The Formation and Development of Academic Disciplines in China

Modern scholarship remains largely silent about how different domains of traditional knowledge practice responded to common challenges and the consequences of this for subsequent disciplinary developments. To what extent were new knowledge systems viewed as tools in the recovery of tradition rather than its abandonment? What were the thematics, conversations, controversies, and dominant modes of argument across these domains as they responded to the new challenges? To what extent and under what conditions did practitioners of traditional forms of learning concede authority to Western knowledge paradigms?

Specifically, the Project seeks:

* to understand and analyze how traditional forms of Chinese scholarship were adapted to new knowledge paradigms;

* to identify the role played by indigenous "grammars," or standards of rational justification, in shaping the formation of academic disciplines, and the concrete forms in which these grammars interacted with western paradigms and concepts;

* to demonstrate how indigenous grammars of knowledge construction, and their ongoing complex interaction with Western paradigms, decisively influenced the formation and development of individual academic disciplines; and

* to examine the significance of the growing trend toward indigenization (bentuhua) of knowledge systems and how it relates to broader contemporary concerns about the indigenization of knowledge in many social science and humanities disciplines.

The third annual workshop will be held in 2009 at Chinese University of Hong Kong. Accommodation for a limited number of participants (20 twin rooms) has been booked for the nights of 9-10-11 July. Depending on how many people attend, there will have to be some sharing of rooms. Some meals will be covered (breakfast definitely).

Papers will be posted on the Project's website by the end of May 2009 (with password protected access-see below).

Your feedback on papers will also be posted on this site. It is not expected that you will have rich and plentiful comments on each paper from your node, but it is expected that you will be able to offer constructive critical feedback on most papers from your node. In doing so, you are asked to pay particular attention to judging how well the papers in your node are explicitly addressing the Project's key themes and problematics. In Hong Kong, the workshop will focus on those written comments so it is crucial that they be on the website by the end of June.

Individual papers are accessible by clicking on the link and entering the user name and password, which are available from john.makeham@anu.edu.au. Putting the papers on the website has the additional advantage of allowing any person from any node the chance to read any paper from any node. The purpose of this exercise is to have each member of a particular node read the papers and send their written comments to be posted on the website by the end of June. Papers and comments should be sent to john.makeham@anu.edu.au for uploading on to the site.

For the formatting of papers, please consult - Style Sheet for Preparation of Chapters

Philosophy Node

Hans-Georg Moeller - Daoism as Academic Philosophy: Feng Youlan's New Metaphysics (Xin Lixue)

John Makeham - The Role of Masters Studies in the Early Formation of Chinese Philosophy as an Academic Discipline

John Makeham - Zhang Taiyan, Yogacara Buddhism, and Chinese Philosophy

John Makeham - Hu Shi and the Search for System

Thierry Meynard - Introducing Buddhism as Philosophy: The cases of Liang Shuming, Xiong Shili and Tang Yongtong

Yvonne Schulz Zinda - Jin Yuelin's Ambivalent Status as a "Chinese Philosopher"

C. Defoort - Fu Sinian's views on the tripartite philosophy, ancient Chinese Masters, and Chinese philosophy

Barry D. Steben - Nishi Amane and the Rise of the Concept of "Chinese Philosophy" in Early Meiji Japan

Lauren Pfister - The Dynamic and Multi-cultural Disciplinary Crucible in which Chinese Philosophy was Formed

Anthropology/Sociology Node

Arif Dirlik - Introduction: Sociology and Anthropology in 20th Century China

Allen Chun - From Sinicization to Indigenization in the Social Sciences: Is that all there is?

Hsiao-pei Yen - Li Anzhai and Frontier Anthropology: Tibet, Discourse of the Frontier, and Applied Anthropology during the War, 1937-1945

Guo Yuhua - Narratives of the 'sufferer' as historical testimony

Chinese History Node

Tze-ki Hon - Marking the Boundaries: The Rise of Historical Geography in Republican China

James Leibold - Digging up or Filling in the Nation? The Spatial/Temporal Journey of Archaeology in Twentieth-Century China

Q. Edward Wang - Narrating the Nation: Meiji Historiography and New Style History Textbooks of Late Qing China

Peter Zarrow - Textbook History in Early Twentieth Century China

Luo Zhitian - On the Peripheralization of Qing-Late Rebublican Classical Studies and Historiography's Orientation toward toward the Center

Architecture Node

Duan Jiangqing - Landscape Architecture, the concept of Garden and its exposition in Chen Zhi's Zao yuan xue gai lun

Wang Ying - The Content, Form and Class Nature of Architecture

Wang Kai - The Establishment of Professionalism in Architecture