Børge Bakken, Cand.mag, Mag.art., DPhil (Oslo)
Fellow jointly in the Division of Pacific and Asian History and in the Contemporary China Centre

Email: borge.bakken@anu.edu.au

Biographical Statement

I entered the China field as an already educated sociologist. Several years of studies and research in Chinese language and culture in Beijing during the mid-1980s opened the field for me. I have tried to widen the scope of general sociology by leaving its Western- oriented bias, and I have come to see China more and more in a historical as well as a comparative context. The Chinese experience is a challenge to the social sciences as such, and I have aimed at bringing sociology and Chinese studies closer to each other.

Research Interests

The modern history and sociology of crime and control, norms and deviance in China; particularly the development of crime and criminology in the People's Republic and the period of reform and modernisation, but in the perspective of the longue durée.

Key Publications

• Knowledge and Morality: On Educational Reforms in Today's China (Kunnskap og moral: Om utdanningsreformer i dagens Kina) (in Norwegian), Rapportserie 1, Oslo, Department of Sociology, University of Oslo, 1989.
• (ed.) Juvenile Crime During the Reforms, Chinese Sociology and Anthropology, Armonk, M.E. Sharpe, Spring 1995.
• (ed.) Migration in China, NIAS report no.31, Copenhagen, 1997.
• The Exemplary Society: Human Improvement, Social Control and the Dangers of Modernity in China, Oxford University Press, Oxford, NY, 2000.
• (ed.) Crime, Control and Policing in China (forthcoming).

Career Highlights

Research fellow, University of Oslo; Visiting fellow, Contemporary China Centre, Australian National University; Visiting Scholar, John King Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University; Visiting Scholar, Ludwig-Maximillian-Universitat, Munich; Senior researcher, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, Copenhagen.