150022 UE Scientific Working (Politics, Economy, Law) (M5) (2017W)

This course aims at providing the students the tools to engage with scientific research in matters of China’s social sciences, both as beneficiaries of scholarly literature (academic reading) and as active creators of new literature (academic writing).

It will first deal with academic reading, taking into examination a corpus of academic literature at the intersection between China area studies and social sciences to analyse the structure of the various typologies of material (academic articles, book chapters, monographs, book reviews) and offering methods to effectively trace down the research questions and the arguments within the articles.

The second part of the course will consider the main research methods in the field of social sciences (quantitative, qualitative), compare and contrast their efficacy and suitability with a particular focus on the challenges and constrictions imposed by the field of Chinese studies.

The reading skills gained in the first part of the course and the methodological - interpretative skills gained during the second part will be put into practice with a hands-on approach in the third part of the course, which will introduce the students to the main academic debates in the field of Chinese politics, encouraging them to take a position within these debates and to critically evaluate the pieces of literature analysed. This will be done both through group discussions held in the classroom and through the autonomous writing of a final essay.