The “Social Science of Practice”: An Introductory Summary and Analysis

Abstract

The “theory of practice” was developed mainly in order to rise above the common tendency to treat the subjective and the objective as an either/or binary. We might rely mainly on subjective presuppositions to arrive at our scholarly conclusions, or engage only in the compilation and accumulation of empirical evidence, but practice is unavoidably born of the interaction between the two dimensions. Precisely for this reason, we suggest that scholarly research proceed from actual practice, in order to rise above the either/or subjective/objective binary, and attend to both theoretical construction and empirical discovery, to focus deliberately on the inter-relating of the two. This article attempts to use actual scholarly practices as concrete examples to illustrate what is meant by the “social science of practice” approach to research.

The “Theory of Practice” was created mainly to attempt to rise above the usual either/or binary opposition between the subjective and the objective. One might rely mainly on subjective theories to guide research, or engage only in descriptions of objective experience, but “practice” is generally a result of the merging of the two. It is for that reason that we seek to proceed from practice in our research, the purpose being to attend both to theoretical conceptualizations and to experiential findings, deliberately intending to join and combine the two.

I have written in some detail about practice from such a point of view (Huang, 2022b). But I have discovered that the concepts just outlined are actually not completely clear nor easy to grasp. This article attempts to use the more concrete illustration of actual “scholarly practice” as an example to explain further the meaning and implications of the “social science of practice.”

The Theory of Practice That Seeks to Rise above a Binary Opposition between the Subjective and Objective

When we do research, we usually start with a topic or a problem. Some of us will start with and lean heavily toward some particular theoretical point of view; others will lean more toward purely empirical experiences, emphasizing a certain body of empirical information. In the course of our research (scholarly practice), some, perhaps the majority, will tend to conclude with the same subjective suppositions with which they began, or conclude with just empirical findings. Most of us have seen or can think of many such examples. Perhaps only a relative minority will seek deliberately, during the course of the actual practice of research and writing, to go back and forth between available theoretical resources and new empirical findings to seek to join the two in conclusions that come with both new empirical findings and a new conceptualization.

Under ideal circumstances, that kind of approach to research lies at the very core of “the social science of practice.” It is precisely because “practice” is based on the interaction between the subjective and the objective that we are able to arrive through its study at the close joining of concept and fact.

To be sure, we have all seen and experienced unsatisfactory results in our scholarly practice, when we make neither important empirical discoveries nor appropriate conceptualizations that are illuminating. But even so, what we know for certain is that “the social science of practice” aims not just at any predetermined subjectivist conclusion or simply empirical descriptions but rather at something that joins the subjective and objective in an illuminating way.

In this respect, the social science of practice is also a scholarly ideal. It comes of course with unpredictability. For example, we might not be able to find truly important empirical evidence, only scattered factual information, or we are not able to formulate an appropriate new generalization that fits the evidence well and is also illuminating and convincing. To attain both goals is our wish, but not our ensured result.

Even so, what is certain is that this is an appropriate goal for research—to arrive at both new empirical findings and a new theoretical conceptualization of them that is appropriate, such that the two are joined into one and are mutually illuminating. Such a scholarly product is different from those that end with the same subjective hypothesis with which they began without truly testing it against empirical evidence, and are therefore unable to bring forth both new empirical evidence and new conceptualizations.

The social science of practice being discussed here is thus not just a method but also an ideal. The key is to arrive at both new empirical findings and new and convincing theoretical conceptualizations through our scholarly practice, not just one-dimensional predetermined subjective theory or mere empirical description.

The reason I have used scholarly practice as the illustrative example here is so that the discussion can be directly relevant to every researcher’s own experience, and hence make for more practical and realistic illustrations of the ideals and methods of using the practice approach to arrive at scholarly results that go beyond the simplistic binary division between the subjective and the objective. This is not a concept that is easily grasped, but it is the point of departure and the very heart of Bourdieu’s theory of practice, evident especially in his two key concepts of “habitus” and “symbolic capital” (Bourdieu, 1978: 78-87, 171-83; 1990 [1980]: chap. 3, chap. 5).

The former refers to a person’s lifelong habits and tendencies—for Bourdieu, habits born of class background are especially important—but they do not by themselves determine how someone will act in a given moment. That will depend in addition on the unpredictable circumstances and choices of the moment. With that example, Bourdieu’s intent was to challenge both liberalism’s simple construction of the “rational being” and the class determinism of vulgar Marxism.

