The Sung Dynasty (960-1278) was a time of vast changes and new challenges in China. The growth of the urban and rural economics, population increase, the emergence of an educated elite, political and intellectual ferment, and threats from hostile neighbors are some of the forces that shaped the age. How did Sung statesmen and thinkers view the relation of state and society and the role of political action in solving society’s ills? The essays in Ordering the World explore contemporary ideas underlying policies, programs, and institutions of the period and examine attitudes toward history and sources of authority. Their findings have important implications for our understanding of the neo-Confucian movement in Sung history and of the Sung in the history of Chinese ideas about politics and social action.
Contents:
Introduction by Conrad Schirokauer and Robert P. Hymes
Su Hsun’s Pragmatic Statecraft, by George Hatch
State Power and Economic Activism during the New Policies, 1068-1085, by Paul J. Smith
Government, Society, and State, by Peter K. Bol
Chu Hsi’s Sense of History, by Conrad Schirokauer
Community and Welfare, by Richard von Glahn
Charitable Estates as an Aspect of Statecraft in Southern Sung China, by Linda Walton
Moral Duty and Self-Regulating Process in Southern Sung Views of Famine Relief, by Robert P. Hymes
The Historian as Critic, by John W. Chaffee
Wei Liao-weng’s Thwarted Statecraft, by James T. C. Liu
Chen Te-hsiu and Statecraft, by Wm. Theodore de Bary
This title is part of UC Press’s Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1993.
