The two chapters in this thematic part were written by historians who share both an interest in the symbolic dimensions of Chinese politics and a common concern with the central role that appeals to the past can play in contemporary struggles for power. In their efforts to place the rhetoric and actions of 1989 in perspective, the authors introduce many historical events (such as the May Fourth Movement of 1919) and theoretical concepts (such as the notion of "civil society") that will figure prominently in later chapters by other contributors. The chapters in Part 1 also provide concrete illustrations that help to flesh out several of the general points raised in the preceding Introduction, including the suggestion that China specialists can learn a great deal from the approach to the study of political culture adopted by historians of the French Revolution. Young's discussion of the extent to which revolutionaries define their cause in opposition to an image of the "ancien régime" that they themselves have helped to craft fits in well with the arguments presented in some of the works on 1789 mentioned below in our list of supplementary materials, and the same is true of Esherick and Wasserstrom's discussion of political theater and political ritual.
Recommended Supplementary Materials for Classroom Use
Scholarship on China: Contemporary Politics
Bergere, Marie-Claire. "Tiananmen 1989: Background and Consequences." In Marta Dassu and Tony Saich, eds., The Reform Decade in China: From Hope to Dismay. London: Kegan Paul International, 1990, pp. 132-150. A brief summary of the social, cultural, economic, and political factors leading up to the protest and repression of 1989, by one of France's pre-eminent China specialists.
Pieke, Frank. "The Ordinary and the Extraordinary: An Anthropological Analysis of Chinese Life and Protest in the Reform Era" (doctoral dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1991). A detailed participant-observer account, which emphasizes the ritualized aspects of mass action and the connections between patterns of protest and patterns of daily life.
Pye, Lucian. "Tiananmen and Chinese Political Culture: The Escalation of Confrontation from Moralizing to Rage." Asian Survey, vol. 30, no. 4 (1990), pp. 331-347. An assessment of the events leading up to the massacre of early June, by a leading China specialist whose approach to political culture is quite different than that which informs this volume.
Wagner, Rudolph. "Political Institutions, Discourse, and Imagination in China at Tiananmen." In Jon Manor, ed., Rethinking Third World Politics. London: Longman, 1991, pp. 121-144. A study of the symbolic dimensions of the events of 1989 by one of Germany's leading China specialists; parts of it complement the arguments presented here.
Zweig, David. "Peasants and Politics." World Policy Journal (Fall 1989), pp. 633-645. Zweig analyzes the impact that the urban protests of 1989 had on the inhabitants of the Chinese countryside and rural responses to the massacre.
Scholarship on China: Historical Perspectives
Huang, Philip C. C., et al. Symposium "Public Sphere"/"Civil Society" in China? A special issue of Modern China, vol. 19, no. 2 (1993). A series of interconnected essays by six social scientists and historians, each of whom advances a different view concerning the perils and possibilities of using the terms in question as lenses through which to examine China's past and present.
Israel, John. "Reflections on 'Reflections on the Modern Chinese Student Movement.'" In the first edition of Wasserstrom and Perry, Popular Protest and Political Culture in Modern China . Boulder: Westview Press, 1992, pp. 85-108. An analysis of China's long tradition of campus activism; ends with comments that place 1989 within the broad historical framework provided by the main body of the essay.
MacFarquhar, Roderick. "Epilogue: The Onus of Unity." In Roderick MacFarquhar and John K. Fairbank, eds., The Cambridge History of China , Volume 15: The People's Republic of China, Part 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 875-881. A concise effort to place the events of 1989 into a broad historical perspective, in which MacFarquhar focuses on the emphasis Chinese political leaders of different eras have placed on the need for national unity; he also highlights the contrasting leadership styles of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.
Madsen, Richard. "The Countryside Under Communism." In Roderick MacFarquhar and John K. Fairbank, eds., The Cambridge History of China , Volume 15: The People's Republic of China, Part 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 619-681. Madsen surveys aspects of rural life, including the nature of village rituals, that have and have not changed since 1949; the work of a sociologist deeply concerned with cultural issues.
Nathan, Andrew J. Chinese Democracy. New York: Knopf, 1985. A survey of democratic thought and action from the late nineteenth century up through the Democracy Wall protests of the late 1970s.
Comparative Works and Case Studies of Other Countries
Davis, Natalie. Society and Culture in Early Modern France. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975. A collection of essays by a leading figure associated with both the development of the "new" social history and the "new" cultural history; many of the pieces focus on the ritualized and theatrical aspects of riots and other types of collective action.
Furet, François, Keith Michael Baker, and Colin Lucas, eds. The French Revolution and the Creation of Modern Political Culture , Three Volumes. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1987, 1988, and 1989. A collection of topical essays on everything from the changing meanings of specific terms (such as "ancien régime" and "revolution") to the evolution of key institutions (such as the National Assembly); the collection includes chapters by each of the co-editors and many other leading scholars of the French Revolution.
Hunt, Lynn. "The Sacred in the French Revolution." In Jeffrey Alexander, ed., Durkheimian Sociology: Cultural Studies . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 25-43. A concise survey of the symbolic struggles and ritual acts that accompanied and helped shape the course of the French Revolution.
