Guanxi civility: Processes, potentials, and contingencies

Politics and Society

Volumn 31, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 131-162

  Lo, Ming Cheng M ^a   Otis, Eileen M ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

^b STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

China; Civil society; Civility; Guanxi; Social networks

Indexed keywords

EID: 0037229751     PISSN: 00323292     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0032329202250165     Document Type: Review

References (158)

1. Hall offers a clear analytical definition of civil society, which includes "the presence of strong and autonomous social groups able to balance the state," as well as "a high degree of civility in social relations." See John A. Hall, "In Search of Civil Society," in Civil Society: Theory, History, Comparison, edited by John A. Hall (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1995), 1-31. Other scholars have put forth similar arguments. For Bryant, civil society should be understood "in terms of the associations of citizens - social self-organization - between households and state and aside from the market"; with a focus on civility, civic associations are conceptualized to be "conducted within a framework of law and convention." See Christopher G. A. Bryant, "Civic Nation, Civil Society, Civil Religion," in Hall, ed., Civil Society, 148). Similarly, Giner's conception of civil society stresses "the network of relatively independent institutions . . . as well as the cultural attitudes of civility and tolerance which are an indispensable part of [a country's] civic and political culture." See Salvador Giner, "Civil Society and its Future," in Hall, ed., Civil Society, 303.
2. Hall offers a clear analytical definition of civil society, which includes "the presence of strong and autonomous social groups able to balance the state," as well as "a high degree of civility in social relations." See John A. Hall, "In Search of Civil Society," in Civil Society: Theory, History, Comparison, edited by John A. Hall (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1995), 1-31. Other scholars have put forth similar arguments. For Bryant, civil society should be understood "in terms of the associations of citizens - social self-organization - between households and state and aside from the market"; with a focus on civility, civic associations are conceptualized to be "conducted within a framework of law and convention." See Christopher G. A. Bryant, "Civic Nation, Civil Society, Civil Religion," in Hall, ed., Civil Society, 148). Similarly, Giner's conception of civil society stresses "the network of relatively independent institutions . . . as well as the cultural attitudes of civility and tolerance which are an indispensable part of [a country's] civic and political culture." See Salvador Giner, "Civil Society and its Future," in Hall, ed., Civil Society, 303.
3. Hall offers a clear analytical definition of civil society, which includes "the presence of strong and autonomous social groups able to balance the state," as well as "a high degree of civility in social relations." See John A. Hall, "In Search of Civil Society," in Civil Society: Theory, History, Comparison, edited by John A. Hall (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1995), 1-31. Other scholars have put forth similar arguments. For Bryant, civil society should be understood "in terms of the associations of citizens - social self-organization - between households and state and aside from the market"; with a focus on civility, civic associations are conceptualized to be "conducted within a framework of law and convention." See Christopher G. A. Bryant, "Civic Nation, Civil Society, Civil Religion," in Hall, ed., Civil Society, 148). Similarly, Giner's conception of civil society stresses "the network of relatively independent institutions . . . as well as the cultural attitudes of civility and tolerance which are an indispensable part of [a country's] civic and political culture." See Salvador Giner, "Civil Society and its Future," in Hall, ed., Civil Society, 303.
4. Habermas locates a "public sphere" between the institutions of private interiority and public authority. He argues that in the Western past, it was precisely the formation of individuality in the private sphere that enabled participation in spaces of both public sphere and public authority. See Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, translated by Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), particularly chap. 2, "Social Structures of the Public Sphere." Within this realm of private individualism, "the political self-understanding of the bourgeois public originated" (ibid., 29). It was through this self-understanding that state control of public functions "was contested and finally wrestled away by the critical reasoning of private persons" (ibid.). Thus, rational individualism, in Habermas's and his followers' understanding, provides the foundation for the development of Western public spheres. It is useful to remind ourselves that for Habermas, theorization about the public sphere is never meant to be abstracted from the specific historical context of the European High Middle Ages; see Craig Calhoun, "Introduction: Habermas and the Public Sphere," in Habermas and the Public Sphere, edited by Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 1-48. By implication, the role of rational individualism should also be understood in varying contexts.
5. Habermas locates a "public sphere" between the institutions of private interiority and public authority. He argues that in the Western past, it was precisely the formation of individuality in the private sphere that enabled participation in spaces of both public sphere and public authority. See Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, translated by Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), particularly chap. 2, "Social Structures of the Public Sphere." Within this realm of private individualism, "the political self-understanding of the bourgeois public originated" (ibid., 29). It was through this self-understanding that state control of public functions "was contested and finally wrestled away by the critical reasoning of private persons" (ibid.). Thus, rational individualism, in Habermas's and his followers' understanding, provides the foundation for the development of Western public spheres. It is useful to remind ourselves that for Habermas, theorization about the public sphere is never meant to be abstracted from the specific historical context of the European High Middle Ages; see Craig Calhoun, "Introduction: Habermas and the Public Sphere," in Habermas and the Public Sphere, edited by Craig Calhoun (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), 1-48. By implication, the role of rational individualism should also be understood in varying contexts.
6. Mary Ryan, "Civil Society As Democratic Practice: North American Cities During the Nineteenth Century," in Patterns of Social Capital: Stability and Change in Historical Perspective, edited by Robert Rotberg (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 231 and 237.
7. Ibid., 241.
8. Ibid., 242.
9. erif Mardin, "Civil Society and Islam," in Hall, ed., Civil Society, 295.
10. Bryant, "Civic Nation, Civil Society, Civil Religion," 143 and 145.
11. Ernest Gellner, "The Importance of Being Modular," in Hall, ed., Civil Society, 41-42.
12. Gellner, "The Importance of Being Modular." See also Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1994); Adam Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society (New York: Free Press, 1992).
13. Gellner, "The Importance of Being Modular." See also Ernest Gellner, Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and Its Rivals (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1994); Adam Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society (New York: Free Press, 1992).
14. The development of courtly courtesies in the form of prohibitions on weapons at the dining table or using table knives in a "warlike" manner arose in part from fears of unchecked knightly aggression and a need to constrain violent behavior. These forms of etiquette achieved a formality and distance of social relations that formed the basis for temporarily checking hostility and are consistent with a somewhat reserved or "cool" civility based on mutual tolerance that individualism-minded philosophers emphasize. For a critique of the argument that locates the origin of individualism-based civility in the history of Christianity, see David Zaret, "Petitions and the 'Invention' of Public Opinion in the English Revolution," American Journal of Sociology 10, no. 6 (1996): 1497-555.
15. The development of courtly courtesies in the form of prohibitions on weapons at the dining table or using table knives in a "warlike" manner arose in part from fears of unchecked knightly aggression and a need to constrain violent behavior. These forms of etiquette achieved a formality and distance of social relations that formed the basis for temporarily checking hostility and are consistent with a somewhat reserved or "cool" civility based on mutual tolerance that individualism-minded philosophers emphasize. For a critique of the argument that locates the origin of individualism-based civility in the history of Christianity, see David Zaret, "Petitions and the 'Invention' of Public Opinion in the English Revolution," American Journal of Sociology 10, no. 6 (1996): 1497-555.
