New Perspective on the Methodology of Cultural Contacts in the Studies of the Cultural Encounters between China and Europe in the Seventeenth Century
Resource
臺大歷史學報, 40, 239-278
Journal
臺大歷史學報
Journal Issue
40
Pages
239-278
Date Issued
2007-12
Date
2007-12
Author(s)
Abstract
Professor Nicolas Standaert's article, entitled “Methodology in View of Contact between Cultures: The China Case in the Seventeenth Century,”published in 2002, is the most recent methodological analysis of the cultural encounters between China and Europe in western scholarship. The present article discusses Standaert's theories and arguments within the broader methodological evolution of “cultural history,” from the perspective of western historiography, and raises some questions for further reflection. There are two purposes for this discussion. First, various concepts in the theory of cultural contacts, as elaborated by Standaert, are associated with the historiographical tendency to cultural history, and which stirs several issues for cross-cultural studies. Therefore, it is hoped that the present analysis of this article will contribute to the understanding of the significance of cross-cultural studies, which did open up a variety of new perspectives for historical studies. The following issues will be discussed: how anthropology affects cross-cultural studies, how and why the concept of "exchange" has been replaced by one of "interaction," the re-definition of the nature of "texts and context," and so on. Second, in recent decades, Mainland Chinese scholars have been actively engaged in the study of Christianity in China and the cultural encounters between both sides. Their efforts stirred new thinking in Chinese studies. However, their perspectives were developed within a different context from the western one, thus generating different research results. This article is mainly concerned with the perspectives from western research, but hopes to provide clues as to how to bring the research from the Chinese and western scholars together to a prospective historiography. This article also intends to discuss the above methodological issues, covering the theories of cultural history. It is not written as a review essay alone, and ventures to offer a specific analysis of cross-cultural studies in western scholarship, as starting from Standaert's methodology.
Subjects
基督宗教在中國
耶穌會
後殖民
後現代
新文化史
他者
交往互動
Christianity in China
The Jesuits
Post-colonialism
Post-modernism
Interaction
New Cultural History
the Other
Type
journal article
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