Academic Discourse Right/Power and the Development of Chinese Sociology

As a kind of right (quanli), academic discourse rights include the right to create and innovate, to endow with meaning and to academic autonomy. As a kind of power (quanli), it refers to the power to guide, judge, control and so on. These rights and powers have been pursued as Chinese sociology developed for over a century. At the inception of sociology in China, Yan Fu and other scholars experimented with localizing sociology and innovating academic discourse. Fei Xiaotong's life covered nearly 20 years of Chinese sociology's early development and another 56 years of its later development; his academic journey epitomizes the historical development of Chinese sociology. The only way for Chinese sociology to move from the periphery of world academia into the center is to endeavor, on the basis of theoretical self-consciousness, to seize the commanding heights of academic discourse rights.