16. Ming-cheng M. Lo and Christopher P. Bettinger, "The Historical Emergence of a 'Familial Society' in Japan," Theory and Society 30 (2001): 237-79.
17. The Five Classical texts, covering ritual, history, poetry, and cosmology along with the writings of his follower Mencius, comprise the Confucian canon, which was the foundation of Confucian ideology and practice.
18. Jonathan Spence, The Search for Modern China (New York: Norton, 1990), 59, our emphasis.
19. Mayfair Yang elaborates, To be sure traditional Chinese culture did operate with a loose gender binary, as there was severe discrimination against women, especially from the Song dynasty onward. However, this binary did not have the same totalizing, universalistic, and rigid essentialism that modern biology introduced into the Western binary. It was counterbalanced by other equally important categories of social status, age, generation, kinship positioning, and the flexibility and situational construction of yin-yang principles. See Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, "From Gender Erasure to Gender Difference: State Feminism, Consumer Sexuality, and Women's Public Sphere in China," in Spaces of Their Own: Women's Public Sphere in Transnational China, edited by Mayfair Yang (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999); Mayfair Yang, Gifts, Favors, & Banquets: The Art of Social Relationships in China (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 65; Tani Barlow, "Theorizing Woman: Funu, Guojia, Jiating [Chinese Woman, Chinese State, Chinese Family], in Body, Subject and Power in China, edited by Angela Zito and Tani Barlow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Ann Anagnost, National Past-Times: Narrative, Representation, and Power in Modern China (Body, Commodity, Text) (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997); Xiaotong Fei, From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
20. Mayfair Yang elaborates, To be sure traditional Chinese culture did operate with a loose gender binary, as there was severe discrimination against women, especially from the Song dynasty onward. However, this binary did not have the same totalizing, universalistic, and rigid essentialism that modern biology introduced into the Western binary. It was counterbalanced by other equally important categories of social status, age, generation, kinship positioning, and the flexibility and situational construction of yin-yang principles. See Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, "From Gender Erasure to Gender Difference: State Feminism, Consumer Sexuality, and Women's Public Sphere in China," in Spaces of Their Own: Women's Public Sphere in Transnational China, edited by Mayfair Yang (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999); Mayfair Yang, Gifts, Favors, & Banquets: The Art of Social Relationships in China (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 65; Tani Barlow, "Theorizing Woman: Funu, Guojia, Jiating [Chinese Woman, Chinese State, Chinese Family], in Body, Subject and Power in China, edited by Angela Zito and Tani Barlow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Ann Anagnost, National Past-Times: Narrative, Representation, and Power in Modern China (Body, Commodity, Text) (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997); Xiaotong Fei, From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
21. Mayfair Yang elaborates, To be sure traditional Chinese culture did operate with a loose gender binary, as there was severe discrimination against women, especially from the Song dynasty onward. However, this binary did not have the same totalizing, universalistic, and rigid essentialism that modern biology introduced into the Western binary. It was counterbalanced by other equally important categories of social status, age, generation, kinship positioning, and the flexibility and situational construction of yin-yang principles. See Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, "From Gender Erasure to Gender Difference: State Feminism, Consumer Sexuality, and Women's Public Sphere in China," in Spaces of Their Own: Women's Public Sphere in Transnational China, edited by Mayfair Yang (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999); Mayfair Yang, Gifts, Favors, & Banquets: The Art of Social Relationships in China (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 65; Tani Barlow, "Theorizing Woman: Funu, Guojia, Jiating [Chinese Woman, Chinese State, Chinese Family], in Body, Subject and Power in China, edited by Angela Zito and Tani Barlow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Ann Anagnost, National Past-Times: Narrative, Representation, and Power in Modern China (Body, Commodity, Text) (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997); Xiaotong Fei, From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
22. Mayfair Yang elaborates, To be sure traditional Chinese culture did operate with a loose gender binary, as there was severe discrimination against women, especially from the Song dynasty onward. However, this binary did not have the same totalizing, universalistic, and rigid essentialism that modern biology introduced into the Western binary. It was counterbalanced by other equally important categories of social status, age, generation, kinship positioning, and the flexibility and situational construction of yin-yang principles. See Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, "From Gender Erasure to Gender Difference: State Feminism, Consumer Sexuality, and Women's Public Sphere in China," in Spaces of Their Own: Women's Public Sphere in Transnational China, edited by Mayfair Yang (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999); Mayfair Yang, Gifts, Favors, & Banquets: The Art of Social Relationships in China (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 65; Tani Barlow, "Theorizing Woman: Funu, Guojia, Jiating [Chinese Woman, Chinese State, Chinese Family], in Body, Subject and Power in China, edited by Angela Zito and Tani Barlow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Ann Anagnost, National Past-Times: Narrative, Representation, and Power in Modern China (Body, Commodity, Text) (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997); Xiaotong Fei, From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
23. Mayfair Yang elaborates, To be sure traditional Chinese culture did operate with a loose gender binary, as there was severe discrimination against women, especially from the Song dynasty onward. However, this binary did not have the same totalizing, universalistic, and rigid essentialism that modern biology introduced into the Western binary. It was counterbalanced by other equally important categories of social status, age, generation, kinship positioning, and the flexibility and situational construction of yin-yang principles. See Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, "From Gender Erasure to Gender Difference: State Feminism, Consumer Sexuality, and Women's Public Sphere in China," in Spaces of Their Own: Women's Public Sphere in Transnational China, edited by Mayfair Yang (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999); Mayfair Yang, Gifts, Favors, & Banquets: The Art of Social Relationships in China (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 65; Tani Barlow, "Theorizing Woman: Funu, Guojia, Jiating [Chinese Woman, Chinese State, Chinese Family], in Body, Subject and Power in China, edited by Angela Zito and Tani Barlow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994); Ann Anagnost, National Past-Times: Narrative, Representation, and Power in Modern China (Body, Commodity, Text) (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997); Xiaotong Fei, From the Soil: The Foundations of Chinese Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
24. Ambrose Yeo-chi King, "Kuan-hsi and Network Building: A Sociological Interpretation," Daedalus 120, no. 2 (1991): 66.
25. Fei, From the Soil, 65.
26. Fei, From the Soil, 65.
27. Dorothy Y. Ko, Teacher of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in China, 1573-1722 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994); Susan Mann, Precious Records: Women in China's Long Eighteenth Century (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997).
28. Dorothy Y. Ko, Teacher of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in China, 1573-1722 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994); Susan Mann, Precious Records: Women in China's Long Eighteenth Century (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997).
29. In state Confucianism, the political elite were regarded as agents of political improvement who were "no ordinary, economically oriented citizens fallibly organizing themselves to monitor an incorrigible state, but certain saintly super-citizens ready to guide society by taking over a corrigible state or at least controlling society's 'Nervous system.' " See Thomas Metzger, "The Western Concept of Civil Society in the Context of Chinese History," in Civil Society: History and Possibilities, edited by Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 212.
