The Cultural Sociology of China: Trajectory and Dynamics of a Burgeoning Field

Abstract

In this essay, we review the burgeoning field of the cultural sociology of China. We first describe the trajectory and features of the development of the cultural sociology of China. We argue that the evolution of this scholarship has involved three intertwined social, political, and intellectual processes across national boundaries: (1) the production, diffusion, reception, and reproduction of modern social scientific paradigms from the West, especially the USA, to China; (2) the tensions between China studies as “area studies” in western academia and sociology as a discipline; (3) the entangled relations between politics and knowledge in both China and the West. Then we review existing cultural sociological studies of various topics in three broad categories: economy, politics, and civil society. We end our essay with a discussion of promising topics and agenda for future research and potential challenges.