Fei Xiaotong (2nd left) talks with villagers at Kaixiangong Village in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, as part of his field study on country life in the Yangtze Valley. Photo: PEKING UNIVERSITY

At present, Chinese society is undergoing unprecedented developments and changes, with a variety of new scenarios and phenomena emerging from time to time. This has posed great challenges for us to make sense of society. Research and studies are an important means by which we engage deeply in social reality and grasp the essence of social phenomena. 

In March 2023, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee released a work plan to launch a Party-wide campaign of in-depth research and studies. The work plan made it explicit to rectify pointless formalities and bureaucratism, and called for an end to superficial surveys. Pointless formalities in research and studies can be ascribed to a matter of attitude and often mask inadequate understandings of research theories and methodologies. 

Development of social surveys 

As a major component of sociological teaching and research, social surveys were initiated and developed alongside the discipline of sociology. In the 1920s, the first batch of Chinese sociologists who pursued overseas studies returned to China and began to work in domestic universities and research institutions.

While constructing Chinese sociology, they vigorously advocated for social surveys. From research on rickshaw pullers and residents’ living expenses in Beiping (modern-day Beijing), to the social survey of Dingxian County in Hebei Province, and economic investigations into Wuxi in Jiangsu Province and Baoding in Hebei, they started a remarkable “social survey movement.” 

Inspired by this movement, scholars, principally those from the Department of Sociology at Yenching University, proposed indigenizing sociology in China. Introducing cultural anthropology from the United Kingdom, and the Human Ecology School from Chicago in the United States, they took China’s national conditions into account and established the basic framework of community research. 

Compared with the social survey movement, community research took theory and methodology a step further. This approach focused on fixed communities, with villages being the most typical case in China, as the basic unit for comprehensive and historical studies. Community research was considered conducive to understanding the nature of society deeply and holistically. 

In the 1930s and 1940s, scholars opened several field sites for community research in northern and southwestern China. As a result, the Yenching School, represented by pioneering sociologists Wu Wenzao (Wu Wen-Tsao), Fei Xiaotong (Fei Hsiao-Tung), and Lin Yaohua (Lin Yueh-Hwa), was brought into being, alongside seminal works such as Peasant Life in China and Three Villages in Yunnan. Resultant theoretical outcomes such as Fei’s Earthbound China deeply summarized and accurately captured the nature of Chinese rural society. 

After reform and opening up, sociology was restored under the leadership of Fei Xiaotong and other scholars. In the reconstruction process, Fei energetically championed social surveys as a key research methodology, also what we call “fieldwork,” as an extension of community research. Taking the lead, he left his footprints across the nation. 

Under Fei’s influence, Chinese sociology has always prioritized “seeking knowledge from reality” as its disciplinary norm, carving out a path close to social realities in China and reflective of the country’s development experience. 

“Seeking knowledge from reality” is Fei’s premise for research, summed up from years of community research and fieldwork. It builds a profound theoretical and methodological vision for social research, primarily concerning how to properly handle the relationship between theory and experience in survey practices, in order to gain objective and in-depth knowledge of the social fabric of China. 

Two extremes

In academic practices, two opposing views are present in fieldwork. Some scholars propose casting aside all preconceptions, including theories, to embrace and reproduce facts sensed in the field faithfully and objectively. They contend that only in this way can academic research be empirically advanced, valuing inspiration from on-the-ground experience and attentive presence brought by fieldwork itself. 

The opposite camp emphasizes the role of theory in field investigations, arguing that without theoretical guidance, researchers would end up with nothing more than a collection of voices, images and videos, or opinions and attitudes, with assumptions that they had uncovered objective facts. This inclination was not only unfavorable for us to truly comprehend social facts, but might also draw us astray instead. 

These two propositions have both gone to extremes, which would affect the depth and facticity of research. Some scholars dubbed the two groups “naïve empiricism” and “abstract empiricism,” respectively. Naïve empiricists believe that seeing is believing, and regard materials gathered from the field as research conclusions. Without proper discrimination of collected materials, such research would be reduced to simply reporting. 

