The Saga of Anthropology in China: From Malinowski to Moscow to Mao (review)

Reviews 461 views through the articulation ofpolitical lines. This book reveals Chinese politics in its real Chinese sense: a political chess game. As already mentioned, there are extensive references to and a discussion of Chinese political and economic writings ; these provide a good starting point for further research. Martine Lewi University ofAntwerp Gregory Elihu Guldin. The Saga ofAnthropology in China: From Malinowski to Moscow to Mao. Armonk and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1994. xiv, 298 pp. Hardcover $55.00. Paperback $19.95. As China opens to the West in the quest for scientific knowledge, China's anthropology is restrained by the pressure to create a social science with Chinese characteristics that will serve the nation and reject the pollution ofbourgeois foreign ideas. Thus, for reasons that are politically rather than intellectually grounded, Chinese anthropology remains fragmented and narrow in focus. The major subfields (biological anthropology, archaeology, ethnology/cultural anthropology, and sociolinguistics) are rarely housed within the same department or even under the same institutional roof. Human evolution, population genetics, primate behavior , human growth and development research, and the archaeology ofthe paleolithic are compartmentalized within the biological sciences. Archaeology of the neolithic and early state societies is a subfield ofChinese history. Linguistics and oral literature find a home in language and literature departments. And ethnology , usually termed minzuxue, is understood to mean the study of China's national minorities, excluding Han Chinese as well as other world populations. Ethnology is a research field within national and regional Minority Institutes, Academies of Social Science, and smaller specialized research units in the minority autonomous regions. Onlyin a few universities is it a field ofstudy. Collégial cooperation and communication between departments and work units is minimal and runs along lines ofpersonal relations. Many of the research publications have restricted distribution (neibu), and archival holdings are jealously guarded from ,„„,„.scholars outside the home institution. The appearance, since 1979, ofa variety of© 1995 by Universityvv ofHawai'iPressless-restricted journals and the holding ofregional or topical conferences has begun to create a larger sense ofcommunity among those who are engaged in similar lines of research. Even so, the lack of communication within and across the 462 China Review International: Vol. 2, No. 2, Fall 1995 subfields and related disciplines parallels problems in other sectors of academia. I am less optimistic than Professor Guldin appears to be about the future reunification ofthe field or about cross-institutional cooperation and communications . There sticks in my mind the posters on the walls ofthe Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences in 1986 warning that it was forbidden to discuss one's scholarly work with persons outside one's department. China's scholars now attend national and international conferences, to be sure, but they are very careful to present only material which has been openly published or approved for discussion , and the ones that I met were reluctant to engage in informal shoptalk about ongoing research. Knowledge ofany kind remains a state secret until cleared by the proper political authorities. Professor Guldin's monograph surveys the development ofanthropology in China, from the turn ofthe century to the present, and contains interesting information about the early days and the impact ofpolitical events since 1949. His main field site and source ofinformation is Guangdong's Zhongshan University Department ofAnthropology, whose organization and foci are an exception to my previous statements about fragmentation. Like the anthropology department at Xiamen University in Fujian, it encourages student exposure to the four-field approach, retains some interest in the theories and methods of the American Boasian school and the British structural-functionalists ofthe pre-World War II decades, and is at least curious about more recent developments abroad. Former classmates, colleagues, and students ofthe teaching faculty turn up elsewhere, particularly at the Central Minorities Institute in Beijing, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Paleoanthropology section ofthe Chinese Academy ofSciences , and the History department at Yunnan University. These contacts provided Professor Guldin with additional information. Even so, he did not have direct access to the full range ofpersons currently "doing" some aspect ofanthropology, particularly those ofminority background located in provincial units. The history and current state of the field he presents is in large part the view from...