Event Description
Demands for in-depth knowledge of foreign countries often go hand in hand with the rise of great powers. Over the past decade, China has invested massively in the development of “area studies” programs across the nation, in support of its global expansion and meeting rising expectations about the role China should play in global governance. This project examines the rise of area studies in China through the lenses of the sociology of knowledge and global and transnational sociology. The central research question asks how the rise of area studies in China has reshaped the sociological logic governing the production and circulation of knowledge about other countries, and how, in the process, it has transformed China’s own self-understanding and -expression of its positionality in the world. This talk presents preliminary findings, organized into three parts: (1) shifts in research focus and classification schemes accompanying the introduction of area studies over the past two decades; (2) the field of knowledge production in which different institutions accumulate and deploy symbolic capital in distinct ways; and (3) the processes through which China articulates itself and its historical, epistemic, and cultural positions in the world.
Event Speaker
Yingyao Wang, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Virginia
Event Information
Open to Columbia University ID holders; registration required. For more information, please email Yanze Yu at [email protected].
Hosted by the China Reading and Innovation Lab at Columbia University. This event is supported by a Center for Science and Society Graduate Student Interest Group Grant.
