Call for Papers: The Social History of the People’s Republic of China

For sinologists and scholars of China alike, a question that has long lingered at the center of their intellectual inquiry is: What is China? The more rigorously this question is pursued as if it were a problem in the natural sciences, the more its answer appears — at least in part — to resemble what the Avataṃsaka Sūtra calls the “unsayable,” or Wittgenstein’s proposition that “what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence,” or Tao Yuanming’s insight that “there is a true meaning here, but when I try to express it, the words have already been forgotten.” In other words, the question persistently eludes any definitive or absolute resolution.

This elusiveness stems from the fact that Chinese society has been continuously reproduced through history while simultaneously undergoing constant transformation. When people of different regional accents, social backgrounds, occupations, and identities interact in specific contexts, they are not only shaped by Chinese society but also actively participate in its ongoing reconstitution. Under such conditions, to study China primarily through the lens of a single discipline is to impose a particular set of “rules of the game” upon an inherently “unsayable” object of inquiry, thereby abstracting it from lived contexts and producing conceptual or theoretical mirages grounded more in disciplinary conventions than in social reality. In this sense, a fully discipline-oriented perspective makes it ever more difficult to conduct research on China that offers either explanatory capacity or critical depth.

From the following three dimensions, this special issue seeks to be a modest intervention that brings the study of China back to the concrete contexts from which it emerges, in order to unsettle the confusions and biases generated by disciplinary languages, methodological rules, or various forms of academic hegemony.

We particularly invite contributions that shift the analytical focus from elite-centered narratives to first-person or close-to-the-ground perspectives on the history of the People’s Republic of China, engaging with lived experiences shaped by occupations, social strata, or identities that are often difficult to access. Our interest lies in understanding what actually transpired in the PRC since its founding—especially before, or in the early stages of, the Reform and Opening period. The subjects of such studies may include central or local officials who once governed a region or a field, rightist intellectuals or technocratic cadres whose political fortunes rose and fell in the course of successive political campaigns, activists who struggled for a more ideal vision of Chinese society, police officers and soldiers stationed in China’s borderlands or ethnic minority regions, athletes representing China in international competitions, or nationally recognized model workers laboring on factory floors. We welcome submissions that examine all aspects of Chinese society and everyday life since 1949, with particular emphasis on the period since the Reform and Opening Up. We also hope that contributions on diverse topics will, at the conceptual, theoretical, or methodological level, seek to unsettle the confusions and biases generated by disciplinary languages, methodological rules, or various forms of academic hegemony.

By situating these individuals within the concrete contexts of their lives, work, and interactions, we seek to explore how macro-level institutional transformations were translated into changes in micro-level practices and mentalities; how everyday social interactions reflected both the continuities and transformations of norms and moral orders in a culture shaped by Confucian Daoist, Legalist, and other traditions; and how the tension between front-stage performances and backstage reflections revealed patterns of compliance with, and resistance to, power relations. We contend that each of these individual life trajectories constitutes a distinctive and indispensable chapter in the rich and complex social history of the New China. These diverse voices from China constitute our preliminary response to the question of “what China is.” Together, we explore how diverse individual trajectories, when read in relation to one another, offer grounded and partial yet illuminating ways of approaching the enduring question of what China is.

Proposed Key Dates:

31 July 2026 — Notice of Intention Due Please submit your tentative title and a brief description (maximum 300 words) in English to three guest editors, Qiang Fu, Shoufu Yin, and Timothy Cheek with the subject line: “JCCA Special Issue Submission.”

31 August 2026 — Notifications about invitations to submit full papers Invitations to submit a full paper do not guarantee final publication, as full manuscripts will undergo the journal’s usual peer review process.

30 September 2026 — Abstract Due Please submit your (long) abstract (maximum 500 words) in English to three guest editors, Qiang Fu, Shoufu Yin, and Timothy Cheek with the subject line: “JCCA Special Issue Submission.”

30 April 2027 — Full manuscript Due

Summer 2028 — Expected Time of Publication Note: The special issue is scheduled for publication in August 2028. Individual papers will be made available online as soon as they are accepted and copyedited. JCCA is a platinum open access journal, meaning all articles are automatically open access with no charges for either authors or readers.

For more information about the journal, refer to https://journals.sagepub.com/author instructions/CCA.