Fieldwork in Modern Chinese History: A Research Guide

333 Pages·2020·5.543 MB·332\333

by  Thomas David DuBois and Jan Kiely

Fieldwork in Modern Chinese
History
This book explores how fieldwork has been used to research Chinese history
in the past and new ways that others might use it in the future. It intro-
duces the previous generations of scholars who ventured out of the archive
to conduct local investigations in Chinese cities, villages, farms and tem-
ples. It goes on to present the techniques of historical fieldwork, providing
guidance on how to integrate oral history into research plans and archival
research, conduct interviews, and locate sources in the field. Chapters by
established researchers relate these techniques to specific types of fieldwork,
including religion, the imperial past, natural environments and agriculture.
Combining the past and the future of the craft, the book provides a rich re-
source for scholars coming new to fieldwork in the history of China.
Thomas David DuBois is Professor of Humanities at Beijing Normal
University.
Jan Kiely is Professor and Associate Director of the Centre for China Stud-
ies and Associate Director of the Universities Service Centre for China
Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
The Historical Anthropology of Chinese Society Series
Series editor: David Faure, Chinese University of Hong Kong
Historians are being increasingly attracted by the methodology of historical
anthropology, an approach which combines observations in the field with
documentary analysis, both of official documents and of documents col-
lected from local society. In China, historians have been pursuing such local
historical research for a generation, with very little of this work being avail-
able in English hitherto. This series makes available in English research un-
dertaken by the Historical Anthropology of Chinese Society project based
at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and related work. The books ar-
gue that top-heavy, dynasty-centred history is incomplete without an under-
standing of how local communities were involved in the government process
and in the creation of their own historical narratives. The books argue that
Chinese social history needs to be rewritten from the bottom up.
1 The Fisher Folk of Later Imperial and Modern China
An Historical Anthropology of Boat-and-Shed Living
Edited by Xi He and David Faure
2 Colonial Administration and Land Reform in East Asia
Edited by Sui-Wai Cheung
3 Fieldwork in Modern Chinese History
A Research Guide
Edited by Thomas David DuBois and Jan Kiely
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
com/The-Historical-Anthropology-of-Chinese-Society-Series/book-series/
HISTANTHCHINSOC
Fieldwork in Modern
Chinese History
A Research Guide
Edited by
Thomas David DuBois and
Jan Kiely
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2020 selection and editorial matter, Thomas David DuBois and
Jan Kiely; individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Thomas David DuBois and Jan Kiely to be identified
as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their
individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections
77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: DuBois, Thomas David, 1969– editor. | Kiely, Jan,
1965– editor.
Title: Fieldwork in modern Chinese history : a research guide /
edited by Thomas David DuBois and Jan Kiely.
Description: London; New York : Routledge/Taylor & Francis
Group, 2020. |
Series: The Historical Anthropology of Chinese Society Series; 3. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019031949 | ISBN 9780367263911 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780429293078 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: China—History—Study and teaching. |
History—China—Research. | History—Fieldwork.
Classification: LCC DS734.95.F54 2020 | DDC 951.0072/3—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019031949
ISBN: 978-0-367-26391-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-29307-8 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by codeMantra
Contents
List of contributors ix
Editors’ preface: Fieldwork in Modern Chinese History xiii
THOMAS DAVID DUBOIS AND JAN KIELY
Acknowledgments xxiii
SECTION 1
History and fieldwork in historical perspective 1
1 They went to the people but did they hear them? Comments on
field research in China in the 1920s and 1930s 3
DAVID FAURE
2 A brief history of Japanese field research on China 22
LINDA GROVE
3 The traditionalist phase in Taiwan anthropology: 1960–1980 35
MYRON L. COHEN
SECTION 2
Work reflections 49
4 Fieldwork for Ming historians 51
MICHAEL SZONYI
5 Conducting fieldwork as a local: perspectives from Hulunbuir 61
GUAN YUXIA, WITH ZHANG WEI
6 Who are they, and who am I?: discovering gender and ethnicity
in the Sino-Tibetan borderland 69
XIAOFEI KANG
vi Contents
7 Ritual performance in changing local society 82
STEPHEN JONES
8 Beyond the border of disciplines and societies: from
fieldwork among the Lahu to the history of bazi basins 96
JIANXIONG MA
SECTION 3
Walking the ground, talking to people 107
9 Basic questions for fieldwork on pre-1949 Chinese society 109
JOHN LAGERWEY
10 Festivals in the field—a social historical perspective 125
PAUL R. KATZ
11 Doing historical-anthropological fieldwork in Jiangnan:
Gazetteers, newspapers, and real life 137
VINCENT GOOSSAERT
12 Incorporating historical GIS in fieldwork on Chinese culture
and religion 144
KENNETH DEAN
13 Walks in Canton: doing historical anthropology in
a Chinese city 159
MAY BO CHING AND ZHIWEI LIU
14 Contextualizing ethnic classification: the case of hemu (合亩)
among the Li of Hainan 178
XI HE
15 Mud on your boots: researching the social and
environmental history of conservation in Baishui
county, Shaanxi during the 1950s 188
MICAH S. MUSCOLINO
16 Medicine, health, and disease: among the barefoot doctors of
Hangzhou 204
XIAOPING FANG
Contents vii
17 Discovering the Cultural Revolution in oral history 215
GUOQIANG DONG
18 Walking a production chain: an interdisciplinary
approach to the history of things 224
THOMAS DAVID DUBOIS
SECTION 4
Finding and working with grassroots documents 237
19 Field research using contracts (qiyue): legal archives
of late Qing and early Republican-era Longquan, Zhejiang 239
ZHENGZHEN DU
20 Account books (zhangben) in local history studies 252
YONGHUA LIU
21 Land and property deeds and urban studies: a case study of
deeds collected by Ms. Liu 264
SUJUAN HUANG
22 Genealogies and revolution in the Jiangxi Soviet 275
WEIXIN RAO
23 Using local public security archives from the 1950s—Poyang
county, Jiangxi 282
SHIGU LIU
24 Exploring a northern Jiangsu county Intangible Cultural
Heritage archive 289
JAN KIELY
Index 301