Lukes, Steven. "Political Ritual and Social Integration." Sociology, vol. 9, no. 2 (1975), pp. 289-308. A critical review of the literature on official ceremonials, which stresses the similarities between these events and acts of social protest.
Thompson, E. P. "Patrician Society, Plebeian Culture." Journal of Social History, vol. 7, no. 4 (1974), pp. 382-405. Thompson discusses the efficacy and limitations of the hegemony of the eighteenth-century British gentry, which depended heavily upon theatrical displays of benevolence but was continually being challenged by a "counter-theatre of threat and sedition."
Primary Sources
Barmé, Geremie, and Linda Jaivin, eds. New Ghosts, Old Dreams: Chinese Rebel Voices (New York: Times Books, 1992), Section II: "Bindings," pp. 117-212. A selection of works of fiction and essays by Chinese dissidents, past and present, who highlight the negative impact that a variety of cultural practices and structures (ranging from the binding of women's feet in earlier times, to contemporary political arrangements that constrain individual creativity) have had on the people of China.
Mao Zedong. "Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan." In Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1967), vol. 1, pp. 42-47. Along with presenting a passionate defense of a specific uprising, Mao's essay paints a vivid picture of the oppressive nature of village life in pre-Communist China.
Su Xiaokang et al. Deathsong of the River: A Reader's Guide to the Chinese TV Series Heshang . Ithaca: Cornell East Asia Series, 1991, edited by Richard W. Bodman and Pin P. Wan. The complete script of the influential miniseries of the late 1980s, which uses a variety of symbolic devices to suggest that many features of the ancien régime that the Communist Party claimed to have defeated in 1949 continue to plague contemporary China.
Part Two
CLASS, GENDER, AND IDENTITY: 1989 AS A SOCIAL MOVEMENT
Although each of the contributors to this section represents a different discipline-Perry is a political scientist, Feigon a historian, and Calhoun a sociologist-they share a common concern with the social and cultural dimensions of the collective actions that took place on the streets of China's cities in 1989. As diverse as their specific interests and approaches are, there are at least two important common threads running through these three essays. First, like the contributors to Part 1, all three of these authors are interested in the ways in which symbols and structures inherited from the past can constrain or give special meaning to contemporary struggles for change. Second, all three find the kinds of theatrical metaphors discussed in Esherick and Wasserstrom's chapter useful for describing and making sense of social movements. This is most obvious in the case of Perry's chapter, which draws attention to the contrasting types of roles that members of different social classes chose or were allowed to play in the street theater of 1989. Feigon uses dramatic imagery in a similar fashion to highlight the tendency of male students to monopolize most of the starring roles in the occupation of Tiananmen Square. Calhoun, finally, refers to scripts and performances in his analysis of the effects that participation in symbolically charged public dramas can have on the self-images of the actors involved. The supplementary materials list for this section includes everything from essays that look at the protest activities of Chinese political actors who belong to social classes other than those of primary concern here, to studies of social movements that have occurred in times and places far removed from 1989's Tiananmen Square, to theoretical works on the formation of collective identities.
Recommended Supplementary Materials for Classroom Use
Scholarship on China: Contemporary Politics
Gladney, Dru. "The People of the People's Republic: Finally in the Vanguard?" Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, vol. 12, no. 1 (Winter 1990), pp. 62-76. Gladney looks at the important roles that members of national minority groups played in the protests of 1989.
Goldstein, Carl, and Lincoln Kaye. "Get Off Our Backs." Far Eastern Economic Review, vol. 156, no. 28 (July 15, 1993), pp. 68-71. A study of the causes and forms of rural unrest in post-1989 China.
Perry, Elizabeth J. "Rural Violence in Socialist China." China Quarterly, 103 (September 1985), pp. 414-440. Perry surveys various types of village protest during the first thirty-five years of CCP rule and pays particular attention to the early 1980s.
Walder, Andrew G., and Gong Xiaoxia. "Workers in the Tiananmen Protests: The Politics of the Beijing Workers' Autonomous Federation." Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, 29 (January 1993), pp. 1-30. A study of the activities of one of the most important nonstudent organizations involved in the struggles of 1989.
Watson, James L. "The Renegotiation of Chinese Cultural Identity in the Post-Mao Era: An Anthropological Perspective." In Kenneth Lieberthal et al., eds., Perspectives on Modern China: Four Anniversaries . Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1991, pp. 364-386. Watson traces the changing forms through which a sense of national identity is cultivated, expressed, and contested in the PRC; his work also appeared in the first edition of this book.
Scholarship on China: Historical Perspectives
Chan, Anita. Children of Mao: Personality Development and Political Activism in the Red Guard Generation . Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1985. Chan analyzes the socialization and political activities of those who came of age during the early years of the Cultural Revolution.
Chesneaux, Jean, ed. Popular Movements and Secret Societies in China, 1840-1950 . Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972. A collection of essays by leading specialists from several countries; includes discussion of a wide range of different types of urban and rural protests.
Kazuko, Ono. Chinese Women in a Century of Revolution, 1850-1950 . Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989. A survey that includes chapters detailing female involvement in social movements ranging from the Taiping Uprising of the mid-nineteenth century to the land reform campaigns of the 1940s.
