CHINA, JAPAN, AND KOREA
A COMPARATIVE AGENDA FOR CHINA ANTHROPOLOGY
Arthur P. Wolf
Stanford University
Maurice Freedman once remarked--whether in print or in conversation I do not
recall--that the future of China anthropology lay in tripartite comparisons of China, Japan,
and Korea. I believe that what he had in mind was studies like S. F. Nadel's comparison of
witchcraft in four African societies,1 A. I. Richard's comparison of family structure among
the Central Bantu,2 and Marshall Sahlin's comparison of political types in Polynesia.3 If so,
the future Freedman envisioned has not been realized. China anthropology remains as
provincial now as it was when I was a graduate student. It has changed, but not in the
direction Freedman recommended. Structuralism and post-structuralism have not made it less
provincial, only more myopic.
The work that comes closest to fulfilling Freedman's vision is all by Koreanists. I
think, for example, of Martina Deuchler's The Confucian Transformation of Korea,4 Griffin
M. Dix's "The East Asia Country of Propriety": Confucianism in a Korean Village,5 Laurel
Kendall's work on Korean women, 6 and, particularly, of Roger and Dawnhee Janelli's
Ancestor Worship and Korean Society.7 Building on Freedman's essays,8 Emily M. Ahern's
Cult of the Dead in a Chinese Village, 9 and Robert J. Smith's Ancestor Worship in
Contemporary Japan,10 the Janellis sharpen their account of Korean ancestor worship by
comparing it with its Chinese and Japanese analogues. Their concluding chapter is entitled
"Ancestor cults in East Asia Compared."11 There is, however, to the best of my knowledge,
no comparative study of any aspect of East Asian societies by a China anthropologist. There
is not even any response to the comparisons undertaken by the Koreanists.
There is no compelling reason to limit comparisons of China to Japan and Korea. In
fact, it might prove more productive to treat China as one of the set of societies that Eric Wolf
and Samir Amin call "tributary states."12 It might even prove worthwhile to follow Meyer
Fortes's lead and compare Chinese concepts with those of such East African societies as the
Tallensi.13 Nonetheless, I recommend taking Freedman's advice. Although Chinese scholars
have contributed very little to the study of Japan and Korea, sinology is well-established in
both countries. Moreover, as both Africanists and Americanists have demonstrated, there is
an advantage in focusing on variation among societies that belong to the same culture area.14
Even if the similarities among them prove illusory, they provide useful points of departure.
Freedman's early death was a tragic loss for China anthropology. Had he lived to
provide an example of the tripartite comparison he advocated, the field might have resisted a
number of short-lived and unproductive detours. As it is, comparison of the major East Asian
societies will require much more than simply broadening our scope of inquiry. For most
younger scholars, it will require a radical change of perspective. Freedman represented the
maturity of a tradition founded by Sir Henry Maine, Edward Burnett Tylor, and Lewis Henry
Morgan. Its method was comparison because its goal was a scientific understanding of human
social behavior. Other societies were approached as examples of human behavior rather than
as alien entities to be preserved for display in an anthropological curiosity cabinet. It accepted
as a matter of faith what Lewis Henry Morgan called "the psychic unity of mankind" and
viewed this as assurance that comparisons of societies would yield an understanding of the
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differences and similarities among them.15
American anthropology has long suffered from a tendency towards a debilitating
relativism.16 It originated in the writings of J. G. Hamman and J. G. Herder and was
transmitted to the United States by Franz Boas.17 It is evident in Ruth Benedict's Patterns of
Culture, Margaret Mead's Growing Up in Samoa, and, in a more virulent form, in the later
work of Clifford Geertz.18 Geertz argues that we are "unfinished or incomplete animals who
complete ourselves through culture--and not through culture in general but through higly
particular forms of it: Dobuan and Javanese, Hopi and Italian..."19 The implication is that
cultures are hermetically sealed cells--unique, mutually inaccessible, and incomparable. The
most important fact about Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans is not that they are human beings.
It is that the are Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
This is nonsense, but it is popular nonsense. It is accepted as matter of faith by the
majority of a generation of anthropologists--and, unfortunately, not just American
anthropologists. Its effect in China anthropology has been to justify a long-standing
provincialism. Plain provincialism is now principled provincialism. Consequently,
implementation of Freedman's vision will require a major effort. It is not just a matter of
providing the resources needed to undertake comparisons of three complex societies that are
the subjects of three largely independent scholarly traditions. It will require reforming China
anthropology. We can no longer accept China's size, its two-thousand year existence as a state,
and its internal complexity as an excuse for never looking beyond the Great Wall. It must be
accepted that Chinese ritual is a kind of ritual; Chinese kinship, a kind of kinship; and the
Chinese state, a kind of state.
The history of anthropology has been marked by wild dialectical swings between
uncontrolled speculation and unrelieved particularism. The result is that the field makes little
headway, being forever pushed off course by unproductive debates. One reason I find
Freedman's proposal so attractive is that it would steady the field by dampening down the
wild swings that give rise to these debates. A China anthropology that treated China as one
member of an East Asian triad would have to steer a middle course between the extreme
positions taken by the particularists and the generalists. It would be grounded in the study of
China, but it would have to address questions general enough to elucidate the differences
between China and its neighbors.
