The Saga of Anthropology in China: From Malinowski to Moscow to Mao

329 Pages·1993·11.72 MB·English

by  Gregory Elyu Guldin

THE SAGA OF
ANTHROPOLOGY
IN CHINA
"The Saga of Anthropology in China Is an Intimate examination of
the development of the anthropological disciplines in China.
Guldin shows both the diverse personalities that shaped this rocky
history and the rivalry among the various Institutions involved.
Anthropology from the outset was derivative of Western thought
and the controversies between the American and the several
European centers of theory are played In the Chinese arena.
"This examination of the development of anthropology Is more
than mere history. For Greg Guldin has shown us how the political
turmoil that has characterized China's twentieth century has
shaped the anthropological landscape there."
Walter Goldschmidt, UCLA
"This is the first book to comprehensively study the development of
the four fields of anthropology In China. It explicates both the
political and social contexts of anthropology's trials ond
tribulations during the different periods of its growth in our country,
and evaluates the field's accomplishments. At the same time, this
work Is noteworthy for its detailed exposition of the discipline's
structural organization, its historical origins, and its changes over
time. Most remarkable, however, was the author's success In
gathering precious first-hand materials culled from intensive
Interviews with the founding and succeeding generations of the
fields of anthropology in China."
Huang Shuping, Zhongshan University
Studies on Modern China
THE SAGA OF ANTHROPOLOGY IN CHINA
From Malinowski to Moscow to Mao
Gregory Eliyu Guldin
THE KWANGSI WAY IN KUOMINTANG CHINA, 1931-1939
Eugene William Levich
"SECRET SOCIETIES" RECONSIDERED
Perspectives on the Social History of
Early Modern South China and Southeast Asia
Edited by David Ownby and Mary Somers Heidhues
MODERN CHINESE WRITERS
Self-Portrayals
Edited by Helmut Martin and Jeffrey C. Kinkley
MODERNIZATION AND REVOLUTION IN CHINA
June Grasso, Jay Corrin, and Michael Kort
PERSPECTIVES ON MODERN CHINA
Four Anniversaries
Edited by Kenneth Lieberthal, Joyce Kalfgren,
Roderick MacFarquhar, and Frederic Wakeman, Jr.
READING THE MODERN CHINESE SHORT STORY
Edited by Theodore Huters
UNITED STATES ATTITUDES TOWARD CHINA
The Impact of American Missionaries
Edited by Patricia Neils
Studies on Modern China
THE SAGA OF
ANTHROPOLOGY
IN CHINA
FROM MALINOWSKI
TO MOSCOW TO MAO
GREGORY ELIYU GULDIN
[I]
An East Gate Book
An East Gate Book
First published 1994 by M.E. Sharpe
Published 2015 by Routledge
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Copyright© 1994 Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved.
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Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Guldin, Gregory Eliyu.
The saga of anthropology in China: from Malinowski to Moscow to Mao I
Gregory Eliyu Guldin.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 1-56324-185-4 (C). ISBN 1-56324-186-2 (P).
1. Anthropology-China-History.
2. Liang, Chao-t'ao.
3. Anthropologists-China-Biography.
I. Title.
GN17.3.C6G85 1993
301 '.0951---dc20
92-34292
CIP
ISBN 13: 9781563241864 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 9781563241857 (hbk)
Contents
Acknowledgments IX
Introduction xi
Map: Provincial Boundaries and Major Cities of China, 1993 xiv
PART I: ANTHROPOLOGICAL LIFE AFTER DEATH
Focus 1: Long Live Liang Zhaotao! 3
Chapter 1: A Decade of Changes 5
Resuscitation 5
Born Again at Zhongda 10
The Second Department 14
PART II: IMPORTING DISCIPLINES, 1898-1949
Chapter 2: Foreign Introductions 23
Early Samples 23
The Founding Foreigners 27
The Father of Many Disciplines: Cai Yuanpei 30
Focus 2: Lin Huixiang, Mentor of Liang Zhaotao 36
Chapter 3: Foreign Visitors 40
Functionalism Comes to China 40
Foreigners in China 44
Moving Beyond the Academy 46
On the Eve of War 47
