The Movement to Indigenize the Social Sciences in Taiwan: Origin and Predicaments

Abstract

Toward the end of the 1920s, sociology began to be institutionalized as an academic discipline. The first national sociological association in China, the Chinese Sociology Association (Zhongguo shehui xuehui 中國社會學會; CSA), was formed in Shanghai in 1930. The development of sociology in China was interrupted first by the Japanese invasion in the late 1930s, and then by a prohibition in 1952, after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took control of mainland China. In 1951, some sociologists were exiled to Taiwan with the Guomin dang 國民黨 (Chinese Nationalist Party; GMD) government and started their own version of the CSA in Taipei. With the GMD’s permission, and with resources endowed by the United States, a revival in the teaching of sociology commenced in the late 1950s in Taiwan.¹ By the 1980s, sociology courses in Taiwan had gradually overcome the constraints of political ideology and the suspicions of the authorities because of the softening of authoritarianism. Since the 1990s, sociology has been a widely taught and researched subject in Taiwan’s higher education.²