| Chapter 1: | The Study |
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Chapter 7 focuses on a discussion of epistemological debates among academics of Chinese studies. In this chapter, I discuss how epistemological rationalities are interconnected with changing political circumstances, how values shift in the academic community, and how the integrity of sinology became questioned and devalued in the process.
Chapter 8 focuses the discussions on the institutional and individual level. The foreground of the discussion in this chapter is on the academic departments and the professional lives of academics. Set against the background issues discussed in chapters 6 and 7, chapter 8 shows examples of how the macro environment of historical traditions, economic constraints of higher education, and epistemological rationalities interplay at the micro level of academics’ intellectual lives and how the scope of the study of China is constructed in universities.
The concluding chapter 9 synthesizes the findings from the previous three chapters, discusses some of the educational implications, and suggests how lessons can be learned from the investigation. This chapter is followed by a discussion of questions arising from this investigation, which it is hoped will lead to future research in the development of the study of China as well as in the field of the sociology of knowledge.