“Symbolic capital” refers to titles, status, degrees, positions, and such (brand names are another example) that will readily change into material capital. Here Bourdieu’s purpose is to challenge liberalism’s usually material understanding of capital, as well as to broaden overly objectivist Marxist understandings of “capital,” by expanding capital’s meaning to include the symbolic sphere.

Compared to excessively formalistic and binary types of understanding, “habitus” and “symbolic capital” are both new concepts and theories of revolutionary import. These two crucial concepts of Bourdieu’s theory of practice are of course fundamental challenges to the earlier concepts predicated either on subjectivism or on objectivism. They challenge in fundamental ways subjectivist ideas of liberalism, market economy, and capitalism that make up the mainstream notions of, especially, economics and jurisprudence. They are of course also revisionist and critical ideas with respect to overly mechanistic Marxism. They reject the formalist mode of subjectivist theoretical thinking that proceeds from certain given definitions to arrive at academic conclusions merely by deductive logic, without testing them empirically against objective evidence. They are of course also criticisms of simple descriptions of objectivist experience without incisive and appropriate conceptualization.

In short, they are also criticisms of the modes of thinking that start with the premise of “rational economic man” to arrive via deductive logic at formal-rational ideal-types, previously considered authoritative and profound. Of that, Max Weber was of course the leading proponent (see esp. Weber, 1978 [1968]: chap. VIII, ii, 666-752, and further discussion below). Bourdieu’s theory of practice was in this respect an epochal contribution.

The Limitations of Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice

Even so, as I have discussed in detail elsewhere, Bourdieu’s theory, especially with respect to studies of China (or other non-Western countries), comes with three major weaknesses and limitations (Huang, 2022b). First is that it does not consider at all the fact that modern China (and almost all other non-Western developing countries), under the invasions and intrusions of Western imperialism and colonialism, cannot but become a bicultural country that is at once deeply influenced by the modern West and still embedded in its own cultural traditions (Huang, 2000). That is to say, it is no longer just a single cultural entity comprising a subjective and an objective dimension, but rather a bicultural entity with two coexisting sets of the subjective and objective dimensions. This can be readily seen, for example, in the longstanding debates in China between Westernization advocates and those insisting on “indigenous resources” 本土资源. Such a bicultural entity can only be understood in terms of the tensions and contradictions between two coexisting sets of subjective and objective combinations, or, in other words, a total of four different contending dimensions, not just two. This fact can be seen clearly in the economic and legal spheres, for example. Bourdieu, however, considers only two dimensions, in a simplified dichotomy between the traditional and the modern (Huang, 2022b).

Moreover, Bourdieu, after considering the either/or opposition between the binary of the subjective and objective, mistakenly assumes that once one focuses instead on practice that joins the two together, one needs no longer be concerned about the possible divergence between practice and representation. He does not consider the fact that new practices will often lead to new representations, which might depart from, or even contradict, the actual practice in significant ways. New practices and new representations in fact often lead to a new kind of combination that I have termed “what is said is one thing, what is done is another; joined together, they make up yet another thing” 说的是一回事, 做的是一回事,合起来又是另一回事 (Huang Zongzhi, 2014a [2001, 2007]). One simple example is that, in the Reform era, there is considerable divergence between the text of the law and its actual practice. On the level of representation, the new laws are often copies of Western laws, but in actual practice, they often show multiple dimensions of “special Chinese characteristics,” and must not be understood only in terms of their (Western) representations. That is to say, the divergence in the two-way relationship between subjective representation and objective practice does not disappear just because we have focused on practice. In actual operation, new practices will be accompanied by new representations, usually still with divergences between the two. This is clearly true of the present-day Chinese legal system, economic system, and system of governance.

Furthermore, Bourdieu, as an anthropologist and sociologist by discipline, does not seriously consider historical change over time, especially over the longue durée. His is fundamentally a horizontal cross-section approach, pertaining to a particular moment or, at most, a person’s lifetime. Applied to a nation or society, that kind of perspective limits us to a particular moment or, at most, a generation’s time. Even when it considers change in “habitus” over the time period of a person’s life, it does not begin to consider changes over long periods of history for a country or society, with respect to the rise of tensions, divergences, oppositions, and interactions between the two (Huang, 2022b).