Abstract empiricism starts from theory and selects materials which support related theories from fieldwork, or tailor realities to fit the theories, turning fieldwork into a tool of theory. Research theses in the abstract empiricism style are filled with mechanism and structural analysis, featuring rigorous and consistent conceptual and logical frameworks. They discuss realistic issues with abstract language yet tend to produce a seemingly profound shallowness. However, fieldwork is not just about these two types of research. 

Seeking knowledge from reality 

There is a yawning gap between theory and reality, a common problem in the social sciences. How can theory play its role just right in the field, so as to help researchers perceive social realities, while not overshadowing the realities? The principle of “seeking knowledge from reality” emphasizes that theory is a tool for research practices, while reality is the aim. 

Explaining this principle, Fei said that researchers should go back to the people after acquiring knowledge from reality. They should allow nutrition to nourish wherever it is obtained. The Chinese always try to be considerate in return, and the return Fei advocated for was to make the common people rich. 

Fei’s term of “seeking knowledge from reality” exactly requires sociology to bridge the gap between theory and reality in fieldwork. “Going back to the people” and “being considerate in return” both aim to acquire genuine knowledge. 

Researchers should take research objects’ feelings, ideas, behaviors, and fates as the research purpose, rather than the tool or means. This is Fei’s sublimation of his mentor Wu Wenzao’s advocacy for starting from and ending up in fieldwork in community research. In Wu’s view, the aim of research is still fieldwork, while Fei made the aim more direct, “going back to the people,” which is a new point of view for the fieldwork methodology and also a crystallization of Fei’s lifetime commitment to social research and studies. The methodology of field research is neither simply about designing survey frameworks, nor about survey skills, but considers how to take theory as a tool and center on the people in the field. 

Methodological consciousness 

When researchers enter the field, they should have a strong methodological consciousness, so that they can keep abundant theories in mind without being dominated by them. Methodological consciousness refers to maintaining a strong awareness of reflection in the field. In other words, when we are observing and interviewing a research object, and delving into a scholarly matter, what theoretical instrument shall we adopt? This theoretical tool is like a searchlight in the dark, leading us to see deeper social truths. What theory enables us to see might either be the profound essence of phenomena, or just theoretical bias. 

When we find that a certain phenomenon disagrees with our theory, we tend to regard the phenomenon superficial and temporary. For instance, when we observe the relationship between employers and employees using capital theory, if we see they get along well without traces of control or exploitation, we will take for granted that they are concealing something or we fail to figure out something more important.

Subject to this theoretical subconsciousness, we will not stop until we find hints of exploitation, believing that we have finally pierced through the surface of social phenomena into the deeper structure, finding the “truth” of society. Then, is this “truth” theoretical or realistic?

To answer this question, we need to trace the research process and reexamine it from a methodological perspective. A key step is to reflect on whether the social phenomenon we have overlooked became superficial due to its consistency with theory, or because it is superficial and temporary without the support of rooted structures. Have we studied the social dynamic thoroughly and understood it based on the logic of research objects themselves, or simply neglected the dynamic because it didn’t fit our theory?

Some scholars call attention to the periphery or abnormalities of matters and individuals, as opposed to the center and normal, while some warn against exceptional cases, relative to the typical, in field research. Both attempts are embodiments of methodological consciousness in the field, and methods to overcome the barriers posed by theory in fieldwork. To apply the method scientifically, researchers should not only have a strong awareness of reflection, but are also required, in ideal scenarios, to conduct research on the spot in the field, which is a necessary condition. 

A huge advantage of fieldwork, as compared to other research methodologies, is that researchers can devote their heart and soul or immerse themselves in the field, to feel what the research objects are thinking, speaking, and doing with their heart as well as sense organs, and directly grasp deeper elements of the objects through “shared feelings.” 

Again, in the above case of employers and employees, whether their harmonious relationship is true or not requires us to share feelings with the research objects. Sharing feelings seems an approach, but it is not (an approach) in the final analysis. Its occurrence necessitates many favorable external conditions, which the field can provide. With the presence of the field, whether feelings can be shared or not depends on whether we can stick to the research philosophy of “seeking knowledge from reality.” Only when we consider research objects as the aim of research to understand what they are thinking, speaking, and doing, rather than focus on theory or research papers, can we truly acquire knowledge from reality. 

Zhou Feizhou is a professor and dean of the Department of Sociology at Peking University. 

Edited by CHEN MIRONG