What’s Wrong with the Study of China/Countries

Authors

  • Hans KUIJPER

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.4312/as.2014.2.1.151-185

Keywords:

Sinology, area/country studies, complexity, scientific collaboration, e-research

Abstract

In this paper the thesis is submitted that there is something fundamentally amiss in Western Sinology (Zhōngguóxué, as distinct from Hànxué, which is a kind of old-fashioned philology): ‘China experts’ either pretend to be knowledgeable about everything related to China, in which case they cannot be taken seriously, or–– eventually––admit not to be scientific all-rounders with respect to the country, in which case they cannot be called ‘China experts’. The author expects no tenured professor of Chinese Studies/History to share this view. Having exposed the weakness, indeed the scandal of old-style Sinology, he also points out the way junior Sinologists should go. The fork in that road is two-pronged: translating or collaborating.

 

 

 

    

Metrics

Metrics Loading ...

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

References

Allen, Peter, Steve Maguire, and Bill McKelvey, eds. 2011. The SAGE Handbook of Complexity and Management. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Anandarajan, Murugan, and Asokan Anandarajan, eds. 2010. e-Research Collaboration. Berlin: Springer.

Atkinson, Rita, Richard Atkinson, Edward Smith, Daryl Bem, and Susan Nolen-Hoeksema. 1999. Hilgard’s Introduction to Psychology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company.

Bammer, Gabriele. 2013. Disciplining Interdisciplinarity. Canberra: ANU Press.

Batty, Michel. 2013. The New Science of Cities. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Béziau, Jean-Yves, and Katarzyna Gan-Krzywoszynska, eds. 2014. New Dimensions of the Square of Opposition. München: Philosophia Verlag.

Bhaskar, Roy, Cheryl Frank, Karl-Georg Høyer, Petter Naess, and Jenneth Parker, eds. 2010. Interdisciplinarity and Climate Change. London: Routledge.

Blitstein, Pablo. 2008. “A New Debate about Alterity”. Accessed on May 1st 2014, www.uba.ar/ceca/newsletters/diciembre_08/newsletter-english_diciembre_08.php.

Bourgine, Paul. 2013. “Complex Systems Science as a New Transdisciplinary Science”. Accessed on May 1st 2014, www.diplomacyandforeignaffairs.com/complex-systems-science-as-a-new-transdisciplinary-science.

Byrne, David, and Gill Callaghan. 2014. Complexity Theory and the Social Sciences. London: Routledge.

Caplat, Guy. 2008. Modèles et métamodèles. Lausanne: PPUR.

Capra, Fritjof, and Pier Luisi. 2014. The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision. Cambridge: CUP.

Chaitin, Gregory. 2005. Metamaths: The Quest for Omega. London: Atlantic Books.

Cheng, Anne. 1997. Histoire de la pensée chinoise. Paris: Seuil.

Cheng, Chung-Ying, and Nicholas Bunnin, eds. 2002. Contemporary Chinese Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell.

Clark, Herbert. 1996. Using Language. Cambridge: CUP.

Critchley, Simon, and William Schroeder, eds. 1999. A Companion to Continental Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell.

Cua, Antonio, ed. 2003. Encyclopedia of Chinese Philosophy. London: Routledge.

Descombes, Vincent. 2013. Les embarrass de l’identité. Paris: Gallimard.

Dutton, William, and, Paul Jeffrieseds. 2010. World Wide Research: Reshaping the Sciences and Humanities. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Ehrlich, Paul, and Anne Ehrlich. 2013. “Can a Collapse of Global Civilization Be Avoided?” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 280 (1754), March 7: 1–9.

–—. 2013. “Future Collapse: How Optimistic Should We Be?”. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 280 (1767), September 22: 1–2.

Elkana, Yehuda, and Hannes Klöpper. 2012. Die Universität im 21. Jahrhundert. Hamburg: Körber-Stiftung.

Feng, Youlan. 1953. A History of Chinese Philosophy, Vol. II. Translated by Derk Bodde. Princeton, NJ: PUP.

Flanagan, Thomas, and Alexander Christakis. 2010. The Talking Point: Creating an Environment for Exploring Complex Meaning. Scottsdale, AZ: Information Age Publishing.

Floridi, Luciano. 2014. The Fourth Revolution: How the Infosphere is Reshaping Human Reality. Oxford: OUP.

Fraser, Chris. 2014. Chinese Philosophy: An Introduction. New York: Columbia University Press.

French, Steven. 2014. The Structure of the World. Oxford: OUP.

Frodeman, Robert, Julie Thompson Klein, and Carl Mitcham, eds. 2010. The Oxford Handbook of Interdisciplinarity. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gasser, Georg, and Matthias Stefan, eds. 2013. Personal Identity: Complex or Simple? Cambridge: CUP.
G
ray, Wayne, ed. 2007. Integrated Models of Cognitive Systems. New York: OUP.

Hesse-Biber, Sharlene, ed. 2011. The Handbook of Emergent Technologies in Social Research. New York: OUP.

