Chinese Journal of Sociology ›› 2017, Vol. 37 ›› Issue (4): 143-187.

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From “Aiming to Enrich People” To “Being Culturally Self-Conscious”:Fei Xiaotong's Turn of Thoughts in His Senior Years

ZHOU Feizhou   

  1. Department of sociology, Peking University
  • Online:2017-07-20 Published:2017-07-20

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Abstract:

This paper is to study reasons for the turn of thoughts in Fei Xiaotong's senior years. His later study emphasized both theory and practice, advocated "being culturally self-conscious", and shifted focus from western culture to traditional Chinese culture. Through careful examination of Fei's later works, this paper argues that his turn of thoughts stemmed from his constant investigation, practice and reflection towards Chinese society. This turn is of "social science" instead of a change of cultural stand. This paper elaborates this turn in four parts. The first two are namely the study of small town and township enterprise, and the study of ethnicity and the frontier. In empirical studies within both fields, he had encountered sociological and anthropological challenges. He found that township enterprises and development of ethnic regions were issues more than economic and social policies, or even economic and social structures, but were closely related to attitudes and culture that were implicit and unspoken. How to treat these attitudes and culture is the center of the third part, the main contents of Fei's sociological methodology in his senior years. Fei started from the methodological questions regarding Peasant Life in China raised by Sir Edmund Leach, and spent the last decade of his life in contemplation and reflection. The answers are first, a new perspective of sociological methodology, and second, a development of the theory of "Being Culturally Self-Conscious". The last part of this paper entails a discussion of Fei's practice as a social scientist to "reach out to others from oneself (tuijijiren)" in a "Pattern of Difference Sequence (chaxugeju)" and culturally self-consciously inherit the traditional spirit of the Chinese literati.

Key words: Fei Xiaotong, cultural self-conscious, sociological methodology