30. There were, of course, moments of crisis for state Confucianism throughout Chinese history. Metzger noted developments that resulted in the fragmented legitimation of the political center and led the late imperial state to autocratically forbid political activity. First, the civil exam system itself, which flourished as the main mechanism of recruiting officials in the Sung period, also gradually created "a population of well-educated scholars who were not able to enter the bureaucratic, political center and thus . . . poured their energies into local communities" (ibid., 218). Furthermore, in the Ming-Ching period (1368-1912), economic expansion differentiated the economic realm from the polity. But Metzger explains that "this center flexibly persisted for centuries as Chinese civilization dynamically evolved" (ibid., 219). So unemployed scholars and commercial activity resulted in potential threats to the state, and the state responded by becoming more autocratic.
31. There were, of course, moments of crisis for state Confucianism throughout Chinese history. Metzger noted developments that resulted in the fragmented legitimation of the political center and led the late imperial state to autocratically forbid political activity. First, the civil exam system itself, which flourished as the main mechanism of recruiting officials in the Sung period, also gradually created "a population of well-educated scholars who were not able to enter the bureaucratic, political center and thus . . . poured their energies into local communities" (ibid., 218). Furthermore, in the Ming-Ching period (1368-1912), economic expansion differentiated the economic realm from the polity. But Metzger explains that "this center flexibly persisted for centuries as Chinese civilization dynamically evolved" (ibid., 219). So unemployed scholars and commercial activity resulted in potential threats to the state, and the state responded by becoming more autocratic.
32. Ezra F. Vogel, "From Friendship to Comradeship: The Changes in Personal Relations in Communist China," China Quarterly 21 (1965): 46-60.
33. Yang, Gifts, Favors, and Banquets.
34. Judith Stacey, Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983).
35. Elisabeth Croll, The Politics of Marriage in Contemporary China (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
36. Andrew Walder, Communist Neo-Traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Industry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).
37. Yang, Gifts, Favors, and Banquets
38. I b i d.
39. Martin King Whyte and William L. Parish, Urban Life in Contemporary China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 305.
40. Yang, Gifts, Favors, and Banquets, 39.
41. I b i d.
42. Yanjie Bian, "Bringing Strong Ties Back In: Indirect Ties, Network Bridges, and Job Searches in China," American Sociological Review 62 (1997): 366-85.
43. Mark Granovetter, "Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of Embeddedness," American Journal of Sociology 91 (1974): 481-510.
44. See also Bian, "Bringing Strong Ties Back In"; Yanjie Bian and Ang Soon, "Guanxi Networks and Job Mobility in China and Singapore," Social Forces 75, no. 3 (1997): 981-1005.
45. See also Josephine Smart and Alan Smart, "Obligation and Control: Employment of Kin in Capitalist Labour Management in China," Critique of Anthropology 13, no. 1 (1993): 7-31; Ching Kwan Lee, "Factory Regimes of Chinese Capitalism: Different Cultural Logics in Labor Control," in Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism, edited by Aihwa Ong and Donald Nonini (New York: Routledge, 1997), 114-42.
46. See also Josephine Smart and Alan Smart, "Obligation and Control: Employment of Kin in Capitalist Labour Management in China," Critique of Anthropology 13, no. 1 (1993): 7-31; Ching Kwan Lee, "Factory Regimes of Chinese Capitalism: Different Cultural Logics in Labor Control," in Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism, edited by Aihwa Ong and Donald Nonini (New York: Routledge, 1997), 114-42.
47. Smart and Smart, "Obligation and Control," 11.
48. I b i d.
49. Ching-Kwan Lee, "Factory Regimes of Chinese Capitalism."
50. Eileen M. Otis, "Embedding Service: Gender, Class, and the Moral Economy of the Socialist Work Unit in China" (unpublished manuscript, Department of Sociology, University of California, Davis, 2002).
51. David Wank, "The Institutional Process of Market Clientelism: Guanxi and Private Business in a South China City," China Quarterly 147 (1996): 820-38. See also Elizabeth C. Henderson, "Channels across the Taiwan Straits: The Political Preferences and Activities of Taiwan's Investors in Mainland China" (paper prepared for the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Chicago, 1997).
52. David Wank, "The Institutional Process of Market Clientelism: Guanxi and Private Business in a South China City," China Quarterly 147 (1996): 820-38. See also Elizabeth C. Henderson, "Channels across the Taiwan Straits: The Political Preferences and Activities of Taiwan's Investors in Mainland China" (paper prepared for the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Chicago, 1997).
53. Andrew Walder, "Introduction," in China's Transitional Economy, edited by Andrew Walder (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1996), 1-17; David Wank, "The Institutional Process of Market Clientelism."
54. Andrew Walder, "Introduction," in China's Transitional Economy, edited by Andrew Walder (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1996), 1-17; David Wank, "The Institutional Process of Market Clientelism."
55. Contradicting the modernist assumptions regarding the incompatibility of industrial development and the extended family, a number of researchers have illustrated the role of the family in organizing production. For example, Tamara Hareven's study of early-twentieth-century U.S. industrial setting illustrates the conditions under which familial institutions can shape the organization of industrial work. See Tamara K. Hareven, Family Time and Industrial Time (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Likewise, Ping-chun Hsiung's work investigates the family foundations of Taiwan's satellite factory system. See Ping-chun Hsiung, Living Rooms as Factories: Class, Gender, and the Satellite Factory System in Taiwan (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996). Hamilton and Biggart demonstrate how family inheritance structures influence the organizational structures of different East Asian economies. See Gary G. Hamilton and Nicole Woolsey Biggart, "Market, Culture, and Authority: A Comparative Analysis of Management and Organization in the Far East," American Journal of Sociology 94 (suppl. 1998): S52-S94. Rather than focusing on the organization of family organizations and structures in China, our main focus here is a cultural one. We concentrate on the ways in which familial idioms develop as part of the repertoire that constitutes a culture of civility. For a discussion of uses of family idioms in small Japanese factories, see also Dorine Kondo, Crofting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
56. Contradicting the modernist assumptions regarding the incompatibility of industrial development and the extended family, a number of researchers have illustrated the role of the family in organizing production. For example, Tamara Hareven's study of early-twentieth-century U.S. industrial setting illustrates the conditions under which familial institutions can shape the organization of industrial work. See Tamara K. Hareven, Family Time and Industrial Time (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Likewise, Ping-chun Hsiung's work investigates the family foundations of Taiwan's satellite factory system. See Ping-chun Hsiung, Living Rooms as Factories: Class, Gender, and the Satellite Factory System in Taiwan (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996). Hamilton and Biggart demonstrate how family inheritance structures influence the organizational structures of different East Asian economies. See Gary G. Hamilton and Nicole Woolsey Biggart, "Market, Culture, and Authority: A Comparative Analysis of Management and Organization in the Far East," American Journal of Sociology 94 (suppl. 1998): S52-S94. Rather than focusing on the organization of family organizations and structures in China, our main focus here is a cultural one. We concentrate on the ways in which familial idioms develop as part of the repertoire that constitutes a culture of civility. For a discussion of uses of family idioms in small Japanese factories, see also Dorine Kondo, Crofting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
