By Tong Lam
Buy new: $53.72
First tagged by "ladonian"
Customer tags: nationalism, politics, history, colonialism, modernity, history of science, history of technology, science studies, east asia, social science, anthropology, china
Review & 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. Read more
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