Radcliffe-Brown in China

Author(s): Chien Chiao

Source: Anthropology Today, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Apr., 1987), pp. 5-6
Published by: Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3033108
Accessed: 08-09-2017 09:43 UTC

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 Radcliffe-Brown in China
CHIEN CHIAO
The author is senior
lecturer and chairman at
the department of
anthropology, Chinese
University of Hong Kong.
Radcliffe-Brown is met
on arrival at Beijing
railway station. Left to
right: Prof. Wu Wenzao,
Ms Chen Yi, Radcliffe-
Brown, Prof. Lei Jieqiong.
Department of Sociology
& Social Service, Yenching
University. 1936. Biennial
Report for 1934-36.
Shehuixue Jie 9: 325-341.
Fei, Hsiao-tung
(Xiaotong). 1939. Peasant
Life in China: a Field
Study of Country Life in
the Yangtze Valley.
London: Kegan Paul.
Freedman, Maurice.
1979. The Study of
Chinese Society. Stanford:
Stanford U.P.
Hsu, Francis L.K. 1949.
Under the Ancestors'
Shadow: Chinese Culture
and Personality. London:
Routledge.
Lin, Yueh-hwa. 1936.
Zun Renleixue Di
Quandian Kaocha
Zhonqguo Zongzu
Xiangcun (An Inquiry into
the Lineage Village in
China from the
Anthropological
Viewpoint). Shehuixue Jie
9: 125-42.
1948. The Golden
Wing: A Sociological
Study of Chinese
Feudalism. London: Kegan
Paul.
Radcliffe-Brown, A.R.
1931. The Present Position
of Anthropological
Studies. British
Association, Centenary
Meeting. Address to
Section H.
1933. Primitive Law.
i through Hong Kong and provided me with more information
f : ,
,p
0.1
In November 1985, 44 social scientists gathered in Hong Kong
for the Second International Conference on Modernization and
Chinese Culture. After the conference, six of them accepted
the invitation of Professor Fei Xiaotong, who led the delegation
from the PRC, to visit Beijing and three other Chinese cities
and to give lectures. Four of the six were anthropologists. As
an organizer of the conference, I was obliged to go. The other
three besides myself were Myron L. Cohen, Burton Pasternak
and Sung-hsing Wang. At our first banquet in Beijing, we four Beijing, he made a visit with colleagues and students
anthropologists sat round a table and engaged in a lively
Shortly after his departure, Shehuixue Jie
conversation with Professor Lei Jie-qiong of Beijing University;
she is a well-known sociologist in China and also went to Hong
Kong for the conference. Somewhere in our conversation we
discovered that when Radcliffe-Brown made his visit to China,
she was a young lecturer in sociology at Yenching University,
which hosted the visit. She further revealed that she had a set
of pictures of the visit with R-B dressed in Chinese gown, and
promised to show them to us the next day. At the next evening's
banquet, she brought us the pictures, ten in number. In four
of them, R-B wore a Chinese changpao (long gown) with a
magua (horse jacket) on top of it; he looked peaceful, gentle,
dignified. We were all thrilled to rediscover R-B as a magnificent
Chinese gentleman.
The pictures had already turned yellowish. I offered to make (1936:79-88), which was published earlier in a Beijing
a new set of negatives and copies of them in Hong Kong, and newspaper but reprinted in the special issue (Wu
to send back the originals with a set of copies. Professor Lei
agreed. Cohen, Pasternak and Wang each requested a set. Cohen
took his set to the American Anthropological Association
meeting held in Washington, DC, in December 1985, where he
showed them to Jonathan Benthall, editor of
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY. They both thought it would be
appropriate to publish these pictures in A.T. Since I was also
at the meeting, Mr Benthall asked me whether I could get
Professor Lei's consent for publication and whether I could
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write a short commentary on R-B's visit to China.