57. Contradicting the modernist assumptions regarding the incompatibility of industrial development and the extended family, a number of researchers have illustrated the role of the family in organizing production. For example, Tamara Hareven's study of early-twentieth-century U.S. industrial setting illustrates the conditions under which familial institutions can shape the organization of industrial work. See Tamara K. Hareven, Family Time and Industrial Time (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Likewise, Ping-chun Hsiung's work investigates the family foundations of Taiwan's satellite factory system. See Ping-chun Hsiung, Living Rooms as Factories: Class, Gender, and the Satellite Factory System in Taiwan (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996). Hamilton and Biggart demonstrate how family inheritance structures influence the organizational structures of different East Asian economies. See Gary G. Hamilton and Nicole Woolsey Biggart, "Market, Culture, and Authority: A Comparative Analysis of Management and Organization in the Far East," American Journal of Sociology 94 (suppl. 1998): S52-S94. Rather than focusing on the organization of family organizations and structures in China, our main focus here is a cultural one. We concentrate on the ways in which familial idioms develop as part of the repertoire that constitutes a culture of civility. For a discussion of uses of family idioms in small Japanese factories, see also Dorine Kondo, Crofting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
58. Contradicting the modernist assumptions regarding the incompatibility of industrial development and the extended family, a number of researchers have illustrated the role of the family in organizing production. For example, Tamara Hareven's study of early-twentieth-century U.S. industrial setting illustrates the conditions under which familial institutions can shape the organization of industrial work. See Tamara K. Hareven, Family Time and Industrial Time (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Likewise, Ping-chun Hsiung's work investigates the family foundations of Taiwan's satellite factory system. See Ping-chun Hsiung, Living Rooms as Factories: Class, Gender, and the Satellite Factory System in Taiwan (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996). Hamilton and Biggart demonstrate how family inheritance structures influence the organizational structures of different East Asian economies. See Gary G. Hamilton and Nicole Woolsey Biggart, "Market, Culture, and Authority: A Comparative Analysis of Management and Organization in the Far East," American Journal of Sociology 94 (suppl. 1998): S52-S94. Rather than focusing on the organization of family organizations and structures in China, our main focus here is a cultural one. We concentrate on the ways in which familial idioms develop as part of the repertoire that constitutes a culture of civility. For a discussion of uses of family idioms in small Japanese factories, see also Dorine Kondo, Crofting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
59. Alan Smart, "Guanxi, Gifts, and Learning from China: A Review Essay," Anthropos, 93 (1998): 561.
60. An extreme example of this is illustrated by overseas Chinese who usually do not make significant investments in their home village so as to avoid weighty demands made on the basis of kin relations. See Alan Smart and Josephine Smart, "Transnational Social Networks and Negotiated Identities in Interactions between Hong Kong and China," in Transnationalism from Below, edited by Michael Peter Smith and Luis Eduardo Guarnizo (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press, 1998), 103-39; Josephine Smart and Alan Smart, "Personal Relations and Divergent Economies in China: A Case of Hong Kong Investment in China," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 15, no. 2 (1991): 216-33.
61. An extreme example of this is illustrated by overseas Chinese who usually do not make significant investments in their home village so as to avoid weighty demands made on the basis of kin relations. See Alan Smart and Josephine Smart, "Transnational Social Networks and Negotiated Identities in Interactions between Hong Kong and China," in Transnationalism from Below, edited by Michael Peter Smith and Luis Eduardo Guarnizo (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press, 1998), 103-39; Josephine Smart and Alan Smart, "Personal Relations and Divergent Economies in China: A Case of Hong Kong Investment in China," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 15, no. 2 (1991): 216-33.
62. King, "Kuan-hsi and Network Building," 76.
63. For example, as an official and a potential investor enter into a business relationship, they build friendship through nonbusiness interactions. "They usually meet each other in restaurants, 'Assessing the bottom line' of one another by drinking together for several runs in various occasions." You-tien Hsing, Making Capitalism in China, 142. See also Hsing, "Blood, Thicker than Water."
64. For example, as an official and a potential investor enter into a business relationship, they build friendship through nonbusiness interactions. "They usually meet each other in restaurants, 'Assessing the bottom line' of one another by drinking together for several runs in various occasions." You-tien Hsing, Making Capitalism in China, 142. See also Hsing, "Blood, Thicker than Water."
65. Hsing, Making Capitalism in China; Yunxiang Yan, "The Culture of Guanxi in a North China Village," China Journal 35 (1996): 1-25; Yang, Gifts, Favors, and Banquets; Alan Smart, "Gifts, Bribes, and Guanxi: A Reconsideration of Bourdieu's Social Capital," Cultural Anthropology 8, no. 3 (1993): 388-408.
66. Hsing, Making Capitalism in China; Yunxiang Yan, "The Culture of Guanxi in a North China Village," China Journal 35 (1996): 1-25; Yang, Gifts, Favors, and Banquets; Alan Smart, "Gifts, Bribes, and Guanxi: A Reconsideration of Bourdieu's Social Capital," Cultural Anthropology 8, no. 3 (1993): 388-408.
67. Hsing, Making Capitalism in China; Yunxiang Yan, "The Culture of Guanxi in a North China Village," China Journal 35 (1996): 1-25; Yang, Gifts, Favors, and Banquets; Alan Smart, "Gifts, Bribes, and Guanxi: A Reconsideration of Bourdieu's Social Capital," Cultural Anthropology 8, no. 3 (1993): 388-408.
68. Hsing, Making Capitalism in China; Yunxiang Yan, "The Culture of Guanxi in a North China Village," China Journal 35 (1996): 1-25; Yang, Gifts, Favors, and Banquets; Alan Smart, "Gifts, Bribes, and Guanxi: A Reconsideration of Bourdieu's Social Capital," Cultural Anthropology 8, no. 3 (1993): 388-408.
69. Wank, "The Institutional Process of Market Clientelism"; Smart, "Gifts, Bribes, and Guanxi." In building new guanxi, people most often draw on shared participation in an organization or group as the starting point (i.e., kinship, shared alma mater, native place, etc.). When shared identities do not exist between two people who want to establish guanxi, one might seek an intermediary to make the proper introductions. "Through the intermediary the individual is able to associate with the 'Stranger' on relational terms." See King, "Kuan-hsi and Network Building," 74.
70. Wank, "The Institutional Process of Market Clientelism"; Smart, "Gifts, Bribes, and Guanxi." In building new guanxi, people most often draw on shared participation in an organization or group as the starting point (i.e., kinship, shared alma mater, native place, etc.). When shared identities do not exist between two people who want to establish guanxi, one might seek an intermediary to make the proper introductions. "Through the intermediary the individual is able to associate with the 'Stranger' on relational terms." See King, "Kuan-hsi and Network Building," 74.
71. Wank, "The Institutional Process of Market Clientelism"; Smart, "Gifts, Bribes, and Guanxi." In building new guanxi, people most often draw on shared participation in an organization or group as the starting point (i.e., kinship, shared alma mater, native place, etc.). When shared identities do not exist between two people who want to establish guanxi, one might seek an intermediary to make the proper introductions. "Through the intermediary the individual is able to associate with the 'Stranger' on relational terms." See King, "Kuan-hsi and Network Building," 74.
72. For an elaboration of this argument, see Smart, "Guanxi, Gifts, and Learning from China." Having developed a similar argument, Kipnis persuasively argues that the understanding of how the instrumental and the expressive are integrated in the China case helps us to recognize that the two are often also blended in Western societies. See Andrew B. Kipnis, Producing Guanxi: Sentiment, Self, and Subculture in a North China Village (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997). For an illustration of the integration of instrumental and affective dimensions of action in a Western context, specifically in the ways individuals imbue money, an impersonal medium of material exchange, with emotional content, see Viviana A. Zelizer, The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor relief, and Other Currencies (New York: Basic Books, 1994).
73. For an elaboration of this argument, see Smart, "Guanxi, Gifts, and Learning from China." Having developed a similar argument, Kipnis persuasively argues that the understanding of how the instrumental and the expressive are integrated in the China case helps us to recognize that the two are often also blended in Western societies. See Andrew B. Kipnis, Producing Guanxi: Sentiment, Self, and Subculture in a North China Village (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997). For an illustration of the integration of instrumental and affective dimensions of action in a Western context, specifically in the ways individuals imbue money, an impersonal medium of material exchange, with emotional content, see Viviana A. Zelizer, The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor relief, and Other Currencies (New York: Basic Books, 1994).
74. For an elaboration of this argument, see Smart, "Guanxi, Gifts, and Learning from China." Having developed a similar argument, Kipnis persuasively argues that the understanding of how the instrumental and the expressive are integrated in the China case helps us to recognize that the two are often also blended in Western societies. See Andrew B. Kipnis, Producing Guanxi: Sentiment, Self, and Subculture in a North China Village (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997). For an illustration of the integration of instrumental and affective dimensions of action in a Western context, specifically in the ways individuals imbue money, an impersonal medium of material exchange, with emotional content, see Viviana A. Zelizer, The Social Meaning of Money: Pin Money, Paychecks, Poor relief, and Other Currencies (New York: Basic Books, 1994).
75. There exists an extensive literature on trust. Generally speaking, the issue of trust has been examined in three arenas: the state, civil society, and the market. But arguments tend to fall along a single fault line: Trust is viewed either as a function of self-interest or springing from more complex motivations and institutional arrangements. Levi's edited collection represents an important argument about trust in the context of state-society relations, which underscores trust as either based on calculated individual interests or norms and obligations bound up with citizenship. According to Levi, governments guarantee trust through regulatory oversight (i.e., overseeing contracts), which enables otherwise risk-taking activities. Here, the foundations of trust are located in institutions. See V. A. Braithwaite, "Institutionalizing Distrust, Enculturating Trust," in Trust and Governance, edited by V. A. Braithwaite and Margaret Levi (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1998), 295-314; Geoffrey Brennen, "Democratic Trust: A Rational-Choice Theory View," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 197-217; Russell Hardin, "Trust and Governance," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 9-27; Magaret Levi, "A State of Trust," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 77-103; Philip Petit, "Republican Theory and Political Trust," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 295-315. A number of other researchers examine the formation of trusting relations as a source of social capital, which shapes patterns of economic activity. Most widely familiar is probably Putnam's analysis of the connections between divergent civic traditions and social capital in northern and southern Italy, as well as his thesis that links declining trust or "social capital" to U.S. economic performance. Whereas Putnam locates social capital in enduring civic traditions, Sabel argues that, with the proper institutions, any society can generate the social trust necessary for economic enterprise. See Charles Sabel, "Studied Trust: Building New Forms of Cooperation in a Volatile Economy," Human Relations 46, no. 9 (1993): 1131-70. Others analyze how institutional mechanisms and specific cultural configurations of trust shape economies. For example, Fukuyama holds that hierarchically organized voluntary associations form the foundations for large enterprises in Japan, while the absence of voluntary associational activity explains the primacy of small business in Spain, France, China, and Taiwan. See Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York: Free Press, 1996). Focusing on the problem of the absence of trust in market exchanges in southern Italy, Diego Gambetta's study examines the emergence of the mafia to protect market exchange. See Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). In contrast to the abundant literature on the role of trust in shaping the economy, there is not much discussion on trust and civil society. This literature tends to adopt an individualistic perspective, viewing trust as a function of a society made up by free, private, and rational individuals. See Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society. Our analysis of guanxi civility joins recent attempts at critiquing the individualistic perspective for not recognizing the diversity of forms and sources of cooperation and solidarity. For example, see Natalie Fenton, "Critical Perspectives on Trust and Civil Society," in Trust and Civil Society, edited by F. Tonkiss et al. (London: Macmillan, 2000), 151-74; for a range of critiques of the rational choice perspective, which recognizes non-self-interested sources of motivations and institutions that guide social cooperation, see Jane Mansbridge, ed., Beyond Self-Interest (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
76. There exists an extensive literature on trust. Generally speaking, the issue of trust has been examined in three arenas: the state, civil society, and the market. But arguments tend to fall along a single fault line: Trust is viewed either as a function of self-interest or springing from more complex motivations and institutional arrangements. Levi's edited collection represents an important argument about trust in the context of state-society relations, which underscores trust as either based on calculated individual interests or norms and obligations bound up with citizenship. According to Levi, governments guarantee trust through regulatory oversight (i.e., overseeing contracts), which enables otherwise risk-taking activities. Here, the foundations of trust are located in institutions. See V. A. Braithwaite, "Institutionalizing Distrust, Enculturating Trust," in Trust and Governance, edited by V. A. Braithwaite and Margaret Levi (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1998), 295-314; Geoffrey Brennen, "Democratic Trust: A Rational-Choice Theory View," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 197-217; Russell Hardin, "Trust and Governance," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 9-27; Magaret Levi, "A State of Trust," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 77-103; Philip Petit, "Republican Theory and Political Trust," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 295-315. A number of other researchers examine the formation of trusting relations as a source of social capital, which shapes patterns of economic activity. Most widely familiar is probably Putnam's analysis of the connections between divergent civic traditions and social capital in northern and southern Italy, as well as his thesis that links declining trust or "social capital" to U.S. economic performance. Whereas Putnam locates social capital in enduring civic traditions, Sabel argues that, with the proper institutions, any society can generate the social trust necessary for economic enterprise. See Charles Sabel, "Studied Trust: Building New Forms of Cooperation in a Volatile Economy," Human Relations 46, no. 9 (1993): 1131-70. Others analyze how institutional mechanisms and specific cultural configurations of trust shape economies. For example, Fukuyama holds that hierarchically organized voluntary associations form the foundations for large enterprises in Japan, while the absence of voluntary associational activity explains the primacy of small business in Spain, France, China, and Taiwan. See Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York: Free Press, 1996). Focusing on the problem of the absence of trust in market exchanges in southern Italy, Diego Gambetta's study examines the emergence of the mafia to protect market exchange. See Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). In contrast to the abundant literature on the role of trust in shaping the economy, there is not much discussion on trust and civil society. This literature tends to adopt an individualistic perspective, viewing trust as a function of a society made up by free, private, and rational individuals. See Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society. Our analysis of guanxi civility joins recent attempts at critiquing the individualistic perspective for not recognizing the diversity of forms and sources of cooperation and solidarity. For example, see Natalie Fenton, "Critical Perspectives on Trust and Civil Society," in Trust and Civil Society, edited by F. Tonkiss et al. (London: Macmillan, 2000), 151-74; for a range of critiques of the rational choice perspective, which recognizes non-self-interested sources of motivations and institutions that guide social cooperation, see Jane Mansbridge, ed., Beyond Self-Interest (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
