The Social Life of Inkstones Read Along: Introduction

[forestofglory]

Welcome to the first post of our read a long of The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China by Dorothy Ko! For this post we are reading the introduction.

Since this the introduction to the book, I thought it might be nice for us to introduce ourselves, so here are some optional discussion questions:

1. What do you hope to get out of reading this book? What do you hope to get out of the read a long format?

2. What is your experience reading academic history books? (No experience necessary of course, but it's helpful for me to know for planning purposes)

3. What is your experience using an inkstone or writing languages that historically where written with inkstones?

4. In the introduction what did you find interesting and/or exciting?

Comments

[theladyscribe]

What was the author's goal in writing? Did they succeed in the way they chose to present their writing?

I took a research methods class in grad school that asked these questions and also emphasized looking at how the writer came to their conclusions (ie, what sources they used and how they used them). That's something I always keep an eye out for in the intros and acknowledgements. Ko doesn't go into her methods in detail in the intro, though she does mention that her research was very hands-on, so I'm curious to see if we get more information on that aspect of it as the book progresses.

[rhysiana]

Yes, I'm very interested in learning more about how she chose to approach it! (It's always so interesting to get little glimpses of the extremely niche arguments happening in an academic field about what is and is not worthy of study, or what methodology should be considered best. I once went to a lunch talk by a history prof about his new book, the translation of a small-town Japanese man's diary, and he spent 90% of the time defending the continued study of diaries and other first-person accounts rather than telling us about his actual book.)

[forestofglory]

I think Francesca Bray and Dorothy Ko are having an argument like that! At least Bray has lot to say about Ko's work in her book, and Ko has cited Bray here as having a very broad view of what "technology" is

[rhysiana]

Ooooh, academic drama!

[xmarksthespotwhereistand]

The way she talks about it, makes one think we should also create an inkstone through the course of this read along.

[forestofglory]

I would love to make and inkstone! It looks like it takes a lot of skill though