Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T01:41:39.708Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Alternative Publications, Spaces and Publics: Revisiting the Public Sphere in 20th- and 21st-century China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 June 2021

Sebastian Veg*
Affiliation:
Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) Paris, France.
Edmund W. Cheng
Affiliation:
Department of Public Policy, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China. Email: [email protected].
*
Email: [email protected] (corresponding author).

Abstract

Reviewing the extant literature on China's public sphere from the perspective of 20th-century history and social science, this introductory essay argues for the continued relevance of studying the publications and public practices associated with knowledge communities. By steering away from normative definitions and by envisaging publicness as a process, a connection can be explored between social discourses and political practices in China. Discursive communities, based on shared identity or sociability, may appear marginal, but at key moments they can play a unique role in modifying the dynamics of political events.

摘要

摘要

采纳20世纪历史和社会科学的视角,这篇导论回顾了中国公共领域的文献,指出研究出版物和知识群体的公共层面,具有恒久意义。通过摒弃规范性定义,并设想公共性为一个过程,我们探索了中国的社会话语与政治实践之间的联系。基于共同身份或社会交往的话语群体,尽管显得微不足道,但在关键时刻,他们却可以发挥独特作用,改变政治事件的动态。

Type
Special section: “Revisiting the Public Sphere in 20th- and 21st-century China”
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS University of London, 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Breaugh, Martin. 2013. The Plebeian Experience: A Discontinuous History of Political Freedom. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Calhoun, Craig (ed.). 1992. Habermas and the Public Sphere. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Calhoun, Craig. 1993. “Civil society and the public sphere.Public Culture 5, 267280.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calhoun, Craig. 1994. Neither Gods nor Emperors: Students and the Struggle for Democracy in China. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calhoun, Craig. 2012. The Roots of Radicalism: Tradition, the Public Sphere and Early Nineteenth Century Social Movements. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cheng, Edmund W., Hiu-Fung, Chung and Cheng, Hoi-wa. 2021. “Life satisfaction and the conventionality of political participation: the moderation effect of post-material value orientation.International Political Science Review. Online First.Google Scholar
Culp, Robert. 2019. The Power of Print in Modern China: Intellectuals and Industrial Publishing from the End of Empire to Maoist State Socialism. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Culp, Robert, Eddy, U and Yeh, Wen-hsin (eds.). 2016. Knowledge Acts in Modern China: Ideas, Institutions, and Identities. Berkeley, CA: Institute of East Asian Studies.Google Scholar
Ding, Xueliang. 1994. “Institutional amphibiousness and the transition from communism: the case of China.British Journal of Political Science 24(3), 293318.Google Scholar
Dirlik, Arif, with Guannan, Li and Yen, Hsiao-pei. 2012. Sociology and Anthropology in Twentieth-century China: Between Universalism and Indigenism. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.Google Scholar
Dolezelova-Velingerova, Milena, and Wagner, Rudolf (eds.). 2014. Chinese Encyclopedias of New Global Knowledge (1870–1930): Changing Ways of Thought. Heidelberg: Springer.10.1007/978-3-642-35916-3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Edy, Jill. 2006. Troubled Pasts: News and the Collective Memory of Social Unrest. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Fraser, Nancy. 1995. “Politics, culture, and the public sphere: toward a postmodern conception.” In Nicholson, Linda and Seidman, Steve (eds.), Social Postmodernism: Beyond Identity Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 287312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frolic, B. Michael. 1997. “State-led civil society.” In Brook, Timothy and Michael Frolic, B. (eds.), Civil Society in China. London: ME Sharpe, 4667.Google Scholar
Gold, Thomas B. 1990. “The resurgence of civil society in China.Journal of Democracy 1(1), 1831.Google Scholar
Goldman, Andrea. 2012. Opera and the City: The Politics of Culture in Beijing, 1770–1900. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Gu, Xin. 1993. “A civil society and a public sphere in post-Mao China? An overview of Western publications.China Information 8(3), 3852.Google Scholar
