A Passion for Facts

Social Surveys and the Construction of the Chinese Nation-State, 1900–1949

Bibliographic Data

ID19933162
AuthorsTong Lam (corresponding author)
Year2019
Pages280
Publication date2019-12-31
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenuePassion for Facts (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherUniversity of California Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1525/9780520950351
OpenAlexW2262317389
ISBN9780520950351
Open LibraryOL29631628M
LanguageEN
Citations received28

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

Passion · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Chinese history and philosophy · Data Analysis and Archiving · Psychology · Social Psychology · china · politics and government · Social conditions · Social surveys

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