I wrote to Professor Lei from Hong Kong, and she gracefully
consented, sending a set of photocopies of Chinese articles about
R-B's visit. In spring 1986, Professor Li Youyi of the Chinese
Academy of Social Science - who was a fourth-year student
in sociology at Yenching University during R-B's visit - passed
about the visit. Other preoccupations took up my time. In
February 1987, when I visited Britain at the invitation of the
British Council, I brought the material about R-B and consulted
again with Mr Benthall. In haste and with a delinquent feeling,
I finished this short article in a hotel very close to the University
of London. It is a small irony that half a century has passed,
a Chinese comes to the place where R-B started his teaching
of social anthropology, and writes about R-B's visit to China.
I am most grateful to Professor Lei Jieqiong for providing
me with the pictures and photocopies, Professor Li Youyi for
further information, and the British Council for inviting me
to London.
A.R.Radcliffe-Brown, the social anthropologist,
arrived in Beijing in late October 1935 and stayed at the
residence of President Leighton Steuart of Yenching
University. He taught a general undergraduate course
on 'comparative sociology' and conducted a seminar for
both graduate and undergraduate students in the
department of sociology at the university. According to
the department's biennial report (1934-36), 'there were
about one hundred students taking the course. Radcliffe-
Brown gave individual instructions and comments to all
the reports and suggestions handed in by students and
encouraged them to learn. He is indeed a good teacher'
(1936: 326). The same report also indicates that during
the New Year break, R-B travelled in China and visited
Wuhan, Nanjing, Shanghai and Guanzhou where he
gave public lectures. He returned to Beijing on 23
January 1936 and left for Japan and the United States
on 23 February. Therefore he stayed in China for four
months altogether, half of them in Beijing.' While in
to the site of Peking Man in Zhoukoudian.
(Sociological Circle), an annual bulletin published
between 1927 and 1938 by the department of sociology,
Yenching University, published a special issue in honour
of R-B's visit to China, in its ninth volume. This has
twelve articles, of which the first is a lengthy introduction
to the 'academic background and scholarly
contributions' of R-B by Professor Wu Wenzao
(1936:1-42), who was the chairman of the department
and engineered R-B's visit. Wu also edited and translated
one of the lectures given by R-B on 'A Proposal for
Sociological Investigation of Village Life in China'
1936:33). Wu mentions in his introduction that R-B has
agreed to write out his lectures on comparative sociology
for publication in China. By the time of his departure
from China, however, he had only finished one third of
them. Wu reveals the outline of them (ibid. 35):
Introduction.
Ch. 1. Scope and Methodology of Comparative Sociology.
Ch. 2. Social Institutions as Adaptive Mechanism.
 in Encyclopaedia of the
Social Sciences. 9:202-6.
1935. On the Concept
of Function in Social
Science. Am. Anthrop. 27:
394-402.
1936. Duiyu
Zhonqgou Xiangcun
Shenghuo Shehuixuei
Diaocha Di Jianyi (A
Proposal for Sociological
Investigation of Village
Life in China). Shehuixue
Jie. 9: 79-88.
Wu, Wenzao. 1936.
Bulang Jiaohou Di Sixiang
Beijing Yu Qi Zai Xuesu
Shan Di Gonqxian
(Academic Background
and Scholarly
Contributions of Professor
Radcliffe-Brown).
Shehuixue Jie 9:1-42.
Yang, Martin C. 1945. A
Chinese Village: Taitou,
Shantung Province. New
York: Columbia U.P.
On the highway to
Zhoukoudian, the site of
Peking Man, which the
party was visiting by
tractor. On Radcliffe-
Brown's right, Dr Yan
Jingyao (a sociologist,
Prof. Lei's late husband,
who was a student of
Radcliffe-Brown's at
Chicago). Top left, partly
hidden, Prof. Lei herself.
The man in a hat standing
on the back of the tractor
is Prof. Lin Yueh-hwa,
who like Prof. Lei is still
living. Standing on the
ground at the back of the
tractor, in Chinese gown,
is Prof. Li Youyi, who
also survives.
