Tao And Technique:on The Tradition Of Community Study In The Republic Of China

From the beginning of the Republic of China was marked by the confrontation of its civilization with the attractions and dangers of modernity approaching from abroad, Chinese scholars thought it was necessary to reproduce constituent parts of Western sociology and they put forward a proposition of the "Indigenization of Sociology." In1925, the Chinese sociologist Xu Shilian had mentioned explicitly to build "a kind of Sociology of our own nationality". In1931, Sun Benwen formally proposed to establish "a China-centered sociology", namely, to form an integrated system of sociology out of contemporary social facts, which gives considerations to both European and American social theories and the native social thoughts in ancient China. Then Wu Wen-tsao and other scholars promoted the localization of Sociology actively. Fei Hsiao-tung, Lin Yueh-hwa, Francis. L. K. Hsu, Martin. C.Yang etc. started their practices of local Anthropology based on communities and formed a certain academic tradition. However, the development of contemporary Chinese Sociology is unsatisfactory, because of its over-emphasis of empirical approaches and application studies while its negligence of the construction of social theories, which made a gap between the development of contemporary Chinese Sociology and the tradition of Sociology since the Republic of China. Unfortunately, the conventional academic trend of thoughts in the Republic of China, such as "the indigenization of sociology", turned to be the "Lost Tradition"This research is based on the community studies in the Republic of China, which were the main part of the indigenization of sociology. It tries to discuss the sociological tradition and grasp the general context of the development of the sociology of the Republic of China in the view of the interaction of "Tao" and "Technique", which involves "Metaphysics" and "Science","Substance" and "Utility", and "Methodology" and "Method". Although this research belongs to social history, it won’t be restricted to it. It tries to combine the sociology in the Republic of China with the social thoughts in certain historical context, so that the review of the tradition of community study in the Republic of China can be more three-dimensional.