Journal of China in Global and Comparative Perspectives

Abstract:

Abstract: Fei Xiaotong’s series of essays, based on his lectures on ‘Rural Sociology’, was published in the 1940s as Xiangtu Zhongguo. It is a landmark for the indigenization of anthropology in non-Europhone countries and cultures, in that it begins the process of creating a technical anthropological vocabulary in the Chinese language. Fei, having obtained his doctorate at the London School of Economics, understood clearly the English-language vocabulary of anthropology, and thereby understood where that vocabulary was and was not appropriate to understanding Chinese society. He realized that direct translation of English terms into Chinese could sometimes create confusion and misunderstanding, and so in addition to using conventional Chinese translations of English terms, he invented a series of new Chinese terms he considered more appropriate to the analysis of Chinese society. Unfortunately, the Communist Revolution interrupted Fei’s indigenization project, superimposing translations of terms from the Marxist ethnological tradition developed in the Soviet Union. Today, however, as anthropology everywhere outside Euro-America continues its quest to indigenize, Fei’s early attempt at indigenization can serve as a partial guide to creating an appropriate anthropological vocabulary in Chinese, and perhaps as an example for how to create such a vocabulary in other languages.