77. There exists an extensive literature on trust. Generally speaking, the issue of trust has been examined in three arenas: the state, civil society, and the market. But arguments tend to fall along a single fault line: Trust is viewed either as a function of self-interest or springing from more complex motivations and institutional arrangements. Levi's edited collection represents an important argument about trust in the context of state-society relations, which underscores trust as either based on calculated individual interests or norms and obligations bound up with citizenship. According to Levi, governments guarantee trust through regulatory oversight (i.e., overseeing contracts), which enables otherwise risk-taking activities. Here, the foundations of trust are located in institutions. See V. A. Braithwaite, "Institutionalizing Distrust, Enculturating Trust," in Trust and Governance, edited by V. A. Braithwaite and Margaret Levi (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1998), 295-314; Geoffrey Brennen, "Democratic Trust: A Rational-Choice Theory View," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 197-217; Russell Hardin, "Trust and Governance," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 9-27; Magaret Levi, "A State of Trust," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 77-103; Philip Petit, "Republican Theory and Political Trust," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 295-315. A number of other researchers examine the formation of trusting relations as a source of social capital, which shapes patterns of economic activity. Most widely familiar is probably Putnam's analysis of the connections between divergent civic traditions and social capital in northern and southern Italy, as well as his thesis that links declining trust or "social capital" to U.S. economic performance. Whereas Putnam locates social capital in enduring civic traditions, Sabel argues that, with the proper institutions, any society can generate the social trust necessary for economic enterprise. See Charles Sabel, "Studied Trust: Building New Forms of Cooperation in a Volatile Economy," Human Relations 46, no. 9 (1993): 1131-70. Others analyze how institutional mechanisms and specific cultural configurations of trust shape economies. For example, Fukuyama holds that hierarchically organized voluntary associations form the foundations for large enterprises in Japan, while the absence of voluntary associational activity explains the primacy of small business in Spain, France, China, and Taiwan. See Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York: Free Press, 1996). Focusing on the problem of the absence of trust in market exchanges in southern Italy, Diego Gambetta's study examines the emergence of the mafia to protect market exchange. See Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). In contrast to the abundant literature on the role of trust in shaping the economy, there is not much discussion on trust and civil society. This literature tends to adopt an individualistic perspective, viewing trust as a function of a society made up by free, private, and rational individuals. See Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society. Our analysis of guanxi civility joins recent attempts at critiquing the individualistic perspective for not recognizing the diversity of forms and sources of cooperation and solidarity. For example, see Natalie Fenton, "Critical Perspectives on Trust and Civil Society," in Trust and Civil Society, edited by F. Tonkiss et al. (London: Macmillan, 2000), 151-74; for a range of critiques of the rational choice perspective, which recognizes non-self-interested sources of motivations and institutions that guide social cooperation, see Jane Mansbridge, ed., Beyond Self-Interest (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
78. There exists an extensive literature on trust. Generally speaking, the issue of trust has been examined in three arenas: the state, civil society, and the market. But arguments tend to fall along a single fault line: Trust is viewed either as a function of self-interest or springing from more complex motivations and institutional arrangements. Levi's edited collection represents an important argument about trust in the context of state-society relations, which underscores trust as either based on calculated individual interests or norms and obligations bound up with citizenship. According to Levi, governments guarantee trust through regulatory oversight (i.e., overseeing contracts), which enables otherwise risk-taking activities. Here, the foundations of trust are located in institutions. See V. A. Braithwaite, "Institutionalizing Distrust, Enculturating Trust," in Trust and Governance, edited by V. A. Braithwaite and Margaret Levi (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1998), 295-314; Geoffrey Brennen, "Democratic Trust: A Rational-Choice Theory View," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 197-217; Russell Hardin, "Trust and Governance," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 9-27; Magaret Levi, "A State of Trust," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 77-103; Philip Petit, "Republican Theory and Political Trust," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 295-315. A number of other researchers examine the formation of trusting relations as a source of social capital, which shapes patterns of economic activity. Most widely familiar is probably Putnam's analysis of the connections between divergent civic traditions and social capital in northern and southern Italy, as well as his thesis that links declining trust or "social capital" to U.S. economic performance. Whereas Putnam locates social capital in enduring civic traditions, Sabel argues that, with the proper institutions, any society can generate the social trust necessary for economic enterprise. See Charles Sabel, "Studied Trust: Building New Forms of Cooperation in a Volatile Economy," Human Relations 46, no. 9 (1993): 1131-70. Others analyze how institutional mechanisms and specific cultural configurations of trust shape economies. For example, Fukuyama holds that hierarchically organized voluntary associations form the foundations for large enterprises in Japan, while the absence of voluntary associational activity explains the primacy of small business in Spain, France, China, and Taiwan. See Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York: Free Press, 1996). Focusing on the problem of the absence of trust in market exchanges in southern Italy, Diego Gambetta's study examines the emergence of the mafia to protect market exchange. See Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). In contrast to the abundant literature on the role of trust in shaping the economy, there is not much discussion on trust and civil society. This literature tends to adopt an individualistic perspective, viewing trust as a function of a society made up by free, private, and rational individuals. See Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society. Our analysis of guanxi civility joins recent attempts at critiquing the individualistic perspective for not recognizing the diversity of forms and sources of cooperation and solidarity. For example, see Natalie Fenton, "Critical Perspectives on Trust and Civil Society," in Trust and Civil Society, edited by F. Tonkiss et al. (London: Macmillan, 2000), 151-74; for a range of critiques of the rational choice perspective, which recognizes non-self-interested sources of motivations and institutions that guide social cooperation, see Jane Mansbridge, ed., Beyond Self-Interest (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
79. There exists an extensive literature on trust. Generally speaking, the issue of trust has been examined in three arenas: the state, civil society, and the market. But arguments tend to fall along a single fault line: Trust is viewed either as a function of self-interest or springing from more complex motivations and institutional arrangements. Levi's edited collection represents an important argument about trust in the context of state-society relations, which underscores trust as either based on calculated individual interests or norms and obligations bound up with citizenship. According to Levi, governments guarantee trust through regulatory oversight (i.e., overseeing contracts), which enables otherwise risk-taking activities. Here, the foundations of trust are located in institutions. See V. A. Braithwaite, "Institutionalizing Distrust, Enculturating Trust," in Trust and Governance, edited by V. A. Braithwaite and Margaret Levi (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1998), 295-314; Geoffrey Brennen, "Democratic Trust: A Rational-Choice Theory View," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 197-217; Russell Hardin, "Trust and Governance," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds.,
