Knowledge Production in Mao-Era China

Learning from the Masses

Rui Kunze, Marc Andre Matten (Autoren)

Buch | Softcover

196 Seiten

2023
Lexington Books (Verlag)
978-1-4985-8463-0 (ISBN)

Artikel merken

This book examines public discourse on the production and dissemination of scientific and technological knowledge in Mao-era China. With three case studies on agricultural mechanization, steel production, and veterinary medicine, the authors argue that the party-state pursued a pragmatist model of modernization.

This book traces and analyzes the transformation of the public discourse of science and technology in Mao-era China. Based on extensive primary sources such as science dissemination materials and technical handbooks, as well as mass media products of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution periods, this book delineates the emergence of a pragmatic approach to knowledge in society. To achieve the goal of fast modernization with limited financial, human, and material resources, the party-state accommodated Western and local, "modern" and "traditional" knowledges in the fields of agricultural mechanization, steel production and Chinese veterinary medicine. The case studies demonstrate that scientific knowledge production in the Mao-era included various social groups and was entangled with political and cultural issues. This reveals and explains the continuity of scientific thinking across the historical divides of 1949 and 1978, which has hitherto been underestimated.

Rui Kunze is a research fellow at Friedrich–Alexander University Erlangen–Nüremberg. Marc Andre Matten is professor of contemporary Chinese history at Friedrich–Alexander University Erlangen–Nüremberg.

List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1 Defining Correct Science—Transformations of Knowledge Epistemologies
Chapter 2 Creating the People’s Science: Science Dissemination as a Social Process
Chapter 3 Promising a Bright Future: The (Half-)Mechanization of Agricultural Production
Chapter 4 Producing Knowledge on the Shopfloor: Technological Innovation in Socialist
Industrialization
Chapter 5 Creating a Bifurcated Knowledge System—the Case of Chinese Veterinary Medicine
Chapter 6 Re-shuffling Science in the Reform Era
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

Erscheinungsdatum	21.07.2023
Zusatzinfo	11 b/w photos;
Sprache	englisch
Maße	153 x 230 mm
Gewicht	295 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Technikgeschichte
ISBN-10	1-4985-8463-2 / 1498584632
ISBN-13	978-1-4985-8463-0 / 9781498584630
Zustand	Neuware