Ezra's Bookshelf

Fei Xiaotong and Sociology in Revolutionary China

by R. David Arkush · 424 pages · ~7.5 hrs

Biography & MemoirHistory

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R. David Arkush traces the life of China's foremost sociologist through the Communist revolution, showing how Fei Xiaotong navigated between scholarly integrity and political survival. Fei, trained at the London School of Economics under Bronislaw Malinowski, conducted pioneering fieldwork in Chinese villages during the 1930s and 1940s, producing analyses that remain foundational. His book Peasant Life in China presented the Chinese countryside to Western readers while advocating for rural industrialization that would improve peasants' lives without destroying village communities. After the Communist victory, Fei attempted to serve as a bridge between intellectuals and the new regime, believing his expertise could guide development policy. Arkush documents how this position became untenable: the party demanded ideological conformity, Fei's empirical findings contradicted official dogma, and his Western training marked him as suspect. During the Hundred Flowers movement, Fei spoke critically of party policy; the Anti-Rightist Campaign that followed destroyed his career for two decades. Arkush draws on Chinese sources and interviews with Fei himself to reconstruct how intellectuals experienced the revolution's demands. The biography illuminates both an individual life and the fate of social science in Maoist China, showing how knowledge becomes impossible when politics determines what can be known.

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