Since modern times, there has been a crisis in China's academic development, which is mainly manifested in the fact that it lags behind the Western world in terms of ideological depth; In terms of concept innovation, it is not as innovative as the thinking of others. Isolation from the country, lack of communication, and rejection of modern civilization ultimately led to academic lag. However, we cannot veto that the Southwest Associated University during the Anti-Japanese War made contributions to the world, but its model cannot be replicated today. After 1949, the research method of using Marxism as an academic guidance brought scholarship into a different situation. The scholarship of New China, especially the academic acceptance and study of the West, mainly focused on the translation of Western academic works, and the introduction of "group studies" by Yan Fu and others is a typical example. This kind of academic practice flourished after the reform and opening up in 1978, mainly because everyone felt the lag and seriousness of scholarship at that meeting, so it was necessary to introduce Western works to China. To this day, including Yilin Publishing House, Central Compilation and Publishing House, etc., are still engaged in works on "introducing ideas", and more and more of them are increasing. In the face of the situation of the West, the domestic academic circles have begun to reflect on the question of how to localize from the past acceptance and learning. In other words, only after "Western Studies-Localization" can there be concepts and frameworks suitable for local logic that can solve and explain domestic social problems. Western scholarship, in this regard, has not suffered a bottleneck due to localization, because this academic self-consciousness itself does not mean to exclude Western learning.
As mentioned above, translating foreign works into China as a way of scholarship was very prosperous in the beginning, and most of the university faculty members who are still thinking about how to solve domestic problems with Western knowledge, and how to understand the nature of problems and how to solve them more deeply. On the one hand, there are still three ways to do scholarship: first, introducing and translating Western works; second, to use Western scholarship to explain China's problems; Third, we need to localize Western knowledge and solve China's problems. On the other hand, there is always a repetition of research and argumentation on an issue (which is a manifestation of academic corruption). In addition, they always follow others to do learning, but have no self-academic innovation ability and critical thinking, which is more of a problem with the purpose and method of education. Whether it is playing with concepts or constantly proposing frameworks, there will be a rupture in the solution of knowledge and facts, and learning will fall into a "terminal" state. This is the crisis existence of its ego.
The existential crisis of the academic self has brought us not only a state of "academic lack of confidence", but also something more terrible. The author believes that as far as learning itself is concerned, if it is placed at the level of "how to do a good job" rather than "whether to do knowledge", there are mainly the following three problems: first, the concern is too small; second, overcomplicating the issue; Third, there is no sense of history. The following is an explanation of the three pathologies of current Chinese scholarship.
First of all, the concern is too small. The academic community's grasp of a problem seems to intentionally or unconsciously avoid the essential problem, for example, the research problem does not seem to have much effect on reality. It is important to start with a point, but the final foothold is always at the point rather than the surface, which is a common problem of doing a good job in learning at present. For example, in the work "The Death of Wang" by the famous sinologist Shi Jingqian, the character (research object) selected is Wang, but in the end, what we want to say is not how Wang died and what the consequences will be after death, but from the fate of a small person to reflect on the social structure, social system and other issues, just like Kong Feili's "Calling the Soul", "Cutting Braids" is not to reflect the question of "whether the hair is cut" and "how to cut the hair", but to reflect on the social structure, especially the political structure. Why can rumors circulate, and what is the essential problem? The two examples here are intended to illustrate how to move from "point-to-point" to "point-to-point", and the research method of "seeing the big from the small" is important (commonly used in history), but more importantly, it is necessary to think about the problems of the whole society through one fact, or some facts and problems. And because these problems are very important in the whole society, the choice of "no pain or itch" for the study of the theme falls into the dilemma of "the problem of choice itself is too unimportant", and the results of natural research and the degree of solution of social problems are not as important as "choosing big problems" and "choosing essential problems". In the author's view, many of China's problems are very likely to be caused by politics, so at the beginning of choosing a problem, we should have a general understanding of the essence of the problem, rather than designing and pondering how to study the problem on the surface of the problem.