Focus 3: Zhongshan University and Yang Chengzhi 50
Chapter 4: China's Western Anthropology Matures 57
The War Years 57
More Foreign Training: Modelling American, French,
and British Anthropology 62
Postwar Flowering 67
Pre-Liberation Anthropology: An Assessment 70
Focus 4: Liang Zhaotao at Liberation 77
PART III: EARLY PRC SOCIALISM
AND THE SOVIET MODEL, 1949-1960
Chapter 5: Transitions 81
A New Society 84
Changing Anthropological Thinking 87
Chapter 6: Reorientation 94
ANew Model 94
Reorganizing Academia 95
Reorganizing Anthropology 97
Minorities Identification 105
Chapter 7: Learning from Elder Brother 111
The Russians Were Coming 111
Soviet Visitors 113
Soviet Ideas 118
Sibling Rivalry 124
Chapter 8: In the Field 131
Language Fieldwork and Reforms 131
Social History 135
Fieldwork Legacies 140
PART IV: "MAOIZED" DISCIPLINES, 1957-1978
Chapter 9: "Maoization" as Sinicization 147
The Disciplines on the Eve of the Anti-Rightist Campaign 147
The Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Intellectuals 149
Disciplinary Criticism 153
Anthropology During the Great Leap 158
"Maoized" Disciplines: The Early 1960s 163
Focus 5: Liang Zhaotao and New China, 194~1964 173
Chapter 10: Disciplinary Deconstruction-The Cultural Revolution 183
Targeting Intellectuals 184
The "Elimination" of Ethnology 187
Attacks 189
Proletarian Education 195
Political Legacies 200
Focus 6: Liang Zhaotao, Exile and Rehabilitation 203
Anthropological Enemy of the People 203
Reviving Archaeology 206
PART V: NATIONAL ANTHROPOLOGIES:
A CHINESE MODEL?
Chapter 11: The Return of Foreign Anthropologies? 213
Long Time No See 215
The Second Coming of Western Anthropology 221
Universal or National Sciences 222
Chapter 12: Sinicizing Chinese Anthropology 232
Indigenization 232
Marxism-Leninism as the Base 234
Chinese Anthropology's "Special Characteristics" 237
Sinicizing the Disciplines: Paleoanthropology, Archaeology,
and Ethnology 239
Re-Maoization? 242
Sinicized Chinese Anthropology 243
Chapter 13: Some Observations on Chinese
and Global Anthropology 245
Focus 7: Liang Zhaotao: An Epitaph 253
Postscript 255
References 257
Glossary 267
Index 285
Page Intentionally Left Blank
Acknowledgments
This book was written with the essential support and criticism of the Anthropol-
ogy Department at Zhongshan University before, during, and after my year there
in 1986 as a visiting professor of anthropology. Liang Zhaotao gave unstintingly
of his time as did many others in the department and at the university. Other key
institutions that were helpful include the Anthropology Department at Xiamen
University, the Institute of Nationality Studies and the Institute of Archaeology
of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), the Nationalities Institutes
of the Central Institute of Nationalities (CIN) and Guangdong Province, the
Guangdong and Yunnan Minzu Xueyuan (Nationalities Colleges), the Institute of
Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), the Kunming Zoology
Institute, and Yunnan University. Individuals from many other institutions also
greatly aided my understanding, but responsibility for the views expressed herein
is, of course, mine alone.
Suggestions and corrections to early drafts of this book were also solicited
and received from friends and colleagues, and I want to publicly acknowledge
my debt to them: Chen Yongling, Gene Cooper, Chris Cosgrove, Walter Gold-
schmidt, Huang Shumin, Huang Shuping, Richard Jungkuntz, Steven 0. Murray,
Jeff Olson, and Aidan Southall.
Special thanks are owed to Pacific Lutheran University for the sabbatical year
and research grant awards that helped make the in-China portions of this enter-
prise possible. Grateful appreciation is also extended to both the Wenner-Gren
Foundation for Anthropological Research and the American Council of Learned
Societies for their support to attend conferences in the People's Republic during
which some of the material for this book was gathered.
ix