Hostname: page-component-669899f699-g7b4s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-25T18:42:15.389Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Maintaining Social Stability without Solving Problems: Emotional Repression in the Chinese Petition System

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 December 2019

Rui Hou Open the ORCID record for Rui Hou [Opens in a new window]
Rui Hou*
Affiliation:
Queen's University. Email: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

What role do emotions play in state repression? Building upon ethnographic observation in one Beijing petition bureau, this paper explores the emotional labour performed by grassroots officials to demobilize social dissent. The petition system serves as an official channel through which the Chinese government receives complaints and grievances from citizens. Notwithstanding its institutional inefficiency in addressing petitioners’ requirements, this system plays a critical role in maintaining social stability. I investigate the process by which frontline petition officials manage petitions. I argue that channelling petitioners’ emotions has become one of these officials’ core functions. Petition officials have developed three types of emotional strategies – emotional defusing, emotional constraint and emotional reshaping – to absorb petitioners’ complaints. This study of emotional repression offers a fresh perspective on the affective dimension of contentious politics and also contributes to the theoretical discussion on how authoritarian regimes deal with dissent.

摘要

摘要

情感在国家镇压中发挥了什么作用？本文基于对北京某信访办的民族志观察，研究了基层官员通过情感劳动来化解社会矛盾的过程。信访是中国政府为了听取民间异议而设置沟通制度。虽然信访制度在解决访民问题上被诟病效率有限，但是其在维系社会稳定的过程中发挥着重要作用。通过对基层信访官员应对上访者的过程进行详细考察，本文认为吸纳访民负面情感已经成为信访制度的重要功能之一。信访官员在基层工作中发展出情绪疏解，情感约束和情感重塑三种情感策略来吸纳上访者的抗议。本文对情感镇压的考察为我们研究抗争政治的情感维度提供了一个崭新的视角，同时也丰富了我们对权威政体异议处置手段的理论见解。

Keywords

emotional labouremotional repressionauthoritarian regimeChinastate repression情感劳动情感镇压权威政体中国国家镇压
Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 243 , September 2020 , pp. 635 - 654
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS University of London 2019

