Violence, Kinship and the Early Chinese State: The Shang and Their World.

• Author: Von Falkenhausen, Lothar

Violence, Kinship and the Early Chinese State: The Shang and Their World. By RODERICK CAMPBELL. Cambridge: CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2018. Pp. xxx + 331. $99.

This is the best one-volume treatment of Shang civilization to have come out since K. C. Chang's still useful but out-of-date Shang Civilization (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1980). Campbell weaves together different strands of evidence into a multifaceted and highly original conspectus of Shang sociocultural, political, and religious realities. His mastery of the material--the vast body of archaeological finds, the notoriously difficult Oracle Bone Inscriptions, and the secondary literature in all relevant languages--is truly impressive. Equally admirable is his sophisticated handling of social and anthropological theories. Integrating textual and archaeological evidence is potentially risky, but Campbell maintains an excellent sense of balance, assuring that proper justice is done to the idiosyncrasies of each body of material.

Campbell's "Preface" briefly characterizes the source materials and explains the aims and structure of the book. In chapter 1, "Being, Society and World: Toward an Intcr-Ontic Approach," the author engages critically with the major Western authorities on the Shang. He emphasizes the need for an understanding of the Shang that is conscious of the researcher's own limitations while making a serious attempt to penetrate into the conceptual world of his/her Shang counterparts. Campbell sets his philosophical bar very high, mentioning the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Bruno Latour as his main sources of inspiration.

To characterize his approach, Campbell coins the Latin-Greek barbarism "inter-ontic." I think I understand what he means by this, and I applaud the underlying intellectual priorities; but the use of such a term (which never reappears later on in the book) diminishes the book's suitability for undergraduate reading assignments and thus stands to lessen its impact.

Chapter 2, "Cities, States, and Civilizations," reflects on the fundamental concepts that Western scholars have used in their attempts to integrate the Shang into worldwide comparative schemes. Highly critical of the previous literature, Campbell trenchantly exposes its hidden assumptions, arguing that previous theories of urbanism and state formation are all inadequate for understanding the Shang. Instead, he calls for analytical models that explain how the Shang sociopolitical...