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The Formation and Development of Academic Disciplines in China: Overview of the Project

Aims

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 the 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 Project consists of seven disciplinary nodes: architecture, Chinese history, Chinese literature, Chinese philosophy, linguistics, religious studies, and sociology. Node membership is drawn from a network of researchers in the Asia-Pacific region, Europe, and North America.

The project has seven node coordinators:

Arif Dirlik (University of Oregon), Sociology

Stanislaus Fung (University of New South Wales), Architecture

Andy Kirkpatrick (Hong Kong Institute of Education), Linguistics

Wolfgang Kubin (Bonn University), Chinese Literary Criticism

Brian Moloughney (Victoria University of Wellington), Chinese History

John Makeham (Australian National University), Chinese Philosophy

Lauren Pfister (Hong Kong Baptist University), Religious Studies

Over the next three years (2007-2009) representatives and members from each node will participate in an annual Workshop that brings all nodes together:

Year 1 (2007)

Theme: The transition from traditional knowledge schema and knowledge practices to new epistemologies

* Why did new concepts get taken up?

* Was it an adequate conceptualization?

* What were the social consequences and conditions for this?

* To what extent were new knowledge systems viewed as tools in recovery of tradition rather than its abandonment?

Year 2 (2008)

Theme: Terminological and disciplinary demarcation

* The role of naming practices for particular disciplines

* Bibliographical systems and libraries

* The role of structuring principles such as groups, networks and rivalries in disciplinary formation and demarcation

Year 3 (2009)

Theme: The creation of "academics" and the formation of seminal institutions

* Incorporation into tertiary teaching and curricula

* Pioneering academic departments

* Pioneering professional associations

* Pioneering professional journals

The 2007 Workshop will be convened at the Australian National University, 3-5 December 2007. It will provide the first opportunity for individual nodes to meet. This meeting will serve two purposes:

* to provide a forum for individual node members to present research papers and to exchange critical feedback and ideas about research relating to their particular disciplinary node;

* to gain a comparative perspective on how shared problematics are addressed from the perspective of eight different disciplinary nodes. This sort of "triangulation" can only be achieved at a forum that brings all the nodes together.

Significance of 2007 Workshop

By focusing enquiry on the hitherto neglected role of indigenous standards of rational justification the Workshop will move beyond the limitations of the "impact-response" paradigm-according to which change in China is explained primarily as the result of reactions to Western influences-to analyze the complex interaction between indigenous grammars of knowledge construction and Western paradigms.

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? The comparative dimension of this multi-disciplinary study will enable us to address these key issues in this first Workshop.

Outcomes

The 2007 Workshop will produce one edited volume, with essays being selected from each of the participating nodes. This will be first in a series of edited volumes to be produced from the three Workshops (2007-2009). The plan is for each disciplinary node to produce at least one collection of essays on the history and development of one particular academic discipline in twentieth century. We intend to stagger the presentation and production of these volumes over a number of years. At the end of the Project, we also aim to produce a single volume that brings together the results of the work in the various disciplines, so as to produce some sense of a larger picture of the history and development of academic disciplines in China.