Second, overcomplicate the problem. As we mentioned above, the problem should choose to touch the essence, rather than "not hurting or itching", and deal with a very simple problem in a complex way, that is, "worrying blindly". For example, if we look at the question of the status of women in the first category, "whether it is an essential issue" and "important question", it is "whether the rise of women's rights has a destructive effect on the stability of the family". Because this is designed to take place in the relationship between the West and traditional Chinese culture (see also Red Rain: A History of Seven Centuries of Violence in a Chinese County), or the latter's tolerance of the former. However, some studies not only do not touch on the essence of this problem, but instead think about whether there is damage to the family from the perspective of women's self-perception of gender roles, which is really inexplicable. This is a manifestation of complication, de-essentialization, and de-importance. Therefore, the solution to a problem has actually been given by the academic community many times, but in addition to the argument to demonstrate, the final method is almost not to say, but also messed up and misled others, which is untrue for learning. Moreover, a big reason for over-complicating the problem is that for the sake of so-called academic innovation, some inexplicable concepts or frameworks are proposed, and a very simple problem is finally complicated, and the gains outweigh the losses. In turn, this is one of the reasons why "Research on Peasant Suicide" can be praised, it is simple and clear when dealing with problems, rather than a lot of so-called academic concepts and frameworks, and directly deals with a very important issue in a simple academic language that ordinary people can understand, which can be described as precious. In my opinion, academia sometimes needs to follow the mass line, rather than being like "metaphysics".
Moreover, there is no sense of history. In the previous article, we traced the evolutionary logic of scholarship from the modern era. The question that needs to be addressed in this article is not to explain what has happened to scholarship since modern times. Therefore, how to do a good job in learning and have a sense of history is a proposition in this article. Academic works without a sense of history are, first of all, a deep problem that cannot be solved, and the final thesis of the work is a state of "suspension". In addition, academics that are detached from a sense of history often encounter the problem of "not knowing where they came from" and "where they are going". In recent years, the academic community has noticed this problem, and the increasing trend of interdisciplinary research has eased it relatively speaking, but it is still far from enough. Taking historical sociology as an example, the study of land reform, the Cultural Revolution, or the Three Antis and Five Antis, the Four Qing Movements, etc., all involve how to understand historical materials in the context of sociology. Of course, this is an interdisciplinary "sense of history", but for example, in the reform of the hukou system, some studies do not look for the source of the hukou problem, and make a fuss about the existing hukou system, and never know how to understand it correctly. At the same time, it may also involve what we called "issues of importance", i.e., "political issues". In addition, if there is no sense of history, not only do we not know "why this is the case", not only do we lack basic problem sorting, but we may also lack a "comparative vision" of ancient and modern contexts.
When we blindly emphasize the number and grade of academic institutions to measure the quality of academic institutions, we are not only destroying the academic itself, but also unable to provide conditions for good works with "leisure", especially in the field of humanities and social sciences, which needs a "relatively leisure" space. Taking a step back, even based on the current academic system, it is difficult to say that there are excellent works of scholarship and works under the three symptoms of "over-complication of problems", "de-importance", and "lack of sense of history", let alone how many classic works have been handed down. The first problem is that the internal logic of academia is not clear. At the same time, when we are faced with the three above-mentioned problems of how to do a good job in today's Chinese studies, and in the face of the three bad academic biases and pathologies, we must be like localization, to achieve a state of consciousness in a timely manner, whether it is to choose a topic, or to narrate, or to cut into the method, or to resolve the problem without overly complicated (not to say that it negates complexity), we should pay attention, otherwise, if it is placed in the question of how to do a good job of "doing learning" mentioned at the beginning, it will be in vain. Moreover, translation scholarship after 1949 was, in today's parlance, not academic work. The real study should be to clarify the problem, or also put forward precise countermeasures, understand the importance of the problem, and so on. This requires researchers to read, reflect and comprehend on their own. At this point, the benevolent will not narrate. However, it is desirable to pay attention to these three aspects, as it is very critical to how to do a good job in learning, especially for researchers in the field of social sciences.
Text/Liu Chen