Papers 2: Local Society, Frontier, and Discourse by Yuanyuan Qiu
Journal of History and Anthropology, 2017
Over the past twenty years, two approaches to the history of late imperial China have made especi... more Over the past twenty years, two approaches to the history of late imperial China have made especially notable contributions to the field and its general trends: the so-called “South China school” and “New Qing History.” In the academic imagination, generally speaking, the South China school is thought of as exploring issues of lineage, ritual practice, local society, regional difference, and the relationship between state and society through fieldwork with a focus on local sources. This approach emphasizes a bottom-up view of Chinese history, or one from the perspective of mid-level government actors. New Qing History works to place the Qing empire into Inner Asian perspective by considering the relationship between the state and its institutions, particularly as expressed in non-Chinese-language sources. This is in contrast to a traditional Sinocentric approach to Qing history. Although scholars in either of these “schools” have never assumed there were any particular barriers between them, nevertheless, they differ in terms of their conceptualization of problems, objects of study, use of sources, and methodological priorities. As a result, there has been little conscious effort to place the two subfields into dialogue. In terms of the field or discipline of Qing history, the time periods covered by either school overlap during the Qing empire (1636/44-1911), and so they share a number of common concerns. As the field has advanced over the past decade, the new generation of “South China” scholars have practiced research beyond their eponymous region, while the perspective of New Qing History has gradually expanded from imperial state to local society. The intersection or intermingling of these subfields has already begun to take place.
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Papers 2: Local Society, Frontier, and Discourse by Yuanyuan Qiu