Religion, science, and civilisation: a history of the sociology of knowledge in China

While following a parallel path of development with its Western counterpart, the sociology of knowledge in China possessed peculiar characteristics that were rooted in the broader intellectual and political contexts. This chapter seeks to chart the history of the sociology of knowledge in China by distinguishing three stages of development. The first stage began in the 1930s and ended in 1949, when Karl Mannheim and the sociology of knowledge were introduced and refashioned as a complement to the community studies inaugurated by the Yenching School. The second stage began in the 1980s, when the sociology of science was accorded a prominent place in the socialist modernisation of China. At the same time, the sociology of science was taken as an adjunct to the Marxian orthodoxy of dialectical materialism. The third stage began in the late 1980s, when a new wave of critical currents such as postmodernism and postcolonialism were introduced to China. While the critique of Orientalism was invoked to challenge the hegemony of Western knowledge, postcolonial perspectives were held to be inadequate for a historic and ‘civilised’ society such as China. The sociology and anthropology of civilisation were accordingly set forth as a substitute for postcolonial theory.