“Bewitched by the History Behind the Walls”

Abstract

This chapter examines how urban sociology in and of China is interconnected in historical and disciplinary terms with Robert Park and the Chicago School. It analyses four dimensions thereof: 1) personal relations between Robert Park and Chinese students and colleagues who enabled his visit to China, namely Xu Shilian, Wu Jingchao and Wu Wenzao; 2) institutional embeddedness of the sociology departments at both the University of Chicago and Yanjing University within the funding structures and strategies of the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1920s and 1930s and amongst competing approaches to research in (urban) sociology; 3) empirical fieldwork and comparative community studies in the form of Fei Xiaotong’s research on small towns in China (early 1980s) and his conceptualization of rural urbanization which built on his earlier classic rural community study and influenced official Chinese urbanization strategies until the recent National Plan on New Urbanization (2014-2020); and 4) theorizing China’s “villages in the city” (城中村‎) in light of previous debates inspired by the Chicago School on “cities within cities” (Park 2015), the “slum” and “urban villages”. Based on these four perspectives the chapter addresses questions of legacy, creative impetus and possible limitations arising from Park’s program vis-à-vis urban sociology in China today.