内容简介：
The centre may hold, but borders can fray. In the early twentieth century, the threat of imperialism loomed large in the Sino-Tibetan borderlands, bringing China’s frontier to the heart of political debates about the future of the country.
Frontier Fieldwork explores the work of social scientists, agriculturists, photographers, students, and missionaries who took to the field on China’s southwestern border at a time when foreign political powers were contesting China’s claims over its frontiers. While other nations extended their authority using military power, China employed fieldworkers to undertake a nation-building exercise by uniting a disparate, multi-ethnic population at the periphery of the country. Their presence there raised crucial questions about the meaning of China at a time when border areas were far removed from the minds of the vast majority of the population. Ultimately, the fieldworkers saw themselves as a vanguard force, foreshadowing the policies of social development and intervention that would be pursued during the Cold War decades later.
Drawing on both Chinese and Western materials, Andres Rodriguez exposes the transformative power of the fieldworkers’ efforts, which went beyond creating new forms of political action and identity. His incisive study demonstrates that despite a range of agendas, fieldworkers converged to issue a rallying call that placed China’s margins at the centre of its nation-making process and race to modernity.
Historians, anthropologists, and scholars of Asian studies and borderland studies will find this engaging work an indispensable contribution to their libraries.
书籍目录：
Introduction
1 Soldiers and Scholars on the Frontier
2 Missionary Explorers in the Field: The West China Border Research Society, 1922–37
3 Frontier Fever: Reporting from the Field
4 Chinese Anthropologists at War: Frontier Reconstruction in the Field, 1937–45
5 Service in the Field: Wartime Students and the Frontier, 1940–45
Conclusion
Glossary
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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