Friends, Not Enemies: The Globalization and Indigenization of Chinese Sociology

In China, the globalization of sociological scholarship went in tandem with various attempts to indigenize the discipline. Apart from the state, a major force behind the globalization of Chinese sociology came from academic connections spanning across America, Hong Kong and mainland China. Two transnational research networks and their corresponding practices could be distinguished: a professional sociology highlighting value neutrality and objective knowledge, and a public sociology favoring labor studies and class politics. Regarding indigenization, Chinese sociologists started to tackle the issue more systematically in the 2000s, when state leaders and the intellectuals were preoccupied with the uniqueness of Chinese experience and social development. History of Chinese sociology and social thought was revisited for conceptual and cultural resources on the problematic of indigenization.