In Search of a Social Science Anchored in (Chinese) Realities

Abstract

This article reviews the author’s own research over the years from the question of how to relate Western theory and China research. The author has found through empirical research that Chinese realities generally run counter to Western theoretical expectations. And, further, that Western theories tend to overlook one side or another of dualities that coexist and interact in the real world—for example, the simultaneous resort to high moral values and practical actions in the Chinese justice system. Those findings have led the author to question the very nature and structure of the major Western social science theories, which exhibit a strong tendency to emphasize one or another side of binary oppositions, not just with regard to such binaries as subjectivism versus objectivism or voluntarism versus structuralism, but even with regard to theory versus experience, and the West versus the non-West. In the real world, however, the two sides coexist and interact within a single whole. Western theories have also shown a strong tendency to reject moral values as somehow irrational and un-modern, while the Confucian “golden rule” of “what you would not have others do unto you, do not unto others” has persisted through the ages down to the present. It still serves as a viable guide to practice. What we need is a method of research that would enable us to grasp accurately Chinese realities and to develop theoretical concepts that would be anchored on those realities.