In a sentence, when we apply the theory of practice to China, we must consider unavoidable cross-cultural dimensions and the different representations that come with them, as well as their changes over long historical periods. We simply cannot limit our perspective in research on Chinese practices to just a singular cultural system or just one moment (or just the span of one person’s life).

Many Chinese scholars to this day tend to lean strongly toward either subjective Western theories or China’s own subjective constructions, or else simply toward China’s objective experiences. Only rather few scholars have been able to start their studies with Chinse practices to rise not only above the binary opposition between the subjective and the objective of a single cultural system, but also of two conjoined cultural systems, and also across long historical periods. But it is precisely that kind of bicultural and longitudinal perspective that can truly apply the original insight of Bourdieu’s theory of practice to arrive at new scholarly insights and contributions.

Sense of Reality and Empirical Research

In addition, on the basis of my own experience in scholarly practice, “sense of reality” seems to me also a necessary requirement. Even if the sources are rich and abundant, if we are overly influenced by ideology or a unicultural hegemonic perspective, or if the researcher is still too young and lacks the sense of reality that comes with experience and age, we might be easily led into imposing our subjective perspective onto the accumulated empirical information, or else fall into merely empirical description or narration, unable to employ available theoretical resources to arrive at a novel conception that is appropriate for the material.

In my own research experience, my understanding of “true” empirical evidence can mainly be seen through my three-volume study of China’s rural economy, The Peasant Economy and Social Change in North China (Huang, 1985; Huang Zongzhi, 2023a [1986, 2000, 2004, 2009, 2014]), The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta,1350-1988 (Huang, 1990; Huang Zongzhi, 2023b [1992, 2002, 2014]), and Beyond the Left and the Right: In Search of a Path of Development for Rural China from the History of Practice (Huang Zongzhi, 2014d), and my three-volume study of Chinese legal history, Civil Justice in China: Representation and Practice in the Qing (Huang, 1996; Huang Zongzhi, 2014a [ 2001, 2007]), Code, Custom, and Legal Practice in China: The Qing and the Republic Compared (Huang, 2001; Huang Zongzhi, 2014b [2007]), and Chinese Civil Justice, Past and Present (Huang, 2010; Huang Zongzhi, 2014c).

The former were based on research materials that could not have been previously accessed; they combined the very detailed and precise information from the systematic modern social science research of the Japanese South Manchurian Railway Company (Mantetsu for short) from the late 1930s to the early 1940s that reached down to individual villages and households and my own subsequent multiple revisits to the same villages in the 1980s. The latter were based on the newly available county-level archival case files that recorded and documented large numbers of individual court cases. Those materials permit us to undertake research that is more fundamental, solid, and dependable than had been possible earlier. I term such materials “all the way down to the bottom” 一竿子插到底 sources about practice and actual operation, which had only been very rarely possible under premodern conditions of travel and access before the rise of modern social sciences.

Furthermore, although I had begun my academic studies rather early (entering college at age fifteen and graduate school at nineteen), because of deep-seated emotional and intellectual conflicts from my personal biculturality, I was only able to plunge wholeheartedly into issues that concerned me most deeply after I had reached nearly middle age (thirty-five to forty years old). That meant years lost to research and study; yet it also meant that I was much closer to an age of relative maturity and clarity (不惑) and therefore a more developed sense of reality. The fact that it was at such an age that I obtained the opportunity to engage in such basic research was a coincidence. It happened to come at the time of the newly established Sino-American cultural relations and scholarly collaboration and exchanges, giving me the opportunity to ask to revisit the Mantetsu-studied villages and, later, to enter deeply into local archives to search for new basic-level research materials that resulted in the discovery of large numbers of case records.

Looking back today, it was also because of my bicultural background and its deeply conflicting mental makeup that caused me to have reservations about all different schools of theory (especially those that were propagated by political power, i.e., ideologies) and to insist on drawing inspiration from the useful parts of all different theoretical resources to help make sense of my empirical discoveries. I therefore did not fall under the undue influence of particular ideologies. Of course, such an attitude toward theory in general was also born of the heightened sense of reality that I attained after arriving at middle age.

A younger person twenty-odd years old would not be certain to be able to appreciate a heightened sense of reality, but that was a crucial factor in my experience. As someone who tended to be quite emotional, my major weakness in younger years was that I was particularly disposed toward acting emotionally and being caught in deep emotional contradictions, and was not able to leave that part of me behind until I approached middle age. But I did not enter the kind of middle-aged clarity that can be self-righteous about one’s own convictions, or single-minded about empirical facts, but rather became deeply committed to searching for truth.