Freedman was trained in a comparativist tradition and wrote at a time when that
tradition had achieved its zenith of influence. He drew a sharp distinction between social
science and sinology. "Social science," he wrote, "is about society; sinology is about
China...It may be a capital idea to turn young anthropologists into sinologues, but they may
then cease to be of use as anthropologists..."20 What I believe he meant is that turning young
anthropologists into sinologues would turn them into particularists. It would deprive them of
the comparative perspective necessary to do good anthropology. Although it is not the fault of
sinologists, this is precisely what has happended since Freedman died. The anthropological
pendulum has swung radically away from the comparative tradition he represented. Most
young anthropologists are of little use as anthropologists. They have lost the comparative
perspective that is anthropology's raison d'etre.
It would have been natural for China anthropology to move in the direction Freedman
pointed toward in the 1960's. It will require an abrupt aboutface for the field to move in that
direction now, but I think it will happen and in the not-too-distant future. The swing to
particularism has reached its natural limits. The rebound is underway. What I suggest, then, it
that the CCK use its resources to implement Freedman's vision. Koreanists like Roger and
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Dawnhee Janelli provide models to be emulated. What is needed now is to encourage young
China anthropologists to respond to the Koreanists' efforts with comparative studies of their
own. If China anthropology is to be anthropology, it must look beyond China. The first
direction to look is east to Korea and Japan.
Notes
1.S. F. Nadel, "Witchcraft in four African societies: An essay in comparison," American
Anthropologist, vol. 54 (1952), pp. 18-29.
2.A. I. Richards, "Some types of family structure amongst the Central Bantu," in
African Systems of Kinship and Marriage, ed. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown and Daryll Forde
(London: Oxford University Press, 1950), pp. 207-251.
3.Marshall Sahlins, Social Stratification in Polynesia (Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1958).
4.Martina Deuchler, The Confucian Transformation of Korea (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1992).
5.Griffin M. Dix, "The East Asian Country of Propriety": Confucianism in the Korean
Village. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California at San Diego.
6.See, for example, "Let the gods eat rice: Women's rites in a Korean village," in Religion
and Ritual in Korean Society, ed. Laurel Kendall and Griffin Dix (Berkeley, Calif.:
Institute of East Asian Studies, 1987), pp. 118-138.
7.Roger L. Janelli and Dawnhee Yin Janelli, Ancestor Worship in Korean Society
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1982).
8.Maurice Freedman, "Ancestor worship: Two facets of the Chinese case," in Social
Organization: Essays Presented to Raymond Firth, ed. Maurice Freedman (Chicago:
Aldine, 1967), pp. xx-xx; and Maurice Freedman, "Ritual aspects of kinship and marriage,"
in Family and Kinship in Chinese Society, ed. Maurice Freedman (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1970), pp. 163-187.
9.Emily M. Ahern, The Cult of the Dead in a Chinese Village (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 1973).
10.Robert J. Smith, Ancestor Worship in Contemporary Japan (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 1974).
11.Roger L. Janelli and Dawnhee Yin Janelli, Ancestor Worship and Korean Society, pp. 177-195.
12.Hill Gates has shown how and why this can be productive. See Hill Gates, China's Motor:
A Thousand Years of Petty Capitalism (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1996).
13.Meyer Fortes, "Pietas in ancestor worship: The Henry Meyers Lecture, 1960." Journal of
the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. 91 (1961), pp. 166-191.
14.See, for example, I. Schapera, "Kinship and marriage among the Tswana," in African
Systems of Kinship and Marriage, ed. A. R. Radcliffe-Brown and Daryll Forde (London:
Oxford University Press, 1950), pp. 140-165, and Fred Eggan, The Social Organization of the
Western Pueblos (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950). The general point is argued
in Fred Eggan, "Social anthropology and the method of controlled comparision,"
American Anthropologist, vol. 58 (1954), pp. 743-763.
15.Morgan's views are examined in detail in Thomas R. Trautman, Lewis Henry Morgan and the
Invention of Kinship (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1987). See especially
Chapters 2 and 4, pp. 18-35 and 58-83.
16.For a critical history see Adam Kuper, Culture: The Anthropologists' Account (Cambridge,
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Mass.: Harvard Univesity Press, 1999).
17.See Matti Bunzel, "Franz Boas and the Humboldtian tradition," in Volkgeist as Method and
Ethic, ed. George W. Stocking, Jr. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), pp. 17-78.
18.See the essays collected in Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Culture (New York: Basic
Books, 1973).
19.Clifford Geertz, "The impact of the concept of culture on the concept of man," in Clifford Geertz,
The Interpretation of Culture (New York: Basic Books, 1973), p. 49.
20.Maurice Freedman, "What can social science do for Chinese studies," in The Study of Chinese
Society: Essays by Maurice Freedman, ed. G. William Skinner (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford
University Press, 1979), pp. 404-406.
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