1 The Proposal and Development of Post-Western Sociology (by Li Peilin)
Post-Western sociology was proposed nearly a decade ago. In 2006 when I served as the Director of the Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), my friend, Professor Laurence Roulleau-Berger, Research Director at National Centre for Scientific Research of France (CNRS), École Normale Supérieure of Lyon, as a visiting professor, visited me in Beijing. In 2012, we decided to establish an International Associated Laboratory (LIA)1 “Post-Western Sociology in Europe and in China” jointly established by the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), the École Normale Supérieure (ENS) of Lyon and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). Professor Laurence Roulleau-Berger put forward the concept of “post-Western sociology” when we discussed the name of the laboratory. To be honest, I was astonished because “post-Western sociology” was excitative. However, I was also afraid that the concept could be interpreted as opposed to Western sociology and like “postmodernism” and “post-structuralism”, it might imply subversion and deconstruction. Professor Laurence Roulleau-Berger insisted, saying that it was the inevitable future of international sociology, and her French colleagues were convinced that this was a creative and potential research field. On the 9th and 10th of November in 2013, CASS, CNRS and ENS jointly held a first opening international conference in Beijing, followed by a second conference in Lyon in January 2014 focused on “Traditions and controversies in trajectories of sociology in Europe and in China”. As such, the LIA Post-Western Sociology and Fieldwork in China and France was created. Chinese partners included the Department of Sociology of Beijing University, the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences of Nanjing University, and the School of Sociology and Political Science of Shanghai University from China and several French universities.
It was not a coincidence for Professor Laurence Roulleau-Berger to suggest post-Western sociology. Although being interested in non-Western and oriental sociology, especially Chinese sociology, she is first a sociologist and not a traditional sinologist. In 2006, she came to the Institute of Sociology, where I worked, for research as a visiting professor for one year. We quickly became friends, perhaps because I obtained my doctorate in France and began our partnership that lasted over ten years. Professor Laurence Roulleau-Berger is a rarely seen French scholar who lives for work. For more than a decade, we held many international conferences in France and China and co-edited works in English, French, and Chinese, including La nouvelle Sociologie Chinoise (CNRS Editions, 2008), European and Chinese Sociologies: A new dialogue (Brill, 2012), China’s Internal and International Migration (Routledge, 2013), and Ecological Risks and Disasters—New Experience in China and Europe (Routledge, 2016). Among them, La Nouvelle Sociologie Chinoise exerted a strong influence on French sociologists, since Chinese sociology today had never been introduced so comprehensively before, and many people did not even know it existed. Professor Michel Wieviorka, former President of International Sociological Association (ISA), wrote in the conclusion of this book, “Chinese sociology is developings well and is both dynamic and ‘global’ in the meaning of word: it is rooted in the study of problems in its own society, but also integrated into high-level global discussions” (Roulleau-Berger, Li, Guo and Liu 2008: 489).
Concerning the study of Post-Western sociology, Professor Laurence Roulleau-Berger, invited by Professor Michel Wieviorka, Editor-in-Chief of Socio, offered nine articles on post-Western social sciences for the fifth issue of Socio in 2015. Out of the nine articles, she wrote “Post-Western Sociology—From China to Europe” and I wrote “Oriental Modernization and China Experience”. In 2017, Professor Xie Lizhong from Beijing University and Professor Laurence Roulleau-Berger co-edited The Fabric of Sociological Knowledge: The Exploration of Post-Western Sociology (Peking University Press, 2017) in Chinese. In 2018, she invited me to co-edit Post-Western Sociology—From China to Europe (Routledge, 2018), writing the introduction entitled Doing Post-Western Sociology and one chapter Post-Western Sociology and Global Revolution.
Two years later in 2020, Professor Laurence Roulleau-Berger suggested that I work with her to edit the Handbook of Post-Western Sociology, saying that it had been included in Brill’s publishing plan.
Yet, we wished to deepen our understanding of post-Western theory and invited Professor Kim Seung Kuk from South Korea and Professor Yazawa Shujiro from Japan to join us. Sociologists from these two countries and China had established a stable network over the past two decades with the aim to develop East Asian sociology, which is consistent with the orientation of post-Western sociology. We invited around 60 sociologists from France, China, South Korea, and Japan to work on this book.
What I want to point out is that although representing a new trend in the development of international sociology under the background of globalization, post-Western sociology cannot be regarded as a systematic theory composed of basic assumptions, core concepts, and analytical logic. Therefore, in Handbook of Post-Western Sociology, we included different understanding of post-Western sociology. In my view, post-Western sociology has several meanings. First, in non-Western countries, especially developing countries, sociology was introduced from Western countries. In a sense, Western sociology is equivalent to classical and mainstream sociology, so it is easy to use their sociological theories to explain the diverse development experience of various countries, but the aim of post-Western sociology is to reshape contemporary sociology based on the new development experience of different countries. Second, post-Western sociology is for innovation, development, and reconstruction, instead of rejection, subversion, confrontation, and deconstruction. Third, post-Western sociology is an open, inclusive, and future-oriented academic system. It will incorporate new research findings based on fresh development experience, to shape a new sociology, which can include a wider range of international experience, especially development experience from non-Western countries.
