Rediscovering“Nature”：The Threefold Transformation of the Yenching School’s Sociological Tradition of Community Studies before the Anti-Japanese War

Liu Yuanyuan 

Published in Chinese Journal of Sociology, 2025 Issue 1.

Abstract: The discussion of the Yenching school，as an object of study in the history of sociology，is far from over. In the midst of the transformation of Chinese society，different generations of Yenching sociologists went deep into the countryside and suburbs，market towns and border regions，and produced a number of classic community studies that had become everlasting traditions.

This paper follows the trajectory of the discipline of sociology at Yenching University to present the threefold transformation of the Yenching sociological community studies prior to the Anti-Japanese War. The early sociological studies at Yenching were shrouded in the God’s perspective of “one unity of religion and society”and were devoted to social reconstruction. Then from the time of Xu Shilian，the view became that the closer the research methods of sociology were to natural science，the more developed sociology would become. The town of Ching Ho，as a social laboratory，initiated the original tradition of “regional” studies，in which the control of “nature”was seen as a measure of social progress. The third academic shift came when Wu Wenzao incorporated the theoretical shift towards human ecology with functional analysis，and thereby “culture”，a social constancy that cannot be controlled， became the focus of community studies. When “function” replaced “causality”，“comparative method”replaced “experimental method”，“the natural history of society” replaced the previous simple and mechanical “historical reconstruction of society”，it marked the establishment of sociology as a discipline truly different from natural science.

In this process，natural science and social science were never rivals to each other，and the community studies tradition of the Yenching school was never detached from nature in the process of transforming it，but rather they were built on the foundation of nature to approach step by step the cultural analysis of “human beings” themselves.

Keywords：nature，Yenching school，christian college，community studies，social experiment in Ching Ho