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Concepts of space and time in traditional China : notes towards a predictive theory of culture

University of British Columbia

This thesis seeks to examine the hypothesis that states that social organization is based on discernable and limited patterns of order, specifically culture-bound definitions of space and time. It suggests that concepts of space and time, once defined by a culture group, may remain relatively constant through long periods of culture change in other areas and, once defined, can be used by the student of culture to describe more adequately many areas of socio-cultural behavior. It pursues this thesis through an examination of some traditional Chinese texts, extant by the time of the Han dynasty, and critical to Chinese intellectual life at least through the Ch'ing period. Having defined the principal space-time concepts through an analysis of these texts, the thesis examines their utility as descriptive tools in the analysis of other areas of Chinese culture, including postal codes, landscape painting and board games. Geographers and anthropologists concerning themselves with the concepts of location, culture and its organization, perception and related phenomena have consistently found both space and time critical to an understanding of man and his environment. Building on this research, the thesis begins with the theory that individuals interested in understanding broad categories of human organization will of necessity have recourse to specific culture-bound concepts of space and time. That is to say, any investigation of human perceptual organization relating man and his environment will uncover an innate system of co-ordinates using space and time as the definers of location and environment. Further, this thesis tests the structuralist hypothesis that, once discerned, these "metalanguages of order" can be used as descripters for other, seemingly unrelated areas of culture. This thesis is the first work to apply structural anthropological techniques to the analysis of a non-technological, literate society through the examination of historical documents. It thus provides a potential expansion of techniques heretofore limited primarily to pre-modern, "peasant" and "primitive" societies. The thesis also breaks new ground by coupling the geographer's concern for the concepts of location with the structuralist's interest in broad patterns of order. The unification of location and category provides the principal analytic tool by which specific cultural artefacts are examined. As a Sinologic exercise it is hoped these relatively modern, social scientific techniques can better explain certain heretofore anomalies in the Chinese tradition. Specifically, it seeks to describe the function of seals and colophones in Chinese art as well as the relation, noted by Scott A. Boorman, between wei-ch'i game play and military behavior. Given the experimental nature of the thesis and the relative youth of its inter-disciplinary emphasis, it diverges from the standard practice of limiting such academic exercises to a deep investigation of a narrow topic. Rather, it attempts to suggest a general framework in which future Sinologic research can pursue a similar line of reasoning and research in several areas. The case it attempts to present is thus not "de justes" but rather "prima facie".

Text

2010-02-26

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/21029

Geography

University of British Columbia

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