Rawski, Evelyn. "The Social Agenda of May Fourth." In Kenneth Lieberthal et al., eds., Perspectives on Modern China: Four Anniversaries . Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1991, pp. 139-157. An analysis of New Culture Movement activists' attempts to create a "new citizen" through efforts aimed at promoting mass literacy, doing away with inequalities related to class and gender, and changing China's family system; ends with a comparison of those aspects of the agenda that have and have not been realized in the PRC and the Republic of China on Taiwan.
Strand, David. Rickshaw Beijing: City People and Politics in the 1920s . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. A study of urban life and social protest in China's capital, which pays particular attention to alliances and tensions between different social groups.
Comparative Works and Case Studies of Other Countries
Bourdieu, Pierre. "What Makes a Social Class? On the Theoretical and Practical Existence of Groups." Berkeley Journal of Sociology, vol. 32 (1987), pp. 1-17. An essay on the contested nature of group identities; adapted from a public lecture given in the United States by one of France's leading cultural theorists.
Kruks, Sonia, et al., eds. Promissory Notes: Women in the Transition to Socialism . New York: Monthly Review Press, 1989. A collection of essays on the roles women have played in twentieth-century revolutions occurring in various parts of the world, and the way state socialist regimes have come to terms with the "woman question" after gaining power; the book includes pieces on China by Christina Gilmartin, Marilyn B. Young, and Delia Davin.
Lipset, Seymour, and Philip Altbach, eds. Students in Revolt . Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969. A collection of essays on campus activism in the United States and a variety of other countries; includes an essay on China by historian John Israel.
Tilly, Charles. From Mobilization to Revolution . Reading, Mass.: Addison and Wesley, 1978. Tilly's general introduction to various approaches to the study of social movements; the book includes a chapter outlining his influential conceptualization of "repertoires" of collective action.
Tilly, Louise. "Gender, Women's History, and Social History." Social Science History, 13:4 (Winter 1989), pp. 439-462. Tilly looks at strategies for engendering the study of revolutions, including particular focus on the roles women play in social protests, and also refers to the gendered dimensions of revolutionary rhetoric and symbolism.
Primary Sources
Honig, Emily, and Gail Hershatter. Personal Voices: Chinese Women in the 1980s . Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. This work contains translations from contemporary newspaper and magazine articles that deal with the gendered dimensions of subjects ranging from courtship to domestic violence and includes analytical introductions by two leading specialists in Chinese women's history.
Long Bow Film Group. " Small Happiness ." This documentary film uses interviews with the inhabitants of a Chinese village to explore the changing status of women since 1949, the impact of the economic reforms of the early 1980s, and the shifting senses of individual and group identity in the countryside.
Perry, Elizabeth J., and Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, eds., Shanghai Social Movements, 1919-1949, a special double-issue of Chinese Studies in History (Fall-Winter 1993-94). This work contains translations of memoirs, scholarly articles, and speeches by Chinese authors who participated in and/or are students of the campus unrest and labor strikes of the Republican era.
Part Three
POPULAR CULTURE AND THE POLITICS OF ART
Each of the previous thematic parts has contained chapters that refer to the important roles that specific creative works, ranging from portraits of Chairman Mao to films such as He Shang (River Elegy), have played in recent Chinese political struggles. The two chapters in Part 3, the first contributions to this volume by scholars who specialize in the study of the arts, expand and enlarge upon this topic in important ways. Art historian Tsao Tsing-yuan's essay is an eyewitness account of the creation and display of one of the most famous symbols of the protests of 1989-the Goddess of Democracy statue-to which earlier chapters (such as Feigon's) have already referred. The second piece, by literary specialist Jones, focuses on the ways in which contemporary Chinese rock music can function as either a transmitter of dissent (a function that Calhoun has already highlighted in Chapter 4) or as a genre through which much more ambiguous political messages are voiced. When taken together, the two chapters in Part 3 draw attention not only to the politicized nature of artistic creation but also to the fascinating and often chaotic eclecticism of form and content that characterizes the Chinese art scene. The statue that Tsao describes, after all, was visually reminiscent of socialist realist icons, traditional representations of Chinese deities, and Western goddess figures such as the Statue of Liberty, and its display was an act of patriotic performance art that included the playing of a work by Beethoven. That a similar eclecticism can be found within the realm of popular music is illustrated by the references Jones makes to groups whose members alternate between strumming electric guitars and playing instruments associated with ancient China, and who combine an interest in contemporary styles with a penchant for historical allusions and group names (such as "Tang Dynasty") that are clearly meant to evoke memories of the distant past. The supplementary materials listed below range from case studies of other artistic genres, to works on the connections between art and politics under other state socialist regimes, to general collections of essays on Chinese popular culture.
Recommended Supplementary Materials for Classroom Use
Scholarship on China: Contemporary Politics
Barmé, Geremie. "Wang Shuo and Liumang ('Hooligan') Culture." Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, vol. 28 (July 1992), pp. 23-64. An essay on the satirical dimensions of an iconoclastic contemporary writer, whose works of fiction are widely read in their original form and also have served as the basis for several popular films.
