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

[blueshiftofdeath]

Yeah!! (For anyone reading this that can't find the part I was referring to there, it was "In the field of Chinese today, so many scholars have constructed their self-images by identifying with the Song, Ming, or Qing literati that the latter's tastes and values have predominated in research agendas as in methods of study." on page 6... hopefully I didn't misunderstand it!)

It's funny to me because I have really internalized that kind of reasoning for plenty of other things, like gender/race and Western economic classes (like I'm always thinking, "well mostly middle/upper class cishet white men did these studies, so that kind of perspective is going to be assumed in most scholarship I read"), but "scholar" as a social class isn't something I'm used to having to consider. Seems like I'm going to have to get ready for a paradigm shift as we read on...

[theladyscribe]

Yes, I think you're spot-on with that read, and I'm like you - "scholar" as a class that would draw historians in wasn't something on my radar before she mentioned it! But it makes a lot of sense that modern-day scholars would be interested in historical scholars and might focus on them to the exclusion of other social groups. It also points to a common issue in historical research: most of the readily-available primary sources are going to be those from the upper/scholarly classes, since by and large they had both access to and the means to preserve their writings, both personal and more public works.