What is China? How do we describe and analyse it? What to make of these descriptions and analyses... more What is China? How do we describe and analyse it? What to make of these descriptions and analyses? Can the knowledge we produce about China be brought to bear on conceptual frameworks and theories developed in the West and from a Western perspective? This short text argues that the current state of Chinese studies in Italy, the Sinophone academia, and the Anglosphere demands that we reconsider some of the epistemological assumptions we hold true about China. How does China behave as an object of social scientific reflection? What is the ontological and cultural status that is conferred on the knowledge we produce about it? Drawing from a multispecies imaginary, the text develops a series of metaphors with which to analytically capture these assumptions and propose ways to translate them into a more orderly and empirically grounded field of inquiry. This field enables transdisciplinary engagements and can be made to serve a theoretically more generative collaborative practice in academia.
What is China? How do we describe and analyse it? What to make of these descriptions and analyses... more What is China? How do we describe and analyse it? What to make of these descriptions and analyses? Can the knowledge we produce about China be brought to bear on conceptual frameworks and theories developed in the West and from a Western perspective? This short text argues that the current state of Chinese studies in Italy, the Sinophone academia, and the Anglosphere demands that we reconsider some of the epistemological assumptions we hold true about China. How does China behave as an object of social scientific reflection? What is the ontological and cultural status that is conferred on the knowledge we produce about it? Drawing from a multispecies imaginary, the text develops a series of metaphors with which to analytically capture these assumptions and propose ways to translate them into a more orderly and empirically grounded field of inquiry. This field enables transdisciplinary engagements and can be made to serve a theoretically more generative collaborative practice in academia.
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