Contributors
May Bo Ching 程美寶 is Professor of History at City University of Hong
Kong. Her major research interest is the social and cultural history of
modern China. Recently, she has been studying how the regional culture
of South China took shape in a trans-regional context in terms of sound,
color, and taste.
Myron L. Cohen 孔邁隆 is Professor of Anthropology at Columbia Univer-
sity. He has done extensive fieldwork in Taiwan and in villages in north-
ern, eastern, and western mainland China. His present writing concerns
the historical anthropology of a community in southern Taiwan. His
publications include Kinship, Contract, Community, and State: Anthro-
pological Perspectives on China (2005) and House United, House Divided:
The Chinese Family in Taiwan (1976). Professor Cohen received his PhD
in anthropology from Columbia University in 1967, after having joined
the Columbia faculty in 1966.
Kenneth Dean 丁荷生 is Lee Chair and James McGill Professor Emeritus of
McGill University, and Professor in the Department of Chinese Studies at
the National University of Singapore. He is the author of several books on
Daoism and Chinese popular religion, and directed Bored in Heaven: A
Film about Ritual Sensation, an 80-minute documentary film on ritual cel-
ebrations around Chinese New Year in Putian, Fujian, China. His current
research concerns transnational trust and temple networks linking Singa-
pore Chinese temples to Southeast China and Southeast Asia. As part of
this project, he is conducting a survey of 800 Chinese temples in Singapore.
Guoqiang Dong 董国强 is Professor of History at Fudan University, working
primarily in the area of Chinese modern political and social history.
Zhengzhen Du 杜正贞 is Professor and supervisor of doctoral students in the
Department of History at Zhejiang University. Since earning her PhD
in History from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, she has special-
ized in late imperial and modern Chinese social and legal history, with a
particular interest in grassroots social organizations, rural life, and folk
beliefs. Her published monographs include “Cunshe” and the Gentry in
Ming and Qing Times: Institutional Transformation in the Rural Society of