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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Ahlers, Anna, and Schubert, Gunter. 2015. “Effective policy implementation in China's local state.” Modern China 41(4), 372–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aminzade, Ron, and McAdam, Doug. 2001. “Emotions and contentious politics.” In Aminzade, Ronald R., Goldstein, Jack A., McAdam, Doug, Perry, Elizabeth J., Sewell, William H. Jr., Tarrow, Sidney and Tilly, Charles (eds.), Silence and Voice in the Study of Contentious Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 107–109CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cai, Yongshun. 2008. “Power structure and regime resilience: contentious politics in China.” British Journal of Political Science 38(3), 411–432.Google Scholar
Capelos, Tereza. 2013. “Understanding anxiety and aversion: the origins and consequences of affectivity in political campaigns.” In Demertzis, Nicholas (ed.), Emotions in Politics. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 39–59.Google Scholar
Chen, Jing. 2016. Useful Complaints: How Petitions Assist Decentralized Authoritarianism in China. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Chen, Xi. 2014. Social Protest and Contentious Authoritarianism in China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cheng, Xiuying. 2013. “Dispersive containment: a comparative case study of labor politics in central China.” Journal of Contemporary China 22(79), 131–147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chuang, Julia. 2014. “China's rural land politics: bureaucratic absorption and the muting of rightful resistance.” The China Quarterly 219, 649–669.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deng, Yanhua, and O'Brien, Kevin. 2013. “Relational repression in China: using social ties to demobilize protesters.” The China Quarterly 215, 533–552.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dimitrov, Martin. 2014. “What the party wanted to know: citizen complaints as a ‘barometer of public opinion’ in communist Bulgaria.” East European Politics and Societies 28(2), 271–295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Distelhorst, Greg. 2015. “The power of empty promises: quasi-democratic institutions and activism in China.” Comparative Political Studies 50(4), 464–498.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Earl, Jennifer. 2011. “Political repression: iron fists, velvet gloves, and diffuse control.” Annual Review of Sociology 37, 261–284.10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102609CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferree, Marx. 2004. “Soft repression: ridicule, stigma, and silencing in gender-based movements.” In Myers, Daniel and Cress, Danie (eds.), Authority in Contention. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 85–101.Google Scholar
Foster, Roger. 2016. “The therapeutic spirit of neoliberalism.” Political Theory 44(1), 82–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fu, Diana, and Distelhorst, Greg. 2018. “Grassroots participation and repression in contemporary China.” The China Journal 79, 1–25.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Jeff, Jasper, James and Polletta, Francesca. 2000. “The return of the repressed: the fall and rise of emotions in social movement theory.” Mobilization 5(1), 65–83.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Jeff, and Pfaff, Steven. 2001. “Emotion work in high-risk social movements: managing fear in the US and East German civil rights movements.” In Goodwin, Jeff, Jasper, James M. and Polletta, Francesca (eds.), Passionate Politics: Emotions and Social Movements. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 282–302.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gould, Deborah. 2009. Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP's Fight against AIDS. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
He, Baogang, and Warren, Mark. 2011. “Authoritarian deliberation: the deliberative turn in Chinese political development.” Perspectives on Politics 9(2), 269–289.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heurlin, Christopher. 2016. Responsive Authoritarianism in China: Land, Protests and Policymaking. New York: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781316443019CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hochschild, Arlie. 2012. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jasper, James M. 1997. The Art of Moral Protest. London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Jasper, James M. 1998. “The emotions of protest: affective and reactive emotions in and around social movements.” Sociogical Forum 13, 397–424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jasper, James M. 2011. “Emotions and social movements: twenty years of theory and research.” Annual Review of Sociology 37(1), 285–303.Google Scholar
Lee, Ching Kwan, and Zhang, Yonghong. 2013. “The power of instability: unraveling the microfoundations of bargained authoritarianism in China.” American Journal of Sociology 118(6), 1475–1508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Li, Lianjiang, Liu, Mingxing and O'Brien, Kevin. 2012. “Petitioning Beijing: the high tide of 2003–2006.” The China Quarterly 210, 313–334.10.1017/S0305741012000227CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipsky, Michael. 2010. Street-level Bureaucracy, 30th Ann. Ed.: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Service. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Liu, Yu. 2010. “Maoist discourse and the mobilization of emotions in revolutionary China.” Modern China 36(3), 329–362.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Luehrmann, Laura. 2003. “Facing citizen complaints in China, 1951–1996.” Asian Survey 43(5), 845–866.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, Brian. 2007. Justice Ignited: The Dynamics of Backfire. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Mei, Ciqi, and Pearson, Margaret M.. 2014. “Killing a chicken to scare the monkeys? Deterrence failure and local defiance in China.” The China Journal 72, 75–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Minzner, Carl. 2006. “Xinfang: an alternative to formal Chinese legal institutions.” Stanford Journal of International Law 42, 104–180.Google Scholar
O'Brien, Kevin, and Deng, Yanhua. 2017. “Preventing protest one person at a time: psychological coercion and relational repression in China.” China Review 17(2), 179–201.Google Scholar
O'Brien, Kevin, and Li, Lianjiang. 2006. Rightful Resistance in Rural China. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Osburg, John. 2013. Anxious Wealth: Money and Morality among China's New Rich. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Ost, David. 2004. “Politics as the mobilization of anger: emotions in movements and in power.” European Journal of Social Theory 7(2), 229–244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perry, Elizabeth. 2002. “Moving the masses: emotion work in the Chinese revolution.” Mobilization 7(2), 111–128.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reddy, William M. 2001. The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511512001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Richard, Barry. 2007. Emotional Governance: Politics, Media and Terror. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Seim, Josh. 2017. “The ambulance: toward a labor theory of poverty governance.” American Sociological Review 82(3), 451–475.10.1177/0003122417702367CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tsang, Eileen Yuk-ha. 2017. “Neither ‘bad’ nor ‘dirty’: high-end sex work and intimate relationships in urban China.” The China Quarterly 230, 444–463.10.1017/S0305741017000649CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wang, Juan. 2015. “Managing social stability: the perspective of a local government in China.” Journal of East Asian Studies 15(1), 1–25.10.1017/S159824080000415XCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wong, Stan Hok-wui, and Peng, Minggang. 2015. “Petition and repression in China's authoritarian regime: evidence from a natural experiment.” Journal of East Asian Studies 15(1), 27–67.Google Scholar
Yang, Guobin. 2000. “Achieving emotions in collective action: emotional processes and movement mobilization in the 1989 Chinese student movement.” The Sociological Quarterly 41(4), 593–614.10.1111/j.1533-8525.2000.tb00075.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yang, Jie. 2015. Unknotting the Heart: Unemployment and Therapeutic Governance in China. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar