Prof Hans Steinmuller

This course is available on the MSc in Anthropology and Development, MSc in Global Media and Communications (LSE and Fudan), MSc in Global Media and Communications (LSE and USC), MSc in Political Economy of Europe in the World (LSE and Fudan), MSc in Social Anthropology and MSc in Social Anthropology (Religion in the Contemporary World). This course is freely available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. It does not require permission. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process. For information on controlled access courses, including eligibility, application processes, deadlines, and departmental contact details, please refer to the Controlled Access Courses webpage.

Priority is given to home department students, followed by those from other departments (based on their statements, and space permitting).

Deadline for application: Please apply as soon as possible after the opening of course selection.

For queries contact: Anthro.Admin@lse.ac.uk

This course is available to students on other relevant programmes (subject to approval).

Mutually exclusive courses:

This course cannot be taken with AN447 at any time on the same degree programme.

Assumed prior knowledge:

Students must have some prior knowledge of social science approaches.

This course provides an interdisciplinary introduction to the comparative social science of China. The main object of the course is to help students develop ways of putting the politics, economy and social life of China into a framework in which they can compare and juxtapose it with other polities, economies and societies. Students will bring to this comparison whatever theoretical approaches they have already learned and are continuing to learn, and will be expected to demonstrate and explain how they are using them as well as to listen to other approaches and disciplinary perspectives.

10 hours of lectures and 15 hours of seminars in the Autumn Term.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn Term.

Essay (1500 words).

Students will have the opportunity to submit one formative essay of up to 1500 words during the course.

Students will be informed of their formative submission deadline by email by the end of Week 4 of term.

• Candea, Matei 2019. Comparison in Anthropology: The Impossible Method. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Fei Xiaotong 1992 [1948]. From the Soil, the Foundations of Chinese Society: A Translation of Fei Xiaotong’s Xiangtu Zhongguo, with an Introduction and Epilogue, transl. Gary Hamilton and Wang Zheng, Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Harrison, Henrietta 2001. China (Inventing the Nation). London: Arnold.
• Pelkmans, Mathijs and Harry Walker (eds.) 2023. How People Compare. Abington: Routledge.
• Stockman, Norman 2000. Understanding Chinese Society, Cambridge: Polity.
• Spence, Jonathan D. 1991. The search for modern China. New York: Norton.
• Weber, Max 1951. The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism, transl. Hans H. Gerth, New York: The Free Press.
• Yan Yunxiang 2003. Private Life under Socialism. Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village 1949-1999. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Exam (100%), duration: 120 Minutes in the Spring exam period.