Looking back now after forty some years, I finally see the coincidence of being in that state of mind at the very time that the unusual opportunity for research opened up for me. This was not a result of any special ability on my part. It was the coincidence of a lucky opportunity for research with my “middle-aged” “clarity” and sense of reality that made up the main driving force of my truth-seeking scholarship thereafter.

Inspirations from Multiple Theoretical Schools of Thought

Herein, another important factor was that because I was deeply tormented in my youth by doubts about the classical Anglo-American liberalism that had come through the influence of my father and my PhD advisor Professor Hsiao Kung-chuan (Xiao Gongquan 萧公权), I did some serious rethinking about that theoretical-ideological tradition, and then later, because of my emotional identification with the Chinese revolution, also identified closely for some years with Marxist theory and Mao Zedong thought. It was only after I reached my mid-thirties that I began to discover the alternative theoretical traditions of substantivism and postmodernism and came under their increasing influence.

But because of the keener sense of reality that I had developed by that time, I eventually arrived at an attitude toward all theories of drawing from them what was useful and true, especially with regard to the new research findings I was making. Liberalism and Marxism had placed me into deeply conflicted contradictions in my youthful years, causing in me almost a state of academic paralysis. Yet, they also gave me a definite degree of understanding and knowledge of both, enabling me to deal both with those traditions and the new ones of substantivism and postmodernism that I was discovering. Those four major theoretical traditions became my point of departure in trying to understand the empirical findings from my new research, using them selectively and reshaping and reinterpreting them as needed. So long as my own sense of reality called for such, I did not hesitate to reshape, redefine, or develop them to arrive at new generalizations appropriate to the new empirical evidence, most especially with respect to capturing the “paradoxical” or contradictory nature (vis-à-vis existing Western theories) of my new empirical findings. That kind of research I consider not just a matter of focusing on practice but also of emphasizing the pragmatic or useful.

That was how I came to develop a host of new conceptualizations and terms. Since my middle-aged years, my attitude has been that so long as I could capture more exactly or fully the empirical reality that I saw, I would not hesitate to develop new terms and concepts as needed. Among the more important ones are “involution,” “involutionary commercialization,” “growth without development,” “part cultivator part worker,” “the new peasantry,” and the “new agricultural revolution,” and so on, as well as those pertaining to my legal research, such as the deliberately paradoxical term “practical moralism,” the “third sphere,” “centralized minimalism,” “semiformal mediation,” and so on. Most of these highlight China’s paradoxical reality when seen in conjunction with the expectations of established Western theory.

All of the above have a certain fortuitous character to them. It was a coincidence that I met up with a special research opportunity to study actual conditions at the most basic levels of society just when I was arriving at middle age with a more level-headed sense of reality; at the same time, because of the ideological and cultural contradictions I had faced earlier, I had come to the conclusion that I wanted to draw on the insights of all different theoretical traditions and to employ, reorganize, or develop them further in order to conceptualize the fundamental realities of China. Today, looking back forty years later, I feel even more strongly the coincidental nature of all of the above.

Current Realities and Prospective Visions

The points about the major dimensions of what I call the “social science of practice” outlined above were mainly formulated with respect to retrospective historical thinking. But after those, with my retirement from UCLA in 2004 and my return to China to teach and participate in the Chinese world of scholarly research, I changed more and more from the earlier, rather passive concern with Chinese current realities to a more active engagement with them and with scholarly thinking about China’s present and future. At the same time, because of my more active concern, I also came to see the need to formulate prospective visions. For those reasons, I have in the past two decades come to engage more and more actively in studying the present as well as seeking prospective answers and visions for the future.

It has been because of those new concerns that I completed two new volumes in rural research, one about the rise of “the new agriculture” in China’s New Peasant Economy: Practice and Theory (Huang Zongzhi, 2020a) and the other about the new “part cultivator part worker” reality of the Chinese countryside and virtually all Chinese peasant families in China’s New Informal Economy: Practice and Theory (Huang Zongzhi, 2020b). The latter has made for not only a new fundamental reality in the countryside, but also a major dynamic of urban development. The two volumes have brought the earlier rural studies volumes down to the present and have also extended those studies into prospective visions for the future. Different from the “mainstream” view of the countryside, I have emphasized and called for not American-style large farms enjoying scale economies, but rather the unavoidability of the small peasant farms for the present and future development of Chinese agriculture. At the same time, I have called actively for more equitable treatment of the informal workers (without job security or social security and benefits) as a prospective vision.

