Skip to main content
Presented to you through Paradigm Publishing Services

University of Hawai'i Press

Visit our Partner Page See all our books
book: Thinking with Cases
Book
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Thinking with Cases

Specialist Knowledge in Chinese Cultural History
  • Edited by: , and
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2007

About this book

Case studies fascinate because they link individual instances to general patterns and knowledge to action without denying the priority of individual situations over the generalizations derived from them. In this volume, an international group of senior scholars comes together to consider the use of cases to produce empirical knowledge in premodern China. They trace the process by which the project of thinking with cases acquired a systematic and public character in the ninth century CE and after. Premodern Chinese experts on medicine and law circulated printed case collections to demonstrate efficacy or claim validity for their judgments. They were joined by authors of religious and philosophical texts. The rhetorical strategies and forms of argument used by all of these writers were allied with historical narratives, exemplary biographies, and case examples composed as aids to imperial statecraft.

The innovative and productive explorations gathered here present a coherent set of interlocking arguments that will be of interest to comparativists as well as specialists on premodern East Asia. For China scholars, they examine the interaction of different fields of learning in the late imperial period, the relationship of evidential reasoning and literary forms, and the philosophical frameworks that linked knowledge to experience and action. For comparativists, the essays bring China into a global conversation about the methodologies of the human sciences.

Contributors: Chu Honglam, Charlotte Furth, Hsiung Ping-chen, Jiang Yonglin, Yasuhiko Karasawa, Robert Sharf, Pierre-Étienne Will, WuYanhong, Judith T. Zeitlin.

Author / Editor information

Contributor: Judith T. Zeitlin Judith T. Zeitlin is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and the Committee on Theater and Performance Studies at the University of Chicago. She is the author of Performing Images: Opera in Chinese Visual Culture (2014) and Thinking with Cases: Specialist Knowledge in Chinese Cultural History (2007), as well as other writings.

Reviews

[This] book is a China historian’s dream, and would be an ideal textbook for a graduate course on the rich array of themes and sources for the history of late-imperial China.

Topics

  • Publicly Available

    Frontmatter

    i
    Download PDF
  • Publicly Available

    Contents

    v
    Download PDF
  • Publicly Available

    Note on Citations and Abbreviations

    vii
    Download PDF
  • Publicly Available

    Foreword

    ix
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Introduction :Thinking with Cases

    1
    charlotte furth
    Download PDF
  • PART 1: THE CASE IN LAW
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    1 .Satisfying Both Sentiment and Law: Fairness-Centered Judicial Reasoning as Seen in Late Ming Casebooks

    31
    Jiang yonglin and Wu yanhong
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    2. Developing Forensic Knowledge through Cases in the Qing Dynasty

    62
    pierre tienne will
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    3 ,From Oral Testimony to Written Records in Qing Legal Cases

    101
    yasuhiko Karasawa
    Download PDF
  • PART 2: MEDICAL CASE HISTORIES
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    4. Producing Medical Knowledge through Cases: History, Evidence, and Action

    125
    charlotte furth
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    5. Facts in the Tale: Case Records and Pediatric Medicine in Late Imperial China

    152
    ping-chen Hsiung
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    6. The Literary Fashioning of Medical Authority: A Study of Sun Yikui’s Case Histories

    169
    judith t. zeitlin
    Download PDF
  • PART 3 :THE CASE IN RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    7. How to Think with Chan Gong’an

    205
    robert h. sharf
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    8. Confucian ‘‘Case Learning’’: The Genre of Xue’an Writings

    244
    Hung-lam Chu
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Appendix: Printed Sources Discussed in This Volume

    274
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Character Glossary

    277
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Bibliography

    289
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Contributors

    317
    Download PDF
  • Requires Authentication Unlicensed
    Licensed

    Index

    321
    Download PDF

Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
February 12, 2018
eBook ISBN:
9780824865184
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
View content
https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824865184
eBook ISBN: 9780824865184
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
Downloaded on 30.4.2026 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9780824865184/html?lang=en
Scroll to top button