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Faculty Working Group

Former Faculty Working Group
Institute of East Asian Studies
Funded for the spring semester 2011

Managing Uncertainty in Contemporary China

Conveners: Professors Thomas Gold (Sociology), You-tien Hsing (Geography) and Kevin O'Brien (Political Science)

Social science research on contemporary China has begun a tectonic shift away from a one-sided focus on the party-state to a more dialectical approach, acknowledging the reality that neither the “party” nor “state” is monolithic, and that an increasingly diverse “society” has been pushing back against the party-state's monopoly on power in many realms of social life. Our Group will explore, in an interdisciplinary and comparative manner, the ways in which the party-state at many levels and different social actors are adapting to the new environment of uncertainty about the rules governing social life, as well as the explicit and implicit rules which are emerging. Uncertainty presents advantages and disadvantages for all actors, and we will specify, based in the historical and cultural context, how this plays out in many fields of social life and how it has been changing over time. The three co-conveners look at private business, NGOs, cultural-historical heritage and boundary-pushers, and hope to draw in colleagues from diverse disciplines to share research findings in order to enrich our understanding of how political boundaries are patrolled, negotiated and transformed in this uncertain environment. We will also reflect on how scholarship itself is changing to make sense of these processes.

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