Different from the presumptions of mainstream Western theory, the constructions above come not from certain predetermined definitions and givens as, for example, the “rational individual” of mainstream economics, or the presupposition that free market economy would of necessity lead to “the optimal allocation of resources,” or, as in Max Weber, that “formal rational” thinking predicated on deductive logic is the optimal mode of thinking for all humankind, as well as the fundamental reality of the modern West. I have looked instead to the high moral ideals of Confucianism, such as the ideal of “humane governance” 仁治 and “do not unto others what you would not have them do unto you,” the high moral value of “serve the people” of the Chinese Revolution, and its socialist-substantivist ideal of equality of all the people.

Max Weber, as a comparative historian of very broad vision, did advance at one point the category of “substantive rationality” to characterize the theory and ideals of some non-Western countries, as well as socialism. However, when it came to presenting his views in a global comparison of the Western legal traditions as opposed to those of other countries, he came finally to collapse substantive rationality into simply “substantive irrationality,” in a simple dichotomy between all of the non-Western civilizations against the “formal rationality” of the modern West (Weber, 1978 [1968]: chap. VIII, ii, 666-752).

From the above, we can see the tensions and contradictions between Weber the broad-visioned historian who respected evidence and Weber the theorist who resorted to simple dichotomous oppositions, placing the legal traditions of all non-Western civilizations under the category of “substantive irrationality,” in simple juxtaposition against the “formal rationality” of the modern West—including its formal logic, its market economy, its capitalism—as the ideal type, while dismissing all non-Western legal systems as simply “kadi justice” of “substantive irrationality,” and, of course, also as missing the free market and capitalist economy and culture (Weber, 1978 [1968]: chap. VIII, ii, 666-752).

I of course do not agree with those views. In my research, I have found that Chinese historical practice has been consistent with the longstanding Chinese mode of thinking that combines “the three reals” “三实” of practice 实践, pragmatism 实用, and substantivism 实质, in sharp contrast with what might be termed “the three reasons” “三理” of the mainstream modern West—rationality 理性, deduction 理推, and ideal type 理想类型 (for a more detailed analysis, see Huang Zongzhi, n.d.[a]).

For this reason, I have added a volume to my earlier three-volume study of the justice system about the present-day system and its future prospect, China’s New Justice System: Practice and Theory (Huang Zongzhi, 2020c). In that volume, I raised the prospective vision of an integration of the Western and Chinese systems into a “New Sinitic Justice System,” and concretized that prospect with some already-in-place and evident practices.

Aside from the village studies and legal studies (a total of nine volumes) mentioned above, because of my protracted thinking about method and theory over the years, I have written also a series of four additional volumes on method and theory, from the first volume Experience and Theory: A Study of the History of Practice of Chinese Society, Economy, and Law (Huang Zhongzhi, 2007), Practice and Theory: The Study of Chinese Society, Economy, and Law, Past and Present (Huang Zongzhi, 2015), and then The Social Science of Practice: Method, Theory, and Prospect (Huang Zongzhi, n.d.[b]), and, finally, the even more prospective study The Dyadic Unity of State and Society (Huang Zongzhi, 2022). What they show is my changing focus first on objective experience, then practice, and finally, prospective vision. The volumes come with both continuity and revision cum advancement.

The first volume, Experience and Theory, deals mainly with how China’s solidly documented empirical experience is very different from that constructed by the major mainstream Western theories (of liberalism and of Marxism). From that perspective, the book advances the concept of the “paradoxical” nature (relative to Western theory) of China’s experience. I formulated the concepts of an interactive “third sphere” between the Chinese state and Chinese society and of a pattern of “centralized minimalism” between the central government and local governance, and of course also the basic conceptualizations about Chinese rural society and the Chinese justice system (such as “involutionary commercialization” and “practical moralism” discussed above.)