80. There exists an extensive literature on trust. Generally speaking, the issue of trust has been examined in three arenas: the state, civil society, and the market. But arguments tend to fall along a single fault line: Trust is viewed either as a function of self-interest or springing from more complex motivations and institutional arrangements. Levi's edited collection represents an important argument about trust in the context of state-society relations, which underscores trust as either based on calculated individual interests or norms and obligations bound up with citizenship. According to Levi, governments guarantee trust through regulatory oversight (i.e., overseeing contracts), which enables otherwise risk-taking activities. Here, the foundations of trust are located in institutions. See V. A. Braithwaite, "Institutionalizing Distrust, Enculturating Trust," in Trust and Governance, edited by V. A. Braithwaite and Margaret Levi (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1998), 295-314; Geoffrey Brennen, "Democratic Trust: A Rational-Choice Theory View," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 197-217; Russell Hardin, "Trust and Governance," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 9-27; Magaret Levi, "A State of Trust," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 77-103; Philip Petit, "Republican Theory and Political Trust," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 295-315. A number of other researchers examine the formation of trusting relations as a source of social capital, which shapes patterns of economic activity. Most widely familiar is probably Putnam's analysis of the connections between divergent civic traditions and social capital in northern and southern Italy, as well as his thesis that links declining trust or "social capital" to U.S. economic performance. Whereas Putnam locates social capital in enduring civic traditions, Sabel argues that, with the proper institutions, any society can generate the social trust necessary for economic enterprise. See Charles Sabel, "Studied Trust: Building New Forms of Cooperation in a Volatile Economy," Human Relations 46, no. 9 (1993): 1131-70. Others analyze how institutional mechanisms and specific cultural configurations of trust shape economies. For example, Fukuyama holds that hierarchically organized voluntary associations form the foundations for large enterprises in Japan, while the absence of voluntary associational activity explains the primacy of small business in Spain, France, China, and Taiwan. See Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York: Free Press, 1996). Focusing on the problem of the absence of trust in market exchanges in southern Italy, Diego Gambetta's study examines the emergence of the mafia to protect market exchange. See Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). In contrast to the abundant literature on the role of trust in shaping the economy, there is not much discussion on trust and civil society. This literature tends to adopt an individualistic perspective, viewing trust as a function of a society made up by free, private, and rational individuals. See Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society. Our analysis of guanxi civility joins recent attempts at critiquing the individualistic perspective for not recognizing the diversity of forms and sources of cooperation and solidarity. For example, see Natalie Fenton, "Critical Perspectives on Trust and Civil Society," in Trust and Civil Society, edited by F. Tonkiss et al. (London: Macmillan, 2000), 151-74; for a range of critiques of the rational choice perspective, which recognizes non-self-interested sources of motivations and institutions that guide social cooperation, see Jane Mansbridge, ed., Beyond Self-Interest (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
81. There exists an extensive literature on trust. Generally speaking, the issue of trust has been examined in three arenas: the state, civil society, and the market. But arguments tend to fall along a single fault line: Trust is viewed either as a function of self-interest or springing from more complex motivations and institutional arrangements. Levi's edited collection represents an important argument about trust in the context of state-society relations, which underscores trust as either based on calculated individual interests or norms and obligations bound up with citizenship. According to Levi, governments guarantee trust through regulatory oversight (i.e., overseeing contracts), which enables otherwise risk-taking activities. Here, the foundations of trust are located in institutions. See V. A. Braithwaite, "Institutionalizing Distrust, Enculturating Trust," in Trust and Governance, edited by V. A. Braithwaite and Margaret Levi (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1998), 295-314; Geoffrey Brennen, "Democratic Trust: A Rational-Choice Theory View," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 197-217; Russell Hardin, "Trust and Governance," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 9-27; Magaret Levi, "A State of Trust," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 77-103; Philip Petit, "Republican Theory and Political Trust," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 295-315. A number of other researchers examine the formation of trusting relations as a source of social capital, which shapes patterns of economic activity. Most widely familiar is probably Putnam's analysis of the connections between divergent civic traditions and social capital in northern and southern Italy, as well as his thesis that links declining trust or "social capital" to U.S. economic performance. Whereas Putnam locates social capital in enduring civic traditions, Sabel argues that, with the proper institutions, any society can generate the social trust necessary for economic enterprise. See Charles Sabel, "Studied Trust: Building New Forms of Cooperation in a Volatile Economy," Human Relations 46, no. 9 (1993): 1131-70. Others analyze how institutional mechanisms and specific cultural configurations of trust shape economies. For example, Fukuyama holds that hierarchically organized voluntary associations form the foundations for large enterprises in Japan, while the absence of voluntary associational activity explains the primacy of small business in Spain, France, China, and Taiwan. See Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York: Free Press, 1996). Focusing on the problem of the absence of trust in market exchanges in southern Italy, Diego Gambetta's study examines the emergence of the mafia to protect market exchange. See Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). In contrast to the abundant literature on the role of trust in shaping the economy, there is not much discussion on trust and civil society. This literature tends to adopt an individualistic perspective, viewing trust as a function of a society made up by free, private, and rational individuals. See Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society. Our analysis of guanxi civility joins recent attempts at critiquing the individualistic perspective for not recognizing the diversity of forms and sources of cooperation and solidarity. For example, see Natalie Fenton, "Critical Perspectives on Trust and Civil Society," in Trust and Civil Society, edited by F. Tonkiss et al. (London: Macmillan, 2000), 151-74; for a range of critiques of the rational choice perspective, which recognizes non-self-interested sources of motivations and institutions that guide social cooperation, see Jane Mansbridge, ed., Beyond Self-Interest (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
82. There exists an extensive literature on trust. Generally speaking, the issue of trust has been examined in three arenas: the state, civil society, and the market. But arguments tend to fall along a single fault line: Trust is viewed either as a function of self-interest or springing from more complex motivations and institutional arrangements. Levi's edited collection represents an important argument about trust in the context of state-society relations, which underscores trust as either based on calculated individual interests or norms and obligations bound up with citizenship. According to Levi, governments guarantee trust through regulatory oversight (i.e., overseeing contracts), which enables otherwise risk-taking activities. Here, the foundations of trust are located in institutions. See V. A. Braithwaite, "Institutionalizing Distrust, Enculturating Trust," in Trust and Governance, edited by V. A. Braithwaite and Margaret Levi (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1998), 295-314; Geoffrey Brennen, "Democratic Trust: A Rational-Choice Theory View," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 197-217; Russell Hardin, "Trust and Governance," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 9-27; Magaret Levi, "A State of Trust," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 77-103; Philip Petit, "Republican Theory and Political Trust," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 295-315. A number of other researchers examine the formation of trusting relations as a source of social capital, which shapes patterns of economic activity. Most widely familiar is probably Putnam's analysis of the connections between divergent civic traditions and social capital in northern and southern Italy, as well as his thesis that links declining trust or "social capital" to U.S. economic performance. Whereas Putnam locates social capital in enduring civic traditions, Sabel argues that, with the proper institutions, any society can generate the social trust necessary for economic enterprise. See Charles Sabel, "Studied Trust: Building New Forms of Cooperation in a Volatile Economy," Human Relations 46, no. 9 (1993): 1131-70. Others analyze how institutional