Heywood, Andrew. 2007. Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hofkirchner, Wolfgang, ed. 2009 ff. Exploring Unity through Diversity. Litchfield Park, AZ: Emergent Publications.

Jacobs, Jerry. 2014. In Defense of Disciplines. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Ji, Sungchul. 2012. Molecular Theory of the Living Cell. New York: Springer.

Johnson, Jeffrey. 2014. Hypernetworks in the Science of Complex Systems. Singapore: World Scientific.

Jullien, François. 2007. La pensée chinoise dans le miroir de la philosophie. Paris: Seuil.

Kelly, Michael. 2013. “Why a Collapse of Global Civilization Can Be Avoided: A Comment on Ehrlich & Ehrlich”. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 280 (1767), September 22: 1–3.

Krausz, Michael, ed. 2010. Relativism: A Contemporary Anthology. New York: Columbia University Press.

Krummel, John. 2010. “Transcendent or Immanent? Significance and History of Li in Confucianism.” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 37(3): 417–37.

Kuijper, Hans. 2000. “Is Sinology a Science?” China Report 36(3): 331–54.

—–. 2013. “The Modernisation of China”. www.academia.edu (fill in author’s name).

–—. 2014. “Perception: An Interdisciplinary Essay”. www.academia.edu (fill in author’s name).

Lai, Karyn. 2008. An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy. Cambridge: CUP.

Lisin, Dimitri. 1995. “Philosopher of Freedom”. Accessed May 1st, 2014, http://vis-www.cs.umass.edu/~dima/mytexts/suff.html.

Liu, Jeeloo. 2005. “The Status of Cosmic Principle (li) in Neo-Confucian Metaphysics”. Journal of Chinese Philosophy 32(3): 391–407.

Mathieu, Nicole, and Anne-Françoise Schmid, eds. 2014. Modélisation et interdisciplinarité. Paris: Quæ.

Mayaram, Shail, ed. 2014. Philosophy as Saṃvāda and Svarāj: Dialogical Meditations on Daya Krishna and Ramchandra Gandhi. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

McCabe, Viki. 2014. Coming to Our Senses: Perceiving Complexity to Avoid Catastrophes. New York: OUP.

Montuori, Alfonso. 2013. “Complexity and Transdisciplinarity: Reflections on Theory and Practice”. Accessed May 1st, 2014, www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02604027. 2013.803349?journalCode=gwof20.

Mou, Bo, ed. 2009. History of Chinese Philosophy. London: Routledge.

Newman, Mark. 2010. Networks: An Introduction. Oxford: OUP.

Nielsen, Michael. 2012. Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science. Princeton, NJ: PUP.

O’Grady, William, John Archibald, Mark Aronoff, and Janie
Rees-Miller. 2009. Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s.

Parfit, Derek. 1984. Reasons and Persons. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Parker, Jenneth. 2014. Critiquing Sustainability, Changing Philosophy. London: Routledge.

Ramage, Magnus, and Karen Shipp. 2009. Systems Thinkers. London: Springer.

Ramchand, Gillian, and Charles Reiss, eds. 2007. The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Interfaces. Oxford: OUP.

Reck, Erich, ed. 2013. The Historical Turn in Analytic Philosophy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Rose, Nikolas, and Joelle Abi-Rached. 2013. Neuro: The New Brain Sciences and the Management of the Mind. Princeton, NJ: PUP.

Rošker, Jana. 2012. Traditional Chinese Philosophy and the Paradigm of Structure (Li 理). Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Samuelson, Paul, and William Nordhaus. 2009. Economics. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Schelling, Friedrich von. 1809. “Philosophische Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit”. Accessed May 1st 2014: www.hs-augsburg.de/~harsch /germanica/Chronologie/19Jh/Schelling/sch_frei.html.

Soames, Scott. 2014. The Analytic Tradition in Philosophy, Vol. I: The Founding Giants. Princeton, NJ: PUP.

Starr, Cecie, Ralph Taggart, Christine Evers, and Lisa Starr. 2013. The Unity and Diversity of Life. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

Straub, Jürgen. 2004. “Identität”, Handbuch der Kulturwissenschaften Vol. I, edited by Jaeger, Friedrich and Liebsch, Burkhard, 277– 303. Grundlagen und Schlüsselbegriffe. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler,.

Taylor, Mark. 2001. The Moment of Complexity: Emerging Network Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Thorén, Henrik, and Johannes Persson. 2013. “The Philosophy of Interdisciplinarity”. Accessed May 1st 2014, http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10838-013-9233-5.

Wolf-Branigin, Michael. 2013. Using Complexity Theory for Research and Program Evaluation. New York: OUP.
Zufferey, Nicolas

Downloads

Published

30. 05. 2014

How to Cite

KUIJPER, Hans. 2014. “What’s Wrong With the Study of China Countries”. Asian Studies 2 (1): 151-85. https://doi.org/10.4312/as.2014.2.1.151-185.