Davis, Deborah, et al., eds. Urban Spaces in Contemporary China . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming. A conference volume on city life, which includes several chapters on Part 3's theme of the role of art in politics and culture; these include essays that deal with the economic side of artistic creation, the avant-garde scene, contemporary poetry, and the usefulness of the concept of a "velvet prison" developed by Miklos Haraszti (whose work is hereinafter cited under "Comparative Works") for understanding the relationship between Chinese artists and the state.
Lee, Benjamin, and Leo Ou-fan Lee. "The Goddess of Democracy Deconstructed." New Perspectives Quarterly, vol. 6, no. 3 (1989), pp. 58-61. An essay that uses the famous statue as the starting point for a brief but wide-ranging discussion of the symbolism of the events of 1989.
Wu Hung. "Tiananmen Square: A History of Monuments." Representations, no. 25 (Summer 1991), pp. 84-117. A study of the architectural history and statuary of this famous square, which includes a discussion of the Goddess of Democracy that complements and builds upon Tsao's eyewitness account.
Yang, Mayfair. "Of Gender, State Censorship, and Overseas Capital: An Interview with Director Zhang Yimou." Public Culture, vol. 5, no. 2 (Winter 1993), pp. 297-313. A wide-ranging conversation between an anthropologist and the director of several widely acclaimed and controversial recent films.
Scholarship on China: Historical Perspectives
Chow, Rey. Woman and Chinese Modernity: The Politics of Reading Between East and West . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991. A work on literary and cinematic texts dealing with China, which draws upon theories associated with feminism and postmodernism to explore issues ranging from Western views of China to the way female writers such as Ding Ling deal with issues of gender and power.
Johnson, David, et al., eds. Popular Culture in Late Imperial China . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. A multidisciplinary collection of essays on topics ranging from the texts used by popular religious sects during the Qing era, to the rise of mass journalism just before and immediately after the 1911 Revolution.
Kraus, Richard C. Pianos and Politics in China: Middle-Class Values and the Struggle over Western Music . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. A study that draws attention to the cultural and political connotations of imported musical genres in twentieth-century China.
Link, Perry, et al., eds. Unofficial China: Popular Culture and Thought in the People's Republic . Boulder: Westview Press, 1989. A multidisciplinary collection of essays on historical themes ranging from peasant operas of the pre-1949 era to Cultural Revolution fiction; also includes chapters on more contemporary themes.
Widmer, Ellen, and David Der-wei Wang, eds. From May Fourth to June Fourth: Fiction and Film in Twentieth-Century China . Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993. A conference volume that deals with aspects of two major genres of artistic creation during the period from 1919 to 1989.
Comparative Works and Case Studies of Other Countries
Burke, Peter. Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe . New York: Harper and Row, 1978. An influential introduction to the study of popular culture.
Chartier, Roger. "Texts, Printing, Readings." In Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989, pp. 154-175. An essay by a leading French historian who is concerned with elucidating the cultural contestations that affect the ways in which literary texts are created, distributed, and interpreted by readers; the article includes a critique of the tendency of scholars to draw sharp lines of demarcation between the "popular" and "elite" cultural realms.
Garofolo, Reebee, ed. Rockin' the Boat: Mass Music and Mass Movements . Boston: South End, 1992. A collection of essays on the political meanings of popular music in various countries.
Haraszti, Miklos. The Velvet Prison: Artists Under State Socialism . New York: Basic Books, 1987. A study of the limits placed on artistic endeavors in Soviet Bloc countries before the fall of the Berlin Wall; focuses on the deals struck between regimes and artists willing to forego public expressions of dissent in return for certain kinds of benefits.
Johnson, James. "Revolutionary Audiences and the Impossible Imperatives of Fraternity." In Bryant T. Ragan, Jr., and Elizabeth A. Williams, eds., Re-Creating Authority in Revolutionary France . New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992, pp. 57-78. Examines the politicization of various forms of artistic expression during the French Revolution.
Primary Sources
Barnstone, Tony, ed. Out of the Howling Storm: The New Chinese Poetry . Hanover, N.H.: Wesleyan University Press, 1993. Translations of poems by a variety of writers associated with the "misty" (menglongshi) school of poets and other groups.
Chen Kaige. Yellow Earth. A provocative and controversial film by one of China's leading directors (now living in exile); the film looks in part at the efforts the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) made before 1949 to adapt popular culture forms (in this case folksongs) to serve specific political goals.
Fraser, Stewart, ed. 100 Great Chinese Posters . New York: Images Graphique, 1977. Color reproductions of propaganda posters from the first three decades of CCP rule; most might best be classified as works of "socialist realism" with Chinese characteristics.