2 Toward Non-hegemonic Sociology and Post-Western Theory (by Laurence Roulleau-Berger)
For several centuries, the history of the West has been synonymous with the history of the world. The global economy of knowledge is structured around epistemic and hegemonic inequalities and domination. For over two decades, social sciences conceived in Western worlds have lost their hegemony. This historical moment in global thought called into question the conditions of production of universalist and tautological narratives. We are witnessing a “global turning point”, distinct from previous turning points, that emerges as a watershed moment in the history of social sciences. Western cultural and social hegemonies in practice did not promote the recognition of non-Western social sciences. There was a type of epistemological, ethical and political indecency in Western worlds that ignored non-hegemonic social sciences. As such, the majority of intellectuals in the Western world are unfamiliar with sociologists in Asia, Chinese, Japanese and Korean scholars in particular. They are unaware that prior to 1949, social sciences and sociology in China were established disciplines and that the study of society has been practiced in China for as long as it has in the West, and that the reinvention of sociology in 1978 represents a landmark event in the history of humanities and social sciences.
In 2002, I started conducting research programs in China by adopting a multi-situated sociological stance between Europe and China, creating a transnational theoretical and empirical space. In 2006, when I was visiting professor at the Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Beijing headed by Professor Li Peilin, who became in 2013 vice-President of the CASS, I realized the scope of what we did not but should know about Chinese sociology; it was therefore clear that we needed to reconsider the hegemony of Western social sciences from a Chinese perspective. First of all, it seemed essential to discover the new Chinese sociology recreated since 1979. To this end, as mentioned by Professor Li Peilin, he, Guo Yuhua, Liu Shiding and myself co-edited La nouvelle sociologie chinoise, published in 2008 by the CNRS Publishers.
From 2006 onwards with Professor Li Peilin, sociologists from the CASS, the Beijing University (Beijing), the Tsinghua University (Peking) and the Renmin University of China (Beijing) we started drawing the outlines of a dialogic space between Chinese and European sociology. This collaboration was structured around reflecting on the de-Westernization of social sciences in order to progress beyond the East/West dichotomies and binary thought. In 2012, I came to speak of post-Western sociology to pursue our shared reflection on non-hegemonic sociology. My friend Professor Li Peilin and I had many intense and rich discussions. And when I suggested the name Post-Western Sociology for this collaboration as a process of circulation and co-production of knowledge between European and Chinese sociologies (Roulleau-Berger 2016), Professor Li Peilin would have preferred another name, as “post” is a fashionable prefix, and Post-Western Sociology could be interpreted as being opposed to Western sociology. I did agree. Later in 2013, following fruitful discussions with our Chinese colleagues Xie Lizhong, He Rong, Li Youmei, Liu Neng, Liu Yuzhao, Shen Yuan, Sun Feiyu, Qu Jingdong, Yang Yiyin … and French colleagues Ahmed Boubeker, Agnès Deboulet, Christine Détrez, Michel Kokoreff, Michel Lallement, Danilo Martuccelli, Paula Vasquez† … we concluded that we could not find a better concept at this stage.
Consequently, in last fifteen years, we have organized many conferences and workshops and have published several books; some of which have already been mentioned by Professor Li Peilin. We developed increasingly transversal Sino-French perspectives on different topics in the several books mentioned above. In 2014, Liu Shiding and I had already co-edited Sociologies économiques française et chinoise : regards croisés. We carried out a cross-sectional study on internal and international migration in China and France through various research programs in order to enable Chinese and Western sociologists to better understand and practice the concept of Post-Western sociology. In addition, Professor Liu Yuzhao and I co-edited Sociology of Migration and Post-Western Theory, ENS Publishers, 2021.
All scholars involved agreed that Post-Western sociology should not be confused with non-Western, de-Western, and anti-Western sociology. Professor Xie Lizhong put forward “Post-Western Sociologies”, referring to several sociological systems constructed by Western and non-Western sociologists. We, the Chinese and French scholars, also shared fieldwork experiences in China and France, made it crystal clear in each step how Post-Western Sociology was different from Post-Colonial sociology, international sociology, and global sociology. It is meant to open an epistemological and multi-situated space where the circulation of concepts and theories prevents dichotomies between Western and non-Western knowledge. We decided to establish a scientific program for the co-production of Post-Western sociology in order to open an “equal” dialogue on shared theories and theories situated in China and Europe. We started organizing how to define the meaning of Post-Western Sociology. In recent years, we have invited international sociologists with a wealth of experience studying non-hegemonic sociologies to join us, including Professors Yazawa Shujiro, Nomiya Daishiro and Yama Yoshiyuki from Japan; Professor Kim Seung-Kuk, Chang Kyung-Sup, Han Sang-Jin and Shim Young-Hee from South Korea; and Professor Svetla Koleva from Bulgaria.
