Problem Solvers or Professional Scholars? State-Sociologist Relationships and the Professionalization of Chinese Sociology, 1979-2000

Yunpeng Chen, University of California, San Diego

This paper focuses on state-sociologist relationships in China and the evolution of Chinese sociology in the late twentieth century. Based on analyses of journal articles, state-funded sociological projects, and oral histories of Chinese sociologists, this paper uncovers an emerging divergence between academic and applied sociologists, a trend that first appeared in the early 1980s and became evident by the end of the century. Taking an ecological perspective, the paper suggests that this decoupling resulted from competition over turfs within academic and political ecologies. While academic sociologists gradually cultivated a collective disciplinary consciousness due to their engagement with particular Western theories, methods, and a variety of research themes, applied sociologists remained loosely connected, lacking a unified research paradigm, and were thus marginalized within the academic community. Despite having avenues for policy-oriented research through central and local social science academies and governmental research institutes, applied sociologists did not secure their turf in the political arena. This research challenges the prevailing state-centered narratives that focus primarily on the Chinese state’s efforts to cultivate and domesticate professionals and academics. Instead, it argues that the professionalization of Chinese sociology is the unintended consequence of the state’s waning interest in sociological research during the 1990s, which afforded sociologists greater autonomy to determine the trajectory of their discipline.

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 Presented in Session 145. Scientific Innovation and Development: Whence and Whither the State?