Part Four
CULTURAL DILEMMAS AND POLITICAL ROLES OF THE INTELLIGENTSIA
The three contributors to this section are all historians whose work to date has tended to focus on three very different types of intellectuals. Schwarcz is best known for her studies of radicals who came of age during the May Fourth Movement but later had trouble reconciling themselves to ruling parties that claimed to be committed to the goals of that struggle. Cheek's previous publications have usually focused on the lives and activities of propagandists and other "establishment intellectuals" who have been ready and willing to serve the needs of Chinese Leninist regimes, at least up to a point. And MacKinnon has written a great deal about various Chinese and Western journalists whose lives became entwined with (and whose writings shaped popular images of) the Revolution. Building on their earlier studies, the chapters these three authors contribute here use discussion of the politics of public and private memory, the ties between intellectuals and the state, and the relationship between Chinese and foreign journalists, respectively, to place the contemporary predicaments of the intelligentsia into historical perspective. The supplementary materials in the list that follows range from works that examine the views of specific intellectual figures involved in the events of 1989 to theoretical and comparative works that focus on the central role that journalists and mass circulation newspapers have played in the rise of nationalism and the outbreak of revolution in various parts of the world.
Recommended Supplementary Materials for Classroom Use
Scholarship on China: Contemporary Politics
Barmé, Geremie. "Travelling Heavy: The Intellectual Baggage of the Chinese Diaspora." Problems of Communism (January-April 1991), pp. 94-112. A discussion of 1989 that highlights the views of Liu Xiaobo and other intellectuals who were critical of the Deng regime but were also wary of or explicitly criticized certain features of the mass movement.
Bonnin, Michel, and Yves Chevrier. "The Intellectual and the State: Social Dynamics of Intellectual Autonomy during the Post-Mao Era." China Quarterly, 127 (September 1991), pp. 569-613. An essay on the changing relations between the intelligentsia and the Deng regime up to and immediately after 1989.
Dirlik, Arif, and Maurice Meisner, eds. Marxism and the Chinese Experience . Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1989. A multidisciplinary collection that includes works on both historical and contemporary topics; some of the chapters most relevant to Part 4 include an essay on the work of a contemporary feminist literary figure (by Roxann Prazniak), and an essay that analyzes Fang Lizhi's conception of "democracy" (by Richard C. Kraus); different parts of the book could also be used effectively in conjunction with other thematic parts of this volume.
Link, Perry. Evening Chats in Beijing: Probing China's Predicament . New York: W. W. Norton, 1992. Based on extended conversations with a wide range of intellectuals, this work explores issues ranging from the most basic daily life concerns to conceptions of patriotism as seen through the eyes of Beijing academics and writers.
Schell, Orville. Discos and Democracy: China in the Throes of Reform . New York: Pantheon, 1988. A work of reportage and analysis that focuses much of its attention on the lives, writings, and public activities of prominent intellectual figures, such as Fang Lizhi, Liu Binyan, and Wang Ruowang.
Scholarship on China: Historical Perspectives
Lee, Leo Ou-fan. "Modernity and Its Discontents: The Cultural Agenda of the May Fourth Movement." In Kenneth Lieberthal et al., eds., Perspectives on Modern China: Four Anniversaries (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1991), pp. 158-177. A reconsideration of the legacy of the New Culture Movement; this article was written by a leading literary critic who has done work on everything from journalism to the fiction of Lu Xun.
Lin Yutang. A History of the Press and Public Opinion in China . New York: Greenwood, 1968-reprint of 1936 edition. A work by a leading Chinese intellectual of an earlier era; Lin touches upon issues ranging from censorship during the Nationalist era to intelligentsia petition drives that took place centuries before the Qing dynasty came to power.
Rankin, Mary. Early Chinese Revolutionaries: Radical Intellectuals in Shanghai and Chekiang, 1902-1911 . Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971. Rankin analyzes the political writings, organizational activities, and social networks of an important group of intelligentsia opponents of Qing rule.
Schwartz, Benjamin, ed. Reflections on the May 4th Movement: A Symposium . Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972. A collection of essays that explores different aspects of the New Culture Movement of the late 1910s and 1920s and the intelligentsia-led protests of 1919.
Spence, Jonathan. The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution, 1895-1980 . New York: Viking, 1981. A survey that weaves a series of life histories of prominent intellectuals into a narrative of modern Chinese history.
Comparative Works and Case Studies of Other Countries
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism . London: Verso, 1983. A study of nationalism by a political scientist deeply concerned with cultural issues; Anderson stresses, among many other things, the important roles that intellectual elites and mass circulation newspapers play in the construction of modern forms of national identity.
Bourdieu, Pierre. "The Corporatism of the Universal: The Role of Intellectuals in the Modern World." Telos (Fall 1989), pp. 99-110. An essay on the political functions of the intelligentsia by a prominent French theorist.
Havel, Vaclav, et al. The Power of the Powerless . Edited by John Keane and introduced by Steven Lukes. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1990. A series of essays by East European dissidents; many of the essays focus on the important roles that intellectuals can play in legitimating or undermining the legitimacy of state socialist regimes.
Popkin, Jeremy, and Jack Censer, eds. Media and Revolution: Comparative and Historical Perspectives . Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, forthcoming in 1994. A conference volume that includes chapters by scholars working on events ranging from the English Civil War of the seventeenth century to the Eastern European events of 1989.
Ramet, Sabrina. Social Currents in Eastern Europe: The Sources and Meaning of the Great Transformation . (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1991. Ramet includes extended discussion of intelligentsia activism in various countries during the 1980s; the book also contains chapters on topics such as rock music and feminism that could usefully be paired with chapters in other parts of this volume.