The second volume, Practice and Theory, replaced the focus on objective “experience” with “practice” that joins the subjective and the objective, in contrast to the Western social science theoretical construction of an either/or opposed relationship between the two. Under the discursive hegemony of the West (especially so in the social sciences), China to a considerable extent has already fallen into the trap of lacking its own “subjectivity,” such that there seems to be no alternative to Western theories other than the counterargument based on the rather narrow call for “indigenous resources.” But at the level of practice, China has in fact clearly shown a transcending of the simple opposition of the subjective and the objective, the Western and the Chinese. China has shown unmistakable subjectivity in its practice, evincing not only indigenous practice but also indigenous pragmatism and substantivism, even if under the great influence of the West. This volume turned from “experience” to “practice” to underline the differences between Western influence and Chinese choices, and what those tell us about long-term, deeper historical tendencies.

Because of my awareness of the differences between “representation” and “practice” in the Chinese legal system, I have argued further that there are major differences between the West and China at the deeper level of basic modes of thought, including their differential attitudes toward the two dimensions of the subjective and the objective: while the West leans strongly toward viewing them as opposed either/or binaries, China has for a very long time tended toward viewing them as dyadic (and “multi-adic”) dimensions of a larger unity (Huang, 2022a). I have also used this view to point out the many dyadic instead of dualistic dimensions within the practices of the West itself (as, e.g., with the combining of “classical orthodoxy” and pragmatism in legal practice), its dualistic oppositional mode of thinking notwithstanding. This, I suggest, is the path to a novel understanding of the West itself, via the method of studying integrative practice, as opposed to the either/or dimension of just the subjective or the objective.

This train of thought came mainly from my engaging more and more in research about China’s present and future. It is precisely at the level of practice that China has shown concern for and made choices on the basis of practical considerations, substantive moral values, and prospective visions, demonstrating a large degree of Chinese subjectivity, rather than merely following the West’s hegemonic discourses.

The reader will be aware that my Practice and Theory volume also shows multiple unresolved issues and problems, still short of being able to present completely clear and precise themes about those. It is in that sense a work still in progress, with unresolved questions and issues in parts of the study that are perhaps overly complex and lacking in clear-cut themes. That, however, can be a plus for communicating with fellow scholars faced with similar issues and problems. But from my personal viewpoint, rereading the volume today shows some obvious weaknesses, and in many respects raises questions more than provides clear-cut answers.

The third volume of my method-theory studies, The Social Science of Practice, is by contrast a more clear-cut summary statement. The reader will see here precise and clear synopses of my major methodological and theoretical concepts, beginning with the “paradoxical” character of much of Chinese practice, to a series of summary statements about actual examples in rural studies, legal studies, and governance, followed by summary analyses of what and why major substantive prospective visions have been adopted, and then on to the substantivist, pragmatic, and practice-oriented modes of dyadic (and “multi-adic”) Chinese thinking, akin to that in present-day life sciences, as opposed to the formalist mode of either/or dualistic oppositions in mainstream Western theory, based mainly on a mechanical world. And, finally, also relatively clear prospective visions.

Together with the first and second volumes, readers will be able to see the gradual formation and development of the “social science of practice” approach that I have advocated all these years, and also what I have termed the “paradoxical” and “distinctive” modes of historical and modern China, distinct from the limitations of opposed dualities in Western theories. In the dyadic mode of thinking of China, we can see the prospect for a new way to transcend the binary divide between China and the West, and arrive at a path toward a new, integrative vision for a new Sinitic culture of the future.

Volume four, The Dyadic Integration of State and Society, is a prospective view based on the process of historical changes in China in the modern period and the dyadic mode of thinking. It points toward a new integration of state and society, as well as of China and the West. Such a prospective view of course does not rule out the possibility of overly extreme tendencies and mistakes such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution. The purpose in raising a clear prospective vision is to point out more explicitly the need for a balanced, integrative long-term approach that will steer clear of those extreme tendencies. It suggests also that, under the governance of China’s distinctive Communist Party + state system, active popular participation (“participatory socialism”) can help to push forward a more balanced and long-term process of integrative change (Huang Zongzhi, 2023c).

What these four volumes contain is the process of development and summary discussion of my methodological-theoretical explorations of these past forty-plus years, from the “paradoxical” nature of China when seen from the point of view of Western theory, to the distinctive modes of Chinese thinking evinced in the practice of the “feeling for stones while crossing the river” approach of the Reform era, and the new values and ideals for the future. The four volumes of theory-method, plus the four volumes on the justice system and five volumes on rural China, together make up the thirteen-volume “collected works” that the Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe is publishing.