The CNRS Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences and the École Normale Supérieure of Lyon strongly supported this LIA, convinced that it would have an international impact. The CNRS and the ENS of Lyon played a key role in opening a space for scientific collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Universities of Beijing, Shanghai and Nanjing with the creation of the LIA in 2013. We created an epistemological and multi-situated space where the circulation of concepts and theories prevents dichotomies between Western and non-Western knowledge.
Few sociologists endeavor to decenter their gaze to look over the other side of the knowledge boundaries. The release of Edward Saïd’s work Orientalism, the East created by the West represented a milestone in the history of postcolonial thought. Orientalism had meant the implementation of systems that trapped, captured, oriented gestures, discourses and points of view by seizing “inert” knowledge and incorporate and enclose it in subfields. Post-colonial discourse was based on the idea of provincializing Europe with Chakrabarty and considering the “subaltern histories” with Spivak according to their own value, it had played a crucial role these past 30 years in the challenging Western hegemonies. A growing consensus then emerged around the idea of the crisis of Western civilization.
Post-Western sociology is based on a political ecology of sociological knowledge where diverse knowledges can enter into an articulated dialogue in emancipatory cosmovisions and practices. It is based on the location of common and situated theories between the diversity of “Westernized West”, “non-Westernized West”, “Easternized East”, “Westernized re-oriented East” in order to go beyond hegemonic social sciences and produce post-Western thought. From this ecology of knowledge we can observe, on one hand, the multiplication of epistemic autonomies vis-à-vis Western hegemonies, and, on another hand, epistemic assemblages between European and Asian sociologies. So we can open a Post-Western Space in a creolization process where “Western” and “non-Western” knowledges do interact.
This Handbook is a part of an intense and successful scientific cooperation between Chinese, French, Japanese and Korean sociologists.
References
Li, Peilin, and Roulleau-Berger, Laurence, eds. 2013. China’s internal and international migration. London and New York: Routledge.
Li, Peilin, and Roulleau-Berger, Laurence, eds. 2016. Ecological risks and disasters—New experience in China and Europe. London and New York: Routledge.
Liu Shiding; Roulleau-Berger, Laurence; and Zhang Wenhong, eds. 2020. The expansion of Economic Sociology. Towards a More Inclusive Practice. Peking: Social Sciences Academic Press.
Roulleau-Berger, Laurence, dir. 2015. “Inventer les sciences sociales post-occidentales : de l’Asie à l’Europe”. Socio, n°5.
Roulleau-Berger, Laurence. 2016. Post-Western Sociology. From China to Europe. Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishers.
Roulleau-Berger, Laurence, ed. 2021. “Post-Western Sociology”. The Journal of Chinese Sociology (July 2021), Springer.
Roulleau-Berger, Laurence, and Li, Peilin, eds. 2012. European and Chinese sociologies: A new dialogue. Leiden and Boston: Brill Publishers.
Roulleau-Berger, Laurence, and Li, Peilin, eds. 2018. Post-western sociology—From China to Europe. London and New York: Routledge.
Roulleau-Berger, Laurence; Li, Peilin; Guo Yuhua; and Liu Shiding, eds. 2008. La nouvelle sociologie chinoise. Paris: CNRS Editions.
Roulleau-Berger, Laurence, and Liu Neng, dir. 2017. “Compressed modernity et temporalités dans la Chine contemporaine”. Temporalités n°26, n°2.
Roulleau-Berger, Laurence, and Liu Shiding. 2014. Sociologies économiques française et chinoise : regards croisés. Lyon: ENS Editions.
Roulleau-Berger, Laurence, and Liu Yuzhao. 2021. Sociology of Migration and Post-Western Theory. Lyon: ENS Publishers.
Xie, Lizhong, and Roulleau-Berger, Laurence, eds. 2017. Construction of sociological knowledge: An exploration of post Western Sociology (in Chinese). Beijing: Press of Peking University.
The LIA is now called the International Advanced Laboratory (IAL) ENS Lyon-Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Post-Western Sociology in Europe and in China since 2021 January the 1st. Professor Li Peilin, Director of the Academic Division of Law, Social and Political Studies of CASS (Peking) and Professor Laurence Roulleau-Berger, Research Director at CNRS are the IAL’s co-directors.