A New History for a New China, 1700-2000: New Data and New Methods, Part 1

课程简介

The purpose of this course is to summarize some of the new directions in Chinese history and Chinese social science produced by the discovery and analysis of new historical data, in particular archival documents and datasets, and to organize this knowledge in a framework that encourages learning about China in comparative perspective.

课程大纲

Part 1 will cover the following subjects:

1. Social Structure and Education in Late Imperial China
2. Education and Social Mobility in Contemporary China
3. Social Mobility and Wealth Distribution in China
4. Wealth Distribution and Regime Change

课程详情

Our course demonstrates how a new scholarship of discovery is redefining
what is singular about modern China and modern Chinese history. The current
understanding of human history and social theory is based largely on Western
experience or on non-Western experience seen through a Western lens. This
course offers alternative perspectives derived from Chinese experience
during the last three centuries. We present specific case studies of the
new scholarship of discovery divided into three independent parts, which
means that students can take any Part without prior or subsequent attendance
of the other Parts. Part 1 addresses the issue of “Who Gets What” and covers
sequentially inequality and education, education and social mobility, social
mobility and wealth distribution, and wealth distribution and regime change.
Part 2 turns to the related issue of “Who Survives” and includes studies
of inequality and population behavior, population behavior and human development,
human development and social organization, and social organization and
social stratification. Part 3 deals with issues of identification and motivation
and presents studies of religion and gender, ethnicity, and nationalism
from late imperial times to the present-day.

Our class eschews the standard chronological narrative arc for an analytic
approach that focuses on specific discoveries and on how these new facts
complicate our understanding of comparative societies, human behavior,
and the construction of individual and group identities. That being said,
while we do not emphasize the temporal narratives of late imperial, early
modern and contemporary China, we of course also discuss change over time
as China progresses from a largely domestic imperial history to the shared
stories of imperialism and semi colonialism, communism and collectivization,
and reform and globalization.