Passion for Facts
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€83.99
20th century china
A01=Tong Lam
asia pacific modern
asian culture
asian history
asian politics
asian studies
Author_Tong Lam
Category=JHBC
chinese dynasty
chinese education
chinese empire
chinese ethnography
chinese history
chinese imperialism
chinese intellectuals
chinese politics
chinese society
chinese tradition
confucian school
east asian science
eastern asia
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
evolution of china
global colonialism
global social science
modern china
neo-confucian school
schools of thought
social sciences research
world history books
Product details
- ISBN 9780520267862
- Weight: 499g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 01 Nov 2011
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In this path-breaking book, Tong Lam examines the emergence of the "culture of fact" in modern China, showing how elites and intellectuals sought to transform the dynastic empire into a nation-state, thereby ensuring its survival. Lam argues that an epistemological break away from traditional modes of understanding the observable world began around the turn of the twentieth century. Tracing the Neo-Confucian school of evidentiary research and the modern departure from it, Lam shows how, through the rise of the social survey, 'the fact' became a basic conceptual medium and source of truth. In focusing on China's social survey movement, "A Passion for Facts" analyzes how information generated by a range of research practices - census, sociological investigation, and ethnography - was mobilized by competing political factions to imagine, manage, and remake the nation.
Tong Lam is Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto.
