Legal studies Photo: TUCHONG

In recent years, iconic concepts have garnered growing attention among Chinese legal academics. However, the discussion has primarily revolved around traditional legal doctrines, while iconic concepts in the intellectual tradition of social science of law have been largely overlooked. The “field,” as an iconic concept in the social science of law, particularly legal anthropology, frequently appears in monographs and academic papers. Scholarly interpretations of this concept can be categorized into three prevailing interpretive paradigms.

The first paradigm is conceptual fundamentalism. This paradigm is based on the intellectual tradition of Western legal anthropology and emphasizes that the understanding of the “field” must center around the cognitive schemas of early Western legal anthropologists, which were developed spontaneously during participatory observation of specific legal phenomena, academic dialogue, and paradigm debate. Advocates of this paradigm believe that the “field” possesses spatiality and culturality.

In the spatial dimension, the “field” refers to a particular space wherein legal anthropologists identify and address legal issues. In the cultural dimension, the “field” defined by early legal anthropologists refers to small societies or village communities that are culturally distinct from modern urban civilizations or Western industrial civilizations. Legal anthropologists engage in knowledge production therein and the solutions they propose primarily apply to such contexts. In this line of thought, the “field,” with its specific spatial and cultural attributes, does not exist in the Chinese context of legal anthropology, restricting its interpretation to being understood through the lens of the Other.

The second paradigm is empirical nativism. It vehemently opposes the mechanistic and rigid interpretation of the “field” by conceptual fundamentalism, asserting that despite the necessity of considering the theories and history of the “field” within the tradition of Western legal anthropology, greater emphasis should be placed on how “experience” that has emerged spontaneously within Chinese legal anthropology shapes the concept of “field.”

A large number of Chinese legal anthropologists are dedicated to identifying issues through empirical research and associate the “field” with empiricism. They either venture to remote areas inhabited by ethnic minorities to observe the practical application of customary laws by ethnic groups, or explore the practical manifestations of conflicts and coordination between local norms and national laws in small villages. They also conduct in-depth participatory observation in particular institutions such as courts or police stations to reveal the mechanisms by which the law functions.

Empirical nativism strongly advocates for interpreting the “field” through local experience, and contends that its objective comprehension is materialized as long as scholars journey to specific places to explore particular legal issues and introduce the empirical knowledge, theories, and methods discovered therein into the genealogy of Chinese legal anthropology.

The third paradigm is method centrism, which points out that the first two paradigms limit the extensions of the “field” without rejecting the value in their respective interpretations of this concept. Method centrism views the “field” as a method for identifying, interpreting, and addressing legal issues. The “field” is ubiquitous: it can manifest as particular places with elements of both geographical space and cultural time, or as abstract texts such as written judgments, litigation records, and online data.

This paradigm recommends grasping the essence of the “field” methodically rather than deriving its meaning from theories or experience. Researchers are deemed to be situated in the “field” in the Chinese context of legal anthropology as long as they identify, interpret, and address legal issues by means of participatory observation. Method centrism has emerged from discussions surrounding the “updating and transformation of research methods for Chinese legal studies in the new era.” However, some scholars argue that it attempts to fundamentally subvert the empirical tradition of legal anthropology and infinitely expand the extensions of the “field” concept, which may hinder dialogue and exchange within the social science of law community.

In the author’s opinion, the understanding of the “field” should neither focus solely on how to continue the discourse of the Western “field” concept nor depart from the theoretical history of the “field” to artificially construct its genealogy in the Chinese context of legal anthropology. Instead, we should concentrate on three core elements of the “field”: Chineseness, empiricism, and culturality.

First, full consideration should be given to the theoretical, knowledge, and methodological traditions of Chinese legal anthropology. An objective understanding of the “field” cannot be gained by directly following Western traditions and indiscriminately adopting Western interpretative paradigms. Second, the “field” concept is not a figment of legal anthropologists’ imaginations. Its existence is objective and observable, which requires discovering its connotations through empirical research on law and legal phenomena in China. Third, a cultural “archaeology of knowledge” for the “field” is needed to delineate its semantic evolution and inherent mechanisms within the knowledge tradition of Chinese legal anthropology.

As China is committed to constructing its independent knowledge system, social science of law, represented by sub-disciplines such as legal anthropology and sociology of law, should intensify research on the “field” and other iconic interdisciplinary concepts in order to provide interdisciplinary insights and support for building an independent legal knowledge system in China.

Liu Shunfeng is an associate professor from the Law School at Hunan Normal University.

Edited by WANG YOURAN