University of Warwick

Graduate Student, Sociology

PhD Student

Thesis Title: Framing Sociology in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore: Geopolitics, State and Its Practitioners

About

I am a Taiwanese PhD student affiliated to the University of Warwick. My dissertation project, tentatively titled "Framing Sociology in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore," is an attempt to empirically map and compare how sociology were developed and practiced in Taiwan, Hong Kong Singapore, and to interpret the observed patterns in terms of the shared and distinctive historical and social contexts.

The choice of the three cases shares their similarities in their colonial histories, demographical majority (Chinese immigrant) and economic development trajectories, while demonstrating significant contrast in their post-war geopolitical status, identity politics and mode of governance.

A ‘sociology of knowledge’-style inquiry, this project is characterized by its attempt to look beyond the national-society container and to situate the subject under a theoretical framework I shall call the world system of knowledge flow. In the other hand, the type of explanation aimed is to be sought at the individual-actor level. Hence the analysis involves three levels of categories– geopolitical, state-institutional, and practitioner-level.

Drawing on findings from literature review, archival research, interviews and some participatory observations, I shall explore the historical context for the implantation of sociology, the divergent sense of geo-disciplinary identity, and their implications on academic practices. I shall also discuss how sociologists in these places negotiate the Western paradigm in studying the local, their public roles, and the responses to the rising managerialism and academic globalism in the recent decades.

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