The roots of Chinese society

Presentation

Fei Xiaotong (1910-2005), trained in China and then Great Britain before the Second World War, here offers a comparative analysis of Chinese society orchestrated around three planes: city and countryside, past and present, West and China. At the heart of this undertaking, the quest for "roots" opens onto a characterization of Chinese society based on "order by distinction of status". This systematized description of Chinese structures, thoughts and practices, whose initial aim was both to rehabilitate them and to show their limits in the eyes of an urban, educated readership, laid the foundations for a reflection on China's pathways into modernity. This text made Fei Xiaotong one of the greatest names in Chinese social science. Many passages remain astonishingly topical despite the time that has elapsed since it was first published in 1948.

This first translation into French makes available to French-speaking readers of all stripes a clear, precise, synthetic and brilliant text that presents the Chinese singularity from the inside. Its depth and acuity make it essential reading for anyone interested in China's past as well as its present.

Translator

Yann Varc'h Thorel holds a degree in Chinese and a master's in literary translation from Inalco. He has translated Lu Xun, Wen Yiduo, Gu Cheng and Gao Xingjian, among others. He also devotes himself to transmitting, publishing and creating in Breton, a language he also teaches in an immersive system.

Huang Hong is professor of French literature at Nanjing University and researcher at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.
She is both a specialist in La Littérature française, translator of some forty literary works (Saint-Exupéry, Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, Marguerite Duras, Patrick Modiano, Michel Tournier, Françoise Sagan, Philippe Forest, Ismail Kadaré, Yasmina Khadra...), essayist and author of books such as La Petite musique de Marguerite Duras and Une vie littéraire.

144 pages
16 x 24
Publication: 01/07/2021
ISBN: 9782858313884