Primary Sources
Barmé, Geremie, and Linda Jaivin, eds. New Ghosts, Old Dreams: Chinese Rebel Voices . New York: Times Books, 1992, Section IV: Wheels, pp. 321-410. This work includes short essays by many of China's most important contemporary intellectual figures, ranging from astrophysicist Fang Lizhi to journalist Dai Qing, as well as a short story by novelist Chen Ruoxi.
Liu Binyan. People or Monsters? and Other Stories and Reportage from China After Mao . Edited by Perry Link. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983. A collection of pieces by China's most famous contemporary journalist.
Yue Daiyun and Carolyn Wakeman. To the Storm: The Odyssey of a Revolutionary Chinese Woman . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. The autobiography of a Chinese intellectual who lived through some of the most harrowing phases of the Chinese Revolution.
Part Five
STATE POWER AND LEGITIMACY
The two chapters in this thematic part were written by scholars who have quite different academic backgrounds and research interests: Chirot is a sociologist whose work tends to focus on regions other than East Asia; Saich is a China specialist whose training is in political science. Their contributions to this volume also concentrate on different periods: Chirot's chapter is mainly concerned with the events leading up to 1989; Saich's pays particular attention to political and cultural developments since the early June massacres that took place in Beijing and Chengdu. Despite these differences, both authors share a common interest in the methods state socialist regimes use to legitimate one-party rule, and each of their chapters argues that contests for power can only be understood if we pay close attention to factors that defy simple quantification, such as (in Chirot's case) a growing sense of moral outrage among key segments of the populace, and (in Saich's case) a change in the ruling elite's ability to control public discourse. Each author suggests in his own way that one of the most important things to watch for is signs that the regime in power is running low on what Pierre Bourdieu refers to as "symbolic capital" (a term that Saich uses and explains in his chapter and that Bourdieu himself defines clearly in his piece cited in the supplementary materials list accompanying Part 2). In addition, both Chirot and Saich are concerned with identifying the conditions that allow subordinated groups to act publicly upon the shared grievances that James Scott refers to as subversive "hidden transcripts" (see his book in the following supplementary materials list). Then, finally, the chapters here in Part 5 each contain arguments that have relevance for ongoing debates within the field of revolutionary studies, because (as the collections of essays edited by Nikki Keddie and Jack Goldstone in the following list illustrate) participants in these debates have recently begun to pay a great deal of attention to the relative importance of state structures and symbolic struggles in precipitating or shaping the course of social revolutions.
Recommended Supplementary Materials for Classroom Use
Scholarship on China: Contemporary Politics
Anagnost, Ann. "Socialist Ethics and the Legal System." In the first edition of Wasserstrom and Perry, Popular Protest and Political Culture in Modern China . Boulder: Westview Press, 1992, pp. 177-205. A study of the power of the Chinese state; the study uses discussion of village compacts to analyze ideological practice and the control of discourse in the era of Deng Xiaoping.
Brook, Timothy. Quelling the People: The Military Suppression of the Beijing Democracy Movement . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. A detailed account of the activities of the People's Liberation Army during the period leading up to and including the Beijing and Chengdu massacres of early June.
Friedman, Edward, et al. Chinese Village, Socialist State . New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. A study of rural politics by a multidisciplinary team of scholars; Friedman et al. emphasize the process through which local inhabitants came to lose faith in and feel victimized by the state apparatus controlled by the CCP.
Nathan, Andrew J., Lowell Dittmer, and Andrew G. Walder. "Tiananmen 1989: A Symposium." Problems of Communism (September-October 1989). Essays on 1989 by three prominent American China specialists, each of whom is concerned with issues of state power and legitimacy.
Shue, Vivienne. The Reach of the State: Sketches of the Chinese Body Politic . Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. A series of interconnected essays on the contours of state power in contemporary China.
Scholarship on China: Historical Perspectives
Duara, Prasenjit. Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942 . Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. Duara argues that, despite the chaos that has generally been seen as characterizing the era, this period was one of state-building as well; the work also includes discussion of the "cultural nexus of power" that empowered local elites within their home villages and connected them to central authorities.
Esherick, Joseph W., and Mary B. Rankin, eds. Chinese Local Elites and Patterns of Dominance . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. A conference volume containing detailed case studies of a wide variety of locations and periods; introductory and concluding essays by the editors take pains to place these findings into the broadest possible comparative and theoretical perspectives, highlighting issues relating to hegemony and the cultural dimensions of political power at both regional and national levels.
Watson, James L., and Evelyn S. Rawski, eds. Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. This work contains several chapters that are relevant to the arguments presented here in Part 5 and includes essays by Evelyn Rawski and Frederic Wakeman, Jr., that focus on the legitimizing functions of state funerals held to honor high-ranking political figures.
Woodside, Alexander. "Emperors and the Chinese Political System." In Kenneth Lieberthal et al., eds., Perspectives on Modern China: Four Anniversaries . Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1991, pp. 5-30. Woodside focuses on the roots of legitimacy in the imperial era and compares the symbolic position of Chinese emperors to that of European kings.
