-Origins Research in Contemporary Spain
(/isis/citation/CBB001320415/)
Article
Hochadel, Oliver;
(2013)
Palaeoanthropology in the Periphery. An Introduction
(/isis/citation/CBB001213573/)
Article
Kjærgaard, Peter C.;
(2014)
Inventing Homo gardarensis: Prestige, Pressure, and Human Evolution in Interwar Scandinavia
(/isis/citation/CBB001420413/)
Chapter
Hochadel, Oliver;
(2009)
Das Postergirl der Paläoanthropologie: Lucy zwischen Wissenschaft und Öffentlichkeit
(/isis/citation/CBB001033080/)
Article
Jia, Hepeng;
Liu, Li;
(2014)
Unbalanced Progress: The Hard Road from Science Popularisation to Public Engagement with Science in China
(/isis/citation/CBB001420043/)
Chapter
Silvia Garofalo;
(2018)
Dal caso Tremante alla nascita dei movimenti no-vax in Italia
(/isis/citation/CBB648845123/)
Thesis
Teslow, Tracy Lang;
(2002)
Representing Race to the Public: Physical Anthropology in Interwar American Natural History Museums
(/isis/citation/CBB001562222/)
Article
Eva Miller;
(2021)
The dinosaur from 600 BCE! Interpreting the dragon of Babylon, from archaeological excavation into fringe science
(/isis/citation/CBB130124576/)
Article
Paul M. Dennis;
(2020)
Bishop Fulton J. Sheen: America’s Public Critic of Psychoanalysis, 1947–1957
(/isis/citation/CBB326374446/)
Book
Thurs, Daniel Patrick;
(2007)
Science Talk: Changing Notions of Science in American Popular Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB000773753/)
Book
Marco Ciardi;
Andrea Sani;
(2023)
Incontri ravvicinati tra scienza e cinema
(/isis/citation/CBB986679361/)
Article
Shapiro, Adam R.;
(2014)
Darwin's Foil: The Evolving Uses of William Paley's Natural Theology 1802--2005
(/isis/citation/CBB001420094/)
Article
Timms, Joanna;
(2012)
Ghost-Hunters and Psychical Research in Interwar England
(/isis/citation/CBB001200206/)
Article
Dingwall, Robert;
Aldridge, Meryl;
(2006)
Television Wildlife Programming as a Source of Popular Scientific Information: A Case Study of Evolution
(/isis/citation/CBB000830296/)
Article
Nieto-Galan, Agustí;
(2013)
From Papers to Newspapers: Miguel Masriera (1901--1981) and the Role of Science Popularization under the Franco Regime
(/isis/citation/CBB001320572/)
Book
Messier, Gilles;
(2012)
Our Own Devices: Stories of the Machine Age
(/isis/citation/CBB001321157/)
Book
Sehgal, Narender K.;
Sangwan, Satpal;
Mahanti, Subodh;
(2000)
Uncharted Terrains: Essays on Science Popularisation in Pre-Independence India
(/isis/citation/CBB000111836/)
Be the first to comment!