Ch. 3. Theory of Social Integration. Xiaotong's study of Kaihsiengkung (1939y, followed
Ch. 4. Family and Kinship. Martin Yang's of Taitou (1945), Lin Yueh-hwa's of Fujien
Ch. 5. Integrative Mechanism of Economy. (1948) and Francis L. K. Hsu's of West Town (1949). Fei's
Ch. 6. Law. study was directly influenced by R-B, as he acknowledged
Ch. 7. Government.
at the beginning of his work. Lin was a graduate student
Ch. 8. Social Class and Diversification of Duties.
in sociology at Yenching University when R-B made his
R-B has promised Wu to send the rest back from the visit. He began a study on Yixu, a lineage village near
USA. Professor Lei, in her letter to me dated 10 March Fuzhou, Fujien. Under R-B's influence, he reanalysed
1986, indicates that they were translated and published his data from a 'functionalist viewpoint' and published
in volume 10 or the last issue of Shehuixue Jie. I have a paper in the special issue (1936: 125-42) which set the
managed to locate this volume later in Paris, but the foundation for his more famous work, The Golden
lectures are not in it. Wing. Under the auspices of R-B, as we can see, a new
tradition of community studies was founded in China;
Three published works by R-B (1935, 1931, 1933) are
but it was short-lived. With the ban on both sociology
translated or partially translated and included in the
and anthropology by the People's Republic, it soon
special issue. There is a brief review of Andaman
became a frozen tradition as Maurice Freedman put it
Islanders. The remaining six articles are all written by
(1979: 379). Now the ban has been lifted for more than
faculty members of the department of sociology on
a decade, and Fei, Lin, Lei and their students have again
various subjects - family, lineage, community study,
been active in their field. The renaissance should not
culture and personality, crime and punishment, etc. -
be too far away.
inspired by R-B's teaching.2
Both sociology and anthropology had long been
introduced to China when R-B came. Nonetheless,
Chinese sociologists were mainly preoccupied with
macroscopic study on social institutions or statistical
surveys, while anthropologists - better known in China 1. There is some confusion with regard to the length of R-B's
as ethnologists - were committed to studying non-Hanstay. Both Lei and Li report that he stayed for three months.
groups or historical documents. R-B brought somethingWu's introductory article on R-B, published immediately after
his visit, counts two months (1936:1). This article follows the
in between which he called 'comparative sociology' or
Biennial Report of the Department of Sociology, Yenching
'social anthropology'. He introduced his familiar
University (1936:326) which gives more specific dates.
concepts - function, structure, system, integration2.and In his introductory essay, Wu makes an abbreviation of
adaptation - to his Chinese colleagues and urged them 'Radcliffe-Brown' by transliterating only its second half into
to pick a Chinese village and test out the concepts and (1936:1). So R-B is constantly referred to as Bulang
Chinese
related hypotheses. Since these were developed from the (Professor Brown). Such usage has been followed by
Jiaoshou
study of more 'backward' and 'isolated' people such as writers throughout the special issue. In fact, some
other
Australian and African aborigines, he thought thatpublications
they from Mainland China today still adopt this
should be applied to a smaller community, and the transliteration. I checked this matter with Professor Lei. She
replies in her letter of 3 March 1986 that this abbreviated
Chinese village would be an ideal unit. An intensive study
transliteration was agreed by R-B himself. Nevertheless, I still
of a Chinese village would require one to two years,
don't think it is a good idea to have R-B known in China as
including both synchronic and diachronic study, and
Professor Brown, and hope this misleading transliteration will
examination of the community's relations with other be corrected in due time.
communities and with the larger society of which it is 3. For an account of a re-study, see Fei Hsaio-tung 'The New
a part (1936: 80-82). Outlook of Rural China: Kaishienkung revisited after half a
Not long after R-B's visit, a series of community century', Huxley Memorial Lecture 1981 (RAIN 48, February
studies appeared. First and best known was Fei 1982). Editor.
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