Zito, Angela. "Grand Sacrifice as Text-Performance: Writing and Ritual in Eighteenth-Century China" (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago, 1989). Zito's anthropological study of the symbolism and meaning of a key state ritual of the imperial era.
Comparative Works and Case Studies of Other Countries
Geertz, Clifford. "Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power." In Sean Wilentz, ed., The Rites of Power . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985, pp. 13-38. Geertz analyzes the crucial role that public rituals play in legitimating the power of ruling elites, even in the most seemingly secular of states.
Goldstone, Jack, ed. Revolutions: Theoretical, Comparative, and Historical Studies . San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1994. This second edition is a wide-ranging collection of readings, which includes essays by prominent contemporary theorists (including the editor and Theda Skocpol) whose models of revolution emphasize the importance of social structural factors in triggering state crises; the book contains several chapters on China and some discussion of 1989.
Keddie, Nikki, ed. The Debate on Revolutions: Theory and Practice . New York: New York University Press, forthcoming in 1994. A volume that brings together essays on revolution that first appeared in the journal Contention during the early 1990s; several of these pieces assess the extent to which various events that took place in 1989 can be interpreted as either confirming or contradicting social-structural/state-centered theories.
Scott, James C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts . New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Scott argues that even the most oppressed groups have the symbolic and tactical resources to carry out effective struggles for change, especially when a weakening of the forces of hegemony allows these groups to bring into the open and to act upon their subversive "hidden transcripts" that are kept alive in more oppressive times through secretive and often satirical forms of communication.
Sewell, William H., Jr. "Ideologies and Social Revolution: Reflections on the French Case." Journal of Modern History, vol. 57, no. 1 (1985), pp. 57-85. A critique of the materialist emphasis in Theda Skocpol's work on social revolutions; stresses the important role that symbolic and discursive struggles play in the fall of old regimes and the rise of new ones.
Primary Sources
Barmé, Geremie and John Minford, eds. Seeds of Fire: Chinese Voices of Conscience . New York: Hill & Wang, 1988, second edition. Selected writings by Chinese dissidents.
Gao Yuan. Born Red: A Chronicle of the Cultural Revolution . Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987. A memoir by a former Red Guard; Gao illustrates quite effectively how the state and its policies has affected even the most private aspects of life in the People's Republic of China.
Koppel, Ted (and ABC News). "The Koppel Report: Tragedy at Tiananmen-the Untold Story." A documentary that highlights issues relating to political legitimacy and power struggles within the Chinese elite; this report could also be used in conjunction with Part 6 of this book, because it illustrates many of the themes Wasserstrom refers to (in Chapter 13) in his discussion of the Western media's treatment of the events of 1989.
Part Six
HISTORICAL NARRATIVES AND KEY WORDS DECONSTRUCTED
For some readers, the last word in the foregoing title is likely to bring to mind the name of Jacques Derrida and other scholars associated with "deconstructionism," but neither of the contributors to this section attempts to link his arguments to that particular school of criticism: Liu does not invoke the name of any leading literary theorists in his chapter; and Wasserstrom draws most heavily upon the work of Northrop Frye, whose formalism is viewed with disdain by many of those who look to Derrida for inspiration. The term "deconstructed" (employed in the looser fashion suggested by Saich in the preceding chapter) is nonetheless an appropriate one to use in the title to this thematic part, since both contributors are concerned with deconstructing (in the literal sense of "taking apart" and examining the workings of) linguistic constructions. The constructions that interest Wasserstrom are texts that describe and analyze the meaning of the events of 1989, while the construction that concerns Liu is a single Chinese political term, "geming," a word for "Revolution" that he argues has acquired sacred properties and has become a dangerous talisman within Chinese politics. Although one author is interested in narratives and the other is concerned with the multiple uses of one key word, both share a common concern with the ways in which an approach to politics that is based on separating all actors into saints and demons distorts our understanding of historical reality. The following supplementary materials list includes works that look at narratives and key words that have figured prominently in other stages of the Chinese Revolution. The list also contains studies that showcase or critique other kinds of approaches to political narratives and sacred symbols, including those that draw upon various types of feminist theory or some form of postmodernist analysis.
Recommended Supplementary Materials for Classroom Use
Scholarship on China: Contemporary Politics
Chow, Rey. "Violence in the Other Country: China as Crisis, Spectacle, and Woman." In Chandra Mohanty et al., eds., Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. An essay that uses media coverage of 1989 as a starting point for a discussion that addresses a variety of issues, including the tendency for Westerners to treat China as a feminized "other" to their own societies.
Schoenhals, Michael. Doing Things with Words in Chinese Politics . Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1992. A series of essays on CCP rhetoric and propaganda that focus on the way language serves as a mechanism of political control in mainland China.
Solomon, Andrew. "Their Irony, Humor (and Art) Can Save China: Zhang Peili Washes a Chicken, Song Shuangsong Cuts His Hair, and Other Acts of Avant-Garde Terrorism." New York Times Magazine (December 18, 1993), pp. 42-51, 66, and 70-72. An essay on the contemporary art scene, which draws attention to the difficulty Westerners often have interpreting the meaning of the performances and creations they come across in China; the work also refers to the doubts some artists have about the official master narrative of the Cultural Revolution as a period when nothing good took place in China; the article includes some interesting illustrations of recent symbol-laden works of art.