Ho, Denise Y. 2011. “Revolutionizing antiquity: the Shanghai cultural bureaucracy in the Cultural Revolution, 1966–1968.The China Quarterly 207, 687705.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hockx, Michel, Judge, Joan and Mittler, Barbara (eds.). 2018. Women and the Periodical Press in China's Long Twentieth Century. A Space of their Own? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hooks, Bell. 1990. “Talking back.” In Ferguson, Russell and Minh-ha, Trinh T. (eds.), Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 341–43.Google Scholar
Huang, Philip C.C. 1993. “‘Public sphere’/‘civil society’ in China? The third realm between state and society.Modern China 19(2), 216240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hung, Ho-fung, and Ip, Iam-chong. 2012. “Hong Kong's democratic movement and the making of China's offshore civil society.Asian Survey 52(3), 504527.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Judge, Joan. 1996. Print and Politics: Shibao and the Culture of Reform. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Judge, Joan. 2015. Republican Lens. Gender, Visuality, and Experience in the Early Chinese Periodical Press. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lam, Tong. 2011. A Passion for Facts. Social Surveys and the Construction of the Chinese Nation-state, 1900–1949. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Lean, Eugenia. 2007. Public Passions: The Trial of Shi Jianqiao and the Rise of Popular Sympathy in Republican China. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Lee, Haiyan. 2001. “‘All the feelings that are fit to print’: the community of sentiment and the literary public sphere in China, 1900–1918.Modern China 27(3), 291327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Leo Ou-fan. 2001. “Incomplete modernity: rethinking the May Fourth intellectual project.” In Doleželová-Velingerová, Milena and Král, Oldřich (eds.), The Appropriation of Cultural Capital: China's May Fourth Project. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Centre, 3165.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lei, Ya-Wen. 2017. The Contentious Public Sphere: Law, Media, and Authoritarian Rule in China. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin, Peiyin, and Tsai, Wei-Pin (eds.). 2014. Print, Profit and Perception. Ideas, Information and Knowledge in Chinese Societies, 1895–1949. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liu, Hailong (ed.). 2019. From Cyber-nationalism to Fandom Nationalism: The Case of Diba Expedition in China. Abingdon: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liu, Qing, and McCormick, Barrett. 2011. “The media and the public sphere in contemporary China.Boundary 2 38(1), 101134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mittler, Barbara. 2004. A Newspaper for China? Power, Identity, and Change in Shanghai's News Media, 1872–1912. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Polletta, Francesca. 2006. It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rankin, Mary Backus. 1982. “‘Public opinion’ and political power: qingyi in late nineteenth century China.The Journal of Asian Studies 41(3), 453484.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rankin, Mary Backus. 1986. Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China: Zhejiang Province, 1865–1911. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Rea, Christopher, and Volland, Nicolai (eds.). 2014. The Business of Culture: Cultural Entrepreneurs in China and Southeast Asia, 1900–1965. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press.Google Scholar
Reed, Christopher. 2004. Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese Print Capitalism, 1876–1937. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press.Google Scholar
Reed, Christopher. 2010. From Woodblocks to the Internet: Chinese Publishing and Print Culture in Transition, 1800 to 2008. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Repnikova, Maria, and Fang, Kecheng. 2019. “Digital media experiments in China: ‘revolutionizing’ persuasion under Xi Jinping.The China Quarterly 239, 679701.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rittersporn, Gabor, Wolf, Malte and Behrends, Jan (eds.). 2003. Public Spheres in Soviet-type Societies. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Rosen, Stanley. 2009. “Contemporary Chinese youth and the state.The Journal of Asian Studies 68(2), 359369.Google Scholar
