台灣孩子的身世之謎──專訪中研院社會所助研究員陳志柔

Unraveling His Mystery as a Son of Taiwan: an Interview with Dr. Chen, Chih-jou, Assistant Research Fellow, Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica

In the following article, Dr. Chen, Chih-jou shares with us his undergraduate life, and what later motivated him to enter the field of China studies. Since college, Dr. Chen has been very enthusiastic in social issues and public affairs. He was not only active in participating student movements but also keen on pursuing knowledge to help clarifying his thoughts and guiding his conducts. In the era of Taiwan's democratization and Taiwan's facing constant challenges from China, Dr. Chen developed his research interest in contemporary Chinese society when he was studying for his Ph.D degree at Duke University in 1991-97. When he first landed in China and entered rural villages for fieldwork, he was intrigued by how different it appeared from where he came from. Then he began to study what constituted the relationship between the peasants and their leaders, and what the power was that shaped the peasants' life styles. He found that though under the state authority and the local officials' surveillance, rural villages had a kind of grass-rooted social force leading to where it intended to reach, that is, their social networks and the local institutions. Such fieldwork not only had allowed Dr. Chen to annex his academic specialties in the problems of rural villages and local institutions, but also had brought Dr. Chen a distinctive life experience.