Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T09:10:21.842Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Constructing Commonality: Standardization and Modernization in Chinese Nation-Building

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2012

Andrew B. Kipnis
Get access

Abstract

This essay examines the importance of Chinese nation-building in the contemporary era. Defining nation-building in terms of processes that help to bridge local differences especially but not only when also distinguishing China from the rest the world, I argue that a focus on globalization has masked the importance of Chinese nation-building to contemporary social change. I analyze three very different societal arenas in which national forms of commonality are being constructed: the consolidation of the education system, the expansion of the urban built environment, and the spread of the Chinese Internet. Though each arena illustrates a very different aspect of the nation-building process, they all result in an increased degree of commonality in lived experience and communicative practice across China.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 71 , Issue 3 , August 2012 , pp. 731 - 755
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2012

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

List of References

All China Data Center. 2010a. “Gross Output Value of Construction Enterprises and Floor Space of Buildings.” http://chinadataonline.org.rp.nla.gov.au (accessed June 7, 2010).Google Scholar
All China Data Center. 2010b. “New Student Enrollment by Level and Type of Schools.” http://chinadataonline.org.rp.nla.gov.au (accessed June 7, 2010).Google Scholar
Anderson, Benedict. (1983) 1991. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London and New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Bakken, Børge. 2000. The Exemplary Society: Human Improvement, Social Control, and the Dangers of Modernity in China. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barboza, David. 2010a. “China's Booming Internet Giants May Be Stuck There.” The New York Times. March 24.Google Scholar
Barboza, David. 2010b. “For Chinese, Web Is the Way to Entertainment.” The New York Times. April 19.Google Scholar
Barboza, David, and Stone, Brad. 2010. “A Nation that Trips Up Many.” The New York Times. January 16.Google Scholar
Beck, Ulrich, Giddens, Anthony, and Lash, Scott. 1994. Reflexive Modernization: Politics Traditon and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order. Cambridge, England: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bray, David. 2008. “Designing to Govern: Space and Power in Two Wuhan Communities.” Built Environment 34(4):392–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chatterjee, Partha. 1993. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
CNNIC (China Internet Network Information Center). 2010. “Statistical Survey Report on Internet Development in China (January 2010).” CNNIC. htttp://www.cnnic.cn/uploadfiles/pdf/2010/3/15/142705/pdf (accessed June 7, 2010).Google Scholar
Cockain, Alex. 2011. “Student Ambivalence Toward Their Experience in Secondary Education.” The China Journal 65:101–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Duara, Prasenjit. 1988. Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900–1942. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Fong, Vanessa L. 2004. “Filial Nationalism Among Chinese Teenagers with Global Identities.” American Ethnologist 31(4):631–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, Robert J. 1995. “Introduction: The Work of Nation Making.” In Nation Making: Emergent Identities in Postcolonial Melanesia, ed. Foster, R. J., 1–30. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Herzfeld, Michael. (1997) 2005. Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State, 2nd ed.New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hsing, You-tien. 2010. The Great Urban Transformation: Politics of Land and Property in China. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Institute of Population and Labor Economics, CASS, ed. 2007. Zhongguo Renkou Nianjian [China population yearbook]. Beijing: CASS.Google Scholar
Kipnis, Andrew B. 2006. “School Consolidation in Rural China.” Development Bulletin 70:123–25.Google Scholar
Kipnis, Andrew B. 2008. China and Postsocialist Anthropology: Theorizing Power and Society after Communism. Norwalk, Conn.: Eastbridge.Google Scholar
Kipnis, Andrew B. 2011a. Governing Educational Desire: Culture, Politics and Schooling in China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kipnis, Andrew B. 2011b. “Subjectification and Education for Quality in China.” Economy and Society 40(2):261–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroeber, Alfred L. 1919. “On the Principle of Order in Civilization as Exemplified by Changes in Fashion.” American Anthropologist 21(3):235–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 1994. “On Technical Mediation—Philosophy, Sociology, Genealogy.” Common Knowledge 3(2):29–64.Google Scholar
Latour, Bruno. 2005. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liu, Jun. 2004. “Guangchang Wenhua Yanjiu” [The study of plaza culture]. Xueshu Jiaoliu [Academic exchange] 125:131–33.Google Scholar
Madsen, Richard. 1984. Morality and Power in a Chinese Village. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McAlister, John T. Jr., ed. 1973. Southeast Asia: The Politics of National Integration. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Meyer, John W., and Ramirez, Francisco O.. 2003. “The World Institutionalization of Education.” In Discourse Formation in Comparative Education, ed. Schriewer, J., 111–32. New York: P. Lang.Google Scholar
Gong, Mo. 2005. “'Suzhi Jiaoyu' Neng Peiyang Chu Xiandai Gongmin Ma?” [Can quality education reform cultivate modern citizens?]. Nanfang Zhoumo. 18 May.Google Scholar
Murphy, Rachel. 2004. “Turning Peasants into Modern Chinese Citizens: ‘Population Quality' Discourse, Demographic Transition and Primary Education.” The China Quarterly 177:1–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nie, Hongping Nannie. 2008. The Dilemma of the Moral Curriculum in a Chinese Secondary School. Latham, Md.: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Nyíri, Pál, Zhang, Juan, and Varrall, Merriden. 2010. “China's Cosmopolitan Nationalists: ‘Heroes' and ‘Traitors' of the 2008 Olympics.” The China Journal 63:25–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosen, Stanley. 1989. “Value Change among Post-Mao Youth. The Evidence from Survey Data.” In Unofficial China: Popular Culture and Thought in the People's Republic of China, eds. Link, E. P., Madsen, R., and Pickowicz, P., 193–216. Boulder, Colo.: Westview.Google Scholar
Rosen, Stanley. 1994. “Chinese Students in the Nineties Adjusting to the Market.” China News Analysis (August 1–15):1–12.Google Scholar
Sargeson, Sally. 2004. “Full Circle? Rural Land Reforms in Globalizing China.” Critical Asian Studies 36(4):637–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sargeson, Sally, and Song, Yu. 2010. “Land Expropriation and the Gender Politics of Citizenship in the Urban Frontier.” The China Journal 64:19–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sassen, Saskia. 2006. Territory Authority Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Simmel, Georg. 1971. On Individuality and Social Forms: Selected Writings. Edited by Levine, Donald N.. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Simone, AbdouMaliq. 2001. “On the Worlding of African Cities.” African Studies Review 44(2):15–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thøgersen, Stig. 2002. A County of Culture: Twentieth-Century China Seen from the Village Schools of Zouping, Shandong. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
U.S. Census Department. 2010. “New Privately Owned Housing Units Started in the United States by Purpose and Design.”Google Scholar
Wang, Shuo. 2000. Please Don't Call Me Human. Translated by Goldblatt, H.. New York: Hyperion East.Google Scholar
Weber, Eugene. 1976. Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France, 1870–1914. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wines, Michael. 2009. “Mythical Beast (a Dirty Pun) Tweaks Web Censors.” The New York Times. March 12.Google Scholar
Yang, Guobin. 2010. The Power of the Internet in China. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Zhang, Ruiqin. 2008. “Qian Lun Qunzhong Wenhua Zhi Guangchang Wenhua” [A brief analysis of the place of plaza culture in mass culture]. Keji Chaungxin Daobao 2008(6):116–7.Google Scholar
Zhongguo Jingji Nianjian Weiyuanhui, , ed. 2008. Zhongguo Jingji Nianjian [China economic yearbook]. Beijing: Zhongguo Jingji Nian Jian Chubanshe.Google Scholar