Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T15:04:49.076Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Loosing the Dragon: Charismatic Legal Action and the Construction of the Taiping Legal Order

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Abstract

This article develops the notion of legal charisma by analyzing the Taiping Rebellion in mid‐nineteenth‐century China. The concept of legal charisma seeks to capture those normally inchoate aspects of law that transcend its institutionalized incarnations and empower its subjects to act out visions of the universal, often in anarchic and unpredictable ways. The article further suggests that such charismatic legal behavior, in spite of its anarchic qualities, provides an important means through which systems of legal authority revitalize and strengthen their hold over legal subjects. The Taiping Rebellion provides an example of both these facets of legal charisma; the rebellion drew on visions of collective empowerment inherent in a newly articulated legal code to act out a challenge to existing social institutions—even as this same code came to assert an ever‐tightening grip on the lives of the Taiping population.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2010 

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

References

Abel, Richard. 1998. Torts. In The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique, 3rd ed., ed. Kairys, David, 190215. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict. 1991. Imagined Communities. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Aretxaga, Begona. 2000. Fictional Reality: Paramilitary Death Squads and the Construction of State Terror in Spain. In Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror, ed. Sluka, Jeffrey A., 4669. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Beccaria, Cesare. 1983 1775. An Essay on Crimes and Punishments. Brookline Village, MA: Branden Press.Google Scholar
Berliner, Nancy. 1986. Chinese Folk Art. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.Google Scholar
Briggs, Charles L., and Bauman, Richard. 1992. Genre, Intertextuality, and Social Power. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 2 (2): 131–72.Google Scholar
Calavita, Kitty. 1986. Worker Safety, Law, and Social Change: The Italian Case. Law & Society Review 20 (2): 189228.Google Scholar
Cohen, Myron. 1968. The Hakka or Guest People: Dialect as a Sociocultural Variable in Southeastern China. Ethnohistory 15 (3): 237–92.Google Scholar
Cohen, Paul. 1984. Discovering History in China. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Collier, Jane, Maurer, Bill, and Suarez‐Navaz, Liliana. 1995. Sanctioned Identities: Legal Constructions of Modern Personhood. Identities 2 (1–2): 127.Google Scholar
Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor. 2006. First Meeting of the Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor, January 20–21. http://www.undp.org/legalempowerment/pdf/Agreed_principles_conceptual_framework.pdf (accessed October 12, 2009).Google Scholar
Comaroff, Jean, and Comaroff, John. 1991. Of Revelation and Revolution: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa, vol. 1 . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Coutin, Susan. 2003. Legalizing Moves: Salvadorian Immigrants' Struggle for U.S. Residency. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Darian‐Smith, Eve. 1999. Bridging Divides. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Deigh, John. 1999. Emotion and the Authority of Law: Variation on Themes in Bentham and Austin. In The Passions of Law, ed. Bandes, Susan, 285308. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1992. Force of Law: The “Mystical Foundation of Authority.” In Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, ed. Cornell, Drucilla, Rosenfeld, Michael, and Carlson, David Gray, 366. New York: Rutledge.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. 1967. The Model of Rules. University of Chicago Law Review 35: 1446.Google Scholar
Dworkin, Ronald. 1986. Law's Empire. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Elias, Norbert. 2000. The Civilizing Process: Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations, rev. ed., ed. Dunning, Eric, Goudsblom, Johan, and Mennell, Stephen, trans. Edmund Jephcott. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
Engel, David M. 1984. The Oven Bird's Song: Insiders, Outsiders, and Personal Injuries in an American Community. Law & Society Review 18 (4): 551–82.Google Scholar
Esherick, Joseph. 1987. The Origins of the Boxer Uprising. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ewick, Patricia, and Silbey, Susan S. 1998. The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Faier, Elizabeth. 2002. Domestic Matters: Feminism and Activism among Palestinian Women in Israel. In Ethnography in Unstable Places: Everyday Lives in Contexts of Dramatic Political Change, ed. Greenhouse, Carol J., Mertz, Elizabeth, and Warren, Kay B., 178209. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Fanon, Franz. 1963. The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove Press.Google Scholar
Fitzpatrick, Peter. 2001. Modernism and the Grounds of Law. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan . New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Galanter, Marc. 1975. Why the Haves Come Out Ahead. Law & Society Review 9 (1): 95160.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1961. Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving. 1971. Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order. New York: Basic Books, Inc.Google Scholar
Gordon, Robert J. 2002. Unsettled Settlers: Internal Pacification and Vagrancy in Namibia. In Ethnography in Unstable Places: Everyday Lives in Contexts of Dramatic Political Change, ed. Greenhouse, Carol J., Mertz, Elizabeth, and Warren, Kay B., 6185. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Gould, Roger V. 1996. Patron‐Client Ties, State Centralization, and the Whiskey Rebellion. American Journal of Sociology 102 (2): 400–29.Google Scholar
Hamburg, Theodore. 1969 1854. The Visions of Hung‐Siu Tshuen, and Origin of the Kwang‐Si Insurrection. New York: Praeger Publishers.Google Scholar
Hart, H. L. A. 1958. Positivism and the Separation of Law and Morals. Harvard Law Review 71 (4): 593629.Google Scholar
Hirsch, Susan F. 1998. Pronouncing and Preserving. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hirsch, Susan F., and Lazarus‐Black, Mindie, eds. 1994. Introduction: Performance and Paradox: Exploring Law's Role in Hegemony and Resistance. In Contested States: Law, Hegemony, and Resistance. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hobsbawm, E. J. 1965. Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.Google Scholar
Holmes, Douglas R. 1993. Illicit Discourse. In Perilous States: Conversations on Culture, Politics, and Nation, ed. Marcus, George, 255–82. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hunt, Alan. 1990. Rights and Social Movements: Counter‐Hegemonic Strategies. Journal of Law and Society 17 (3): 309–28.Google Scholar
Ileto, Reynaldo Clemena. 1979. Pasyon and Revolution: Popular Movements in the Philippine, 1840–1910. Quezon City: Manila University Press.Google Scholar
Jen, Yu‐wen. 1973. The Taiping Revolutionary Movement. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Kahn, Paul. 1997. The Reign of Law: Marbury v. Madison and the Construction of America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Kahn, Paul. 2003. Freedom, Autonomy and the Cultural Study of Law. In Cultural Analysis Cultural Studies, and the Law, ed. Sarat, Austin and Simon, Jonathan, 154–87. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Kairys, David. 1998. Freedom of Speech. In The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique, 3rd ed., ed. Kairys, David, 190215. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. 1991. Kant: Political Writings, 2nd ed., ed. Reiss, Hans, trans. H. B. Nisbet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kaufmann, Daniel. 2004. Human Rights and Development: Towards Mutual Reinforcement. Paper presented at conference cosponsored by Ethical Globalization Initiative and the NYU Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, March 2004 (as revised December 2004). http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTWBIGOVANTCOR/Resources/HumanRights2.pdf (accessed November 19, 2009).Google Scholar
Kleinman, Sherryl. 1996. Opposing Ambitions: Gender and Identity in an Alternative Organization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Philip. 1977. Origins of the Taiping Vision: Cross‐Cultural Dimensions of a Chinese Rebellion. Comparative Studies in Society and History 19 (3): 350–66.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Philip. 1978. The Taiping Rebellion. In The Cambridge History of China, vol. 10, ch. 6, ed. Fairbank, John K. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lowe, Lisa. 1996. Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Llewellyn, Karl N., and Hoebel, E. Adamson. 1941. The Cheyenne Way. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1958 1926. Crime & Custom in Savage Society. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield, Adams & Co.Google Scholar
Merry, Sally E. 1988. Legal Pluralism. Law & Society Review 22 (5): 869–96.Google Scholar
Merry, Sally E. 2003. Human Rights Law and the Demonization of Culture (And Anthropology along the Way). Political and Legal Anthropology Review 26 (1): 5576.Google Scholar
Mezey, Naomi. 2003. Law as Culture. In Cultural Analysis, Cultural Studies, and the Law, ed. Sarat, Austin and Simon, Jonathan, 3772. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Michael, Franz. 1966. The Taiping Rebellion: History and Documents. Vol. 1: History. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Michael, Franz. 1971a. The Taiping Rebellion: History and Documents. Vol. 2: Documents and Comments. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Michael, Franz. 1971b. The Taiping Rebellion: History and Documents. Vol. 3: Documents and Comments. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Moore, Sally Falk. 1978. Law as Process: An Anthropological Approach. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Nelson, Diane M. 1999. A Finger in the Wound: Body Politics in Quincentennial Guatemala. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Parnell, Phillip C. 2002. The Composite State: The Poor and the Nation in Manila. In Ethnography in Unstable Places: Everyday Lives in Contexts of Dramatic Political Change, ed. Greenhouse, Carol J., Mertz, Elizabeth, and Warren, Kay B., 146–77. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Pearce, Frank. 1989. The Radical Durkheim. London: Unwin Hyman.Google Scholar
Polletta, Francesca. 2006. It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Posner, Richard. 1987. The Constitution as an Economic Document. George Washington Law Review 56 (1): 438.Google Scholar
Potter, Jack. 1978. Cantonese Shamanism. In Studies in Chinese Society, ed. Wolf, Arthur P., 321–45. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Rawls, John. 1999. A Theory of Justice, rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.Google Scholar
Reis, Nancy. 2002. “Honest Bandits” and “Warped People”: Russian Narratives about Money, Corruption, and Moral Decay. In Ethnography in Unstable Places: Everyday Lives in Contexts of Dramatic Political Change, ed. Greenhouse, Carol J., Mertz, Elizabeth, and Warren, Kay B., 276315. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Riles, Annelise. 2006. Anthropology, Human Rights, and Legal Knowledge: Culture in the Iron Cage. American Anthropologist 108 (1): 5265.Google Scholar
Rosenthal, Judy. 2002. Trance against the State. In Ethnography in Unstable Places: Everyday Lives in Contexts of Dramatic Political Change, ed. Greenhouse, Carol J., Mertz, Elizabeth, and Warren, Kay B., 316–51. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ruhlmann, Robert. 1960. Traditional Heroes in Chinese Popular Fiction. In The Confucian Persuasion, ed. Wright, Arthur F., 141–76. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Sarat, Austin, and Simon, Jonathan, eds. 2003. Cultural Analysis, Cultural Studies, and the Situation of Legal Scholarship. In Cultural Analysis, Cultural Studies, and the Law, 134. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Benjamin. 1964. In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Shih, Vincent. 1967. The Taiping Ideology. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Spence, Jonathon D. 1981. The Gate of Heavenly Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution 18951980. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Spence, Jonathon D. 1990. The Search for Modern China. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.Google Scholar
Spence, Jonathon D. 1996. God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.Google Scholar
Tamanaha, Brian A. 1993. The Folly of the “Social Scientific” Concept of Legal Pluralism. Journal of Law & Society 20 (2): 192217.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 2004. Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Teng, Ssu‐yu. 1966. New Light on the History of the Taiping Rebellion. New York: Russell & Russell.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. P. 1975. Whigs and Hunters: The Origins of the Black Act. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Turner, Victor. 1969. The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti‐Structure. Chicago: Aldine Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Urban, Greg. 1996. Entextualization, Replication, and Power. In Natural Histories of Discourse, ed. Silverstein, Michael and Urban, Greg, 2144. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Wagner, Rudolf. 1982. Reenacting the Heavenly Vision: The Role of Religion in the Taiping Rebellion. China Research Monograph (#25) for the Institute of East Asian Studies at the University of California at Berkeley and the Center for Chinese Studies. Berkeley, CA: UC Regents.Google Scholar
Wallace, Anthony. 1979. Revitalization Movements. In Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach, 4th ed., ed. Lessa, William A. and Vogt, Evon Z., 421–29. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Weber, Max. 1992 1930. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Weinrib, Ernest. 1988. Legal Formalism: On the Immanent Rationality of Law. Yale Law Journal 97 (6): 9491016.Google Scholar
Weller, Robert P. 1994. Resistance, Chaos and Control in China: Taiping Rebels, Taiwanese Ghosts and Tiananmen. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
White, Lucy. 1990. Subordination, Rhetorical Survival Skills, and Sunday Shoes. Buffalo Law Review 38: 158.Google Scholar
Wolf, Arthur P., ed. 1978. Gods, Ghosts and Ancestors. In Studies in Chinese Society, 131–82. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar

Case Cited

Gonzales v. Carhart, 550 U.S. 124; 127 S. Ct. 1610 (2007).Google Scholar