Tuohy, Sue. "Cultural Metaphors and Reasoning: Folklore Scholarship and Ideology in Contemporary China." Asian Folklore Studies, vol. 50, no. 1 (1991), pp. 189-220. Tuohy looks at the ways in which folklore scholarship is used to reinforce the power of governmentally sanctioned master narratives concerning the Chinese nation; she pays particular attention to official attempts to use images of China's long history as well as its cultural "homogeneity" and "unity" to defuse tensions related to ethnic strife, regional conflicts, and other phenomena associated with diversity.
Unger, Jonathan, ed. Using the Past to Serve the Present: Historiography and Politics in Contemporary China . Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1993. A multidisciplinary collection of essays that deal with issues ranging from the political implications of contemporary historical dramas, to the ways in which more formal types of historical writing (such as official histories of the CCP) are used to serve factional ends; Unger includes several chapters (by Geremie Barmé, Ralph Crozier, and Rudolph Wagner among others) that could also be read in conjunction with Parts 3, 4, and 5 of this book that focus on issues of artistic creation, the roles of the intelligentsia, and state power.
Scholarship on China: Historical Perspectives
Barlow, Tani. "Theorizing Woman: Funu, Guojia, Jiating [Chinese Women, Chinese State, Chinese Family]." Genders, vol. 10 (Spring 1990), pp. 132-160.
Duara, Prasenjit. "De-Constructing the Chinese Nation." Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, 30 (July 1993), pp. 1-28.
Fitzgerald, John. "The Irony of the Chinese Revolution: The Nationalists and Chinese Society, 1923-1927." In idem., ed., The Nationalists and Chinese Society, 1923-1937: A Symposium. Melbourne: University of Melbourne Press, 1989, pp. 13-43. An essay that uses many of the same concepts discussed by Wasserstrom in Chapter 13 of this volume to analyze the tales told about an earlier series of revolutionary events.
Wasserstrom, Jeffrey N. and Sue Tuohy, eds. Indiana East Asian Working Paper Series on Language and the Politics in Modern China . Bloomington: Indiana University East Asian Studies Center. A multidisciplinary series of studies that presents findings associated with a project on the "Keywords of the Chinese Revolution" that is being funded primarily by the National Endowment for the Humanities; to date, several papers have appeared, including an essay on Cultural Revolution vulgarities by Elizabeth Perry and Li Xun, and a discussion of the perils of translation between Chinese and other languages by Joshua Fogel.
Wolf, Margery. A Thrice-Told Tale: Feminism, Postmodernism, and Ethnographic Responsibility . Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992. This work presents three different types of accounts of a single incident, which Wolf observed while doing fieldwork in Taiwan, as the basis for a critical discussion of a wide range of theoretical issues relating to social-scientific method and textual analysis.
Comparative Works and Case Studies of Other Countries
Anderson, Benedict R. Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia . Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990. A study of the linguistic dimensions of political authority; this book has implications for the study of countries very far removed in time and space from contemporary Indonesia.
Hobsbawm, Eric, and Terence Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. A collection of essays by specialists who not only are interested in geographic areas ranging from Africa to Wales but who share a common interest in the uses rulers and their opponents make of symbolically charged public rituals that are "invented" at specific moments in time (often to serve specific nationalist or class-based purposes), and yet derive much of their power from their ability to appear rooted in the distant past.
Hunt, Lynn. Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution . Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. A study of the events leading up to and following 1789, which focuses much of its attention on the changing meanings of political terms and symbols; that includes discussion of the relevance of Northrop Frye's work for historians concerned with revolutionary change.
Scott, Joan W. Gender and the Politics of History . New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. A series of interconnected essays, many of which focus on issues relating to political symbolism; some sections argue for the value that some features of Derrida's work has for feminist historians.
Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983, revised edition. An influential study by a Marxist literary critic; Williams draws attention to the way in which Western understandings of centrally important terms (such as "democracy") were transformed during the Industrial Revolution.
Primary Sources
Chesneaux, Jean, ed. The People's Comic Book . Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press, 1973. Translations of People's Republic of China comic books dealing with historical and political themes; Chesneaux's collection gives a clear picture of both the fetishization of revolutionary valor (discussed hereinafter by Liu Xiaobo in Chapter 14) and the "romantic" nature of most CCP historical narratives (referred to hereinafter by Wasserstrom in Chapter 13).
Lu Xun. Diary of a Madman and Other Stories . Translated by William Lyell. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990. A collection of fictional works by China's most important and iconoclastic modern writer; see especially "Ah Q-The Real Story" (pp. 101-172), which focuses on the events of 1911 and draws attention to the confusion that reigned at that time among many over what exactly it meant to call oneself a "revolutionary."
Zou Rong. The Revolutionary Army: A Chinese Nationalist Tract of 1903 . Translated and introduced by John Lust. Paris: Mouton, 1968. A work by a famous revolutionary martyr; it is perhaps the first clear attempt to imbue the Chinese word geming with talismanic properties; Zou's edition contains useful extended critical footnotes on the meanings of specific Chinese terms at this point in history.
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