{"product_id":"9780520950351","title":"A Passion for Facts: Social Surveys and the Construction of the Chinese Nation-State, 1900-1949","description":"In this path-breaking book, Tong Lam examines the emergence of the \"culture of fact\" in modern China, showing how elites and intellectuals sought to transform the dynastic empire into a nation-state, thereby ensuring its survival. Lam argues that an epistemological break away from traditional modes of understanding the observable world began around the turn of the twentieth century. Tracing the Neo-Confucian school of evidentiary research and the modern departure from it, Lam shows how, through the rise of the social survey, \"the fact\" became a basic conceptual medium and source of truth. In focusing on China’s social survey movement, \u003ci\u003eA Passion for Facts\u003c\/i\u003e analyzes how information generated by a range of research practices—census, sociological investigation, and ethnography—was mobilized by competing political factions to imagine, manage, and remake the nation.","brand":"University of California Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47084625559792,"sku":"9780520950351","price":85.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780520950351_p0.jpg?v=1763710087","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780520950351","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}