Author ｜
Rune Svarverud
Abstract ｜
This article addresses Chinese concepts of air quality and air pollution by applying theoretical and methodological perspectives from the field of conceptual history, arguing for the relevance of these perspectives for the study of modern conceptual change in China, particularly in the period from the 1920s to the 1970s. By analyzing terms for the perceived relationship between air and health in Chinese discourse since the 1840s, a link can be made between conceptual changes and China’s social history. Questions about air quality were first attached to ideas about modern hygiene, translated and transposed as knowledge from the West. Later smoke emissions from industry became part of the Chinese discourse on air and health, after which, in the 1970s, generic concepts of air pollution were popularized in China. With some modifications, the criteria developed as traits of modernity by Koselleck and other advocates of conceptual history are well suited to analyze conceptual shifts and modernity. This article argues that the period between the 1920s and the 1970s was a period of major conceptual transformation with regard to air and health in China and is found to demarcate a saddle period in Chinese conceptual history with regard to air pollution.
keywords ｜
air pollution, fresh air, smoke, hygiene, conceptual history