Rowe, William. 1989. Hankow. Conflict and Community in a Chinese City, 1796–1895. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Schmidt, V.A. 2008. “Discursive institutionalism: the explanatory power of ideas and discourse.Annual Review of Political Science 11, 303326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scott, James. 1990. Domination and the Arts of Resistance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Shao, Jiang. 2015. Citizen Publications in China before the Internet. New York: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Shao, Qin. 1998. “Tempest over teapots: the vilification of teahouse culture in early Republican China.Journal of Asian Studies 57(4), 1009–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soifer, Hillel David. 2012. “The causal logic of critical junctures.Comparative Political Studies 45(12), 1572–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Song, Yongyi. 2007. “A glance at the underground reading movement during the Cultural Revolution.Journal of Contemporary China 16(51), 325333.Google Scholar
Strand, David. 1990. “Protest in Beijing: civil society and public sphere in China.Problems of Communism 39, 119.Google Scholar
Tang, Xiaobing. 2012. Xiandai Zhongguo de gonggong yulun: yi Dagongbao “Xingqi lunwen” he Shenbao “Ziyoutan” wei li (Public Opinion in Modern China: Dagongbao's “Weekly Essay” and Shenbao's “Free Conversation” Columns). Beijing: Sheke wenxian chubanshe.Google Scholar
Teets, Jessica C. 2009. “Post-earthquake relief and reconstruction efforts: the emergence of civil society in China?The China Quarterly 198, 330347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Veg, Sebastian. 2019. Minjian: The Rise of China's Grassroots Intellectuals. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Veg, Sebastian. Forthcoming. “Publicness beyond the public sphere.” In Geroulanos, Stefanos and Sapiro, Gisèle (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Intellectual History and the Sociology of Ideas. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Volland, Nicolai. 2003. “The Control of the Media in the PRC.” PhD diss., University of Heidelberg. Available at http://d-nb.info/987400770/34.Google Scholar
Wagner, Rudolf. 2001. “The early Chinese newspapers and the Chinese public sphere.European Journal of East Asian Studies 1(1), 133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagner, Rudolf (ed.). 2008. Joining the Global Public: Word, Image, and City in Early Chinese Newspapers, 1870–1910. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Wakeman, Frederic. 1998. “Boundaries of the public sphere in Ming and Qing China.Daedalus 127(3), 167188.Google Scholar
Wang, Di. 2008. The Teahouse: Small Business, Everyday Culture, and Public Politics in Chengdu, 1900–1950. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warner, Michael. 2002. “Publics and counter-publics” (abbreviated version). Quarterly Journal of Speech 88(4), 413425.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warner, Michael. 2005. Publics and Counterpublics. New York: Zone Books.Google Scholar
White, Gordon. 1994. “Civil society, democratization and development: clearing the analytical ground.Democratization 1(2), 375390.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, III, Lynn, T. 1989. Policies of Chaos: The Organizational Causes of Violence in China's Cultural Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Xu, Jilin. 2011. “Public sphere in neoteric China: forms, functions and self-understandings – a case study of Shanghai.” In Zhenglai, Deng (ed.), State and Civil Society: The Chinese Perspective. Singapore: World Scientific, 241270.Google Scholar
Xu, Yi, and Chan, Chris King-Chi. 2018. “Conductive activism: anti-sweatshop campaigns across Hong Kong and mainland China.Journal of Contemporary Asia 48(1), 88112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yang, Guobin. 2009. The Power of the Internet in China: Citizen Activism Online. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Yang, Guobin, and Calhoun, Craig. 2007. “Media, civil society, and the rise of a green public sphere in China.China Information 21(2), 211236.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yang, Mayfair Mei-hui (ed.). 1999. Spaces of their Own: Women's Public Sphere in Transnational China. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Zhang, Qing. 2003. “Jindai Zhongguo dui gong yu gonggong de biaoda” (The representations of gong and public in Modern China.” In Jilin, Xu (ed.), Gonggongxing yu gonggong zhishifenzi (Publicness and Public Intellectuals). Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin, 192220.Google Scholar