The entire set centers around what I call “the social science of practice,” its rationale and actual application, showing the process of formation of my studies first of history, then the present, and then prospective visions for the future, evincing both advancement and expansion, as well as of differential stages and essential continuity. Readers will be able to see both the process of formation of its theory and method and its gradual extension and expansion from history to present-day realities and further to prospective visions for the future.

Beyond Retrospective to New Prospective Thoughts

Looking back today, in my total of sixty-plus years of scholarly journey, I have indeed taken quite a few detours. Under the influence of my father and my PhD advisor, I undertook the study of liberalism in Liang Qichao and Modern Chinese Liberalism (Huang, 1972) and was quite deeply influenced by liberal ideas, but I was never able to find in liberalism satisfactory answers to my deepest concerns, which had to do with deep conflicts and contradictions between China and the West, along with thoughts for searching out theoretical ideas that were closer to Chinese historical realities. Later, I wrote a number of articles and short studies under the influence of Marxist ideas, but was still unable to find answers for issues that concerned me most deeply. I was in fact in a state of partial scholarly paralysis for nearly ten years. It was only after I had begun to approach middle age that I found the path to a genuine scholarly search for truth, wishing to engage, on the one hand, in the study of the most basic of realities through the use of hitherto unavailable research materials, and on the other hand, to draw from all available theories to help me conceptualize my new research findings. When needed, I was prepared to select, reshape, or develop further theoretical concepts that would best capture the new realities I discovered.

In that effort, one major theme came to be the discovery that Chinese realities often did not fit Western theories, especially the mainstream theories of liberalism and Marxism, but rather had distinctive origins of their own. As I searched for theoretical resources to conceptualize my new findings, I gradually came to understand that “theory” should never be already given or “dead,” but rather must be continually reshaped and redefined according to actual practice, to reselect, renew, recompose, or to improve upon in order to capture the realities of practice. Only then can theory carry genuine vitality and be adapted to Chinese realities, especially the host of clearly “paradoxical” realities when seen only through existing Western theories.

I believe that because I had arrived in middle age at a fundamental concern with truth-seeking, and because of my insistence on focusing on “practice” (and not just subjectivist theory or just objectivist empirical information) that is the closest to actual reality, I had formed an approach to scholarship that was concerned above all with truth-seeking. This is in part because practice, unlike representation, is ever-changing: last year’s or last decade’s practice will not be like this year’s or the next decade’s practice. Precisely because practice is born of the interaction of the subjective and the objective, the West and China, it is at once the earliest indication of changes to come, and also the weightiest and truest evidence of change. It is unlike discourse, which can often be not a true representation of reality, just a subjectivist representation of it. The more so with established theory, or worse, rigid and ideologized theory. That is of course true also with the mere compilation of empirical information. Practice is what we need to grasp in our research, along with its practical usefulness (or not), and also whether or not it accords with our prospective substantivist moral ideals. This is the basic approach that has driven my scholarship of the past forty-plus years and my thirteen volumes of studies.

With regard to the future, I believe that we cannot and must not deny the fundamental reality of the coexistence and interaction between Western influences and Chinese realities. The path to our future research consists in the clearer and more precise joining together of the strong points of the West and of China to come to a new Sinitic synthesis, not unlike the joining together of Confucianism with Legalism in the Han that came to form the core of the “Sinitic legal system.” At the level of mode of thinking, we need to continue the original fundamental mode of a dyadic or multi-adic joining together (rather than of either/or dualistic opposition) of multiple dimensions. That should now include also the dominant Western mode of deductive logic that has served so well the needs of the mechanical revolution of modern times. That should include also the West’s finer ideals of individual liberty and rights. Yet, that does not mean the acceptance of those as the only universally valid “truth” and “science,” but rather incorporating them into the broader dyadic and “multi-adic” view of the universe to arrive at a higher mode of integrative thinking—that is, to rise above not just the “modernism” theory and ideology of the West but also the older Sinitic view of Chinese tradition, to form thereby a new Sinitic vision that surpasses both. For now, there are already many indications of such a development in Chinese practices, to be followed by new modes of representation, even though those will surely deviate from actual practice in multiple ways. Precisely for that reason, the “social science of practice” that “comes from practice and returns to practice” will surely remain the closest to both what is actually done as well as to newly emergent tendencies.