mechanisms and specific cultural configurations of trust shape economies. For example, Fukuyama holds that hierarchically organized voluntary associations form the foundations for large enterprises in Japan, while the absence of voluntary associational activity explains the primacy of small business in Spain, France, China, and Taiwan. See Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York: Free Press, 1996). Focusing on the problem of the absence of trust in market exchanges in southern Italy, Diego Gambetta's study examines the emergence of the mafia to protect market exchange. See Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). In contrast to the abundant literature on the role of trust in shaping the economy, there is not much discussion on trust and civil society. This literature tends to adopt an individualistic perspective, viewing trust as a function of a society made up by free, private, and rational individuals. See Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society. Our analysis of guanxi civility joins recent attempts at critiquing the individualistic perspective for not recognizing the diversity of forms and sources of cooperation and solidarity. For example, see Natalie Fenton, "Critical Perspectives on Trust and Civil Society," in Trust and Civil Society, edited by F. Tonkiss et al. (London: Macmillan, 2000), 151-74; for a range of critiques of the rational choice perspective, which recognizes non-self-interested sources of motivations and institutions that guide social cooperation, see Jane Mansbridge, ed., Beyond Self-Interest (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
83. There exists an extensive literature on trust. Generally speaking, the issue of trust has been examined in three arenas: the state, civil society, and the market. But arguments tend to fall along a single fault line: Trust is viewed either as a function of self-interest or springing from more complex motivations and institutional arrangements. Levi's edited collection represents an important argument about trust in the context of state-society relations, which underscores trust as either based on calculated individual interests or norms and obligations bound up with citizenship. According to Levi, governments guarantee trust through regulatory oversight (i.e., overseeing contracts), which enables otherwise risk-taking activities. Here, the foundations of trust are located in institutions. See V. A. Braithwaite, "Institutionalizing Distrust, Enculturating Trust," in Trust and Governance, edited by V. A. Braithwaite and Margaret Levi (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1998), 295-314; Geoffrey Brennen, "Democratic Trust: A Rational-Choice Theory View," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 197-217; Russell Hardin, "Trust and Governance," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 9-27; Magaret Levi, "A State of Trust," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 77-103; Philip Petit, "Republican Theory and Political Trust," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 295-315. A number of other researchers examine the formation of trusting relations as a source of social capital, which shapes patterns of economic activity. Most widely familiar is probably Putnam's analysis of the connections between divergent civic traditions and social capital in northern and southern Italy, as well as his thesis that links declining trust or "social capital" to U.S. economic performance. Whereas Putnam locates social capital in enduring civic traditions, Sabel argues that, with the proper institutions, any society can generate the social trust necessary for economic enterprise. See Charles Sabel, "Studied Trust: Building New Forms of Cooperation in a Volatile Economy," Human Relations 46, no. 9 (1993): 1131-70. Others analyze how institutional mechanisms and specific cultural configurations of trust shape economies. For example, Fukuyama holds that hierarchically organized voluntary associations form the foundations for large enterprises in Japan, while the absence of voluntary associational activity explains the primacy of small business in Spain, France, China, and Taiwan. See Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York: Free Press, 1996). Focusing on the problem of the absence of trust in market exchanges in southern Italy, Diego Gambetta's study examines the emergence of the mafia to protect market exchange. See Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). In contrast to the abundant literature on the role of trust in shaping the economy, there is not much discussion on trust and civil society. This literature tends to adopt an individualistic perspective, viewing trust as a function of a society made up by free, private, and rational individuals. See Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society. Our analysis of guanxi civility joins recent attempts at critiquing the individualistic perspective for not recognizing the diversity of forms and sources of cooperation and solidarity. For example, see Natalie Fenton, "Critical Perspectives on Trust and Civil Society," in Trust and Civil Society, edited by F. Tonkiss et al. (London: Macmillan, 2000), 151-74; for a range of critiques of the rational choice perspective, which recognizes non-self-interested sources of motivations and institutions that guide social cooperation, see Jane Mansbridge, ed., Beyond Self-Interest (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
84. There exists an extensive literature on trust. Generally speaking, the issue of trust has been examined in three arenas: the state, civil society, and the market. But arguments tend to fall along a single fault line: Trust is viewed either as a function of self-interest or springing from more complex motivations and institutional arrangements. Levi's edited collection represents an important argument about trust in the context of state-society relations, which underscores trust as either based on calculated individual interests or norms and obligations bound up with citizenship. According to Levi, governments guarantee trust through regulatory oversight (i.e., overseeing contracts), which enables otherwise risk-taking activities. Here, the foundations of trust are located in institutions. See V. A. Braithwaite, "Institutionalizing Distrust, Enculturating Trust," in Trust and Governance, edited by V. A. Braithwaite and Margaret Levi (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1998), 295-314; Geoffrey Brennen, "Democratic Trust: A Rational-Choice Theory View," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 197-217; Russell Hardin, "Trust and Governance," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 9-27; Magaret Levi, "A State of Trust," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 77-103; Philip Petit, "Republican Theory and Political Trust," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 295-315. A number of other researchers examine the formation of trusting relations as a source of social capital, which shapes patterns of economic activity. Most widely familiar is probably Putnam's analysis of the connections between divergent civic traditions and social capital in northern and southern Italy, as well as his thesis that links declining trust or "social capital" to U.S. economic performance. Whereas Putnam locates social capital in enduring civic traditions, Sabel argues that, with the proper institutions, any society can generate the social trust necessary for economic enterprise. See Charles Sabel, "Studied Trust: Building New Forms of Cooperation in a Volatile Economy," Human Relations 46, no. 9 (1993): 1131-70. Others analyze how institutional mechanisms and specific cultural configurations of trust shape economies. For example, Fukuyama holds that hierarchically organized voluntary associations form the foundations for large enterprises in Japan, while the absence of voluntary associational activity explains the primacy of small business in Spain, France, China, and Taiwan. See Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York: Free Press, 1996). Focusing on the problem of the absence of trust in market exchanges in southern Italy, Diego Gambetta's study examines the emergence of the mafia to protect market exchange. See Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). In contrast to the abundant literature on the role of trust in shaping the economy, there is not much discussion on trust and civil society. This literature tends to adopt an individualistic perspective, viewing trust as a function of a society made up by free, private, and rational individuals. See Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society. Our analysis of guanxi civility joins recent attempts at critiquing the individualistic perspective for not recognizing the diversity of forms and sources of cooperation and solidarity. For example, see Natalie Fenton, "Critical Perspectives on Trust and Civil Society," in Trust and Civil Society, edited by F. Tonkiss et al. (London: Macmillan, 2000), 151-74; for a range of critiques of the rational choice perspective, which recognizes non-self-interested sources of motivations and institutions that guide social cooperation, see Jane Mansbridge, ed., Beyond Self-Interest (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
85. There exists an extensive literature on trust. Generally speaking, the issue of trust has been examined in three arenas: the state, civil society, and the market. But arguments tend to fall along a single fault line: Trust is viewed either as a function of self-interest or springing from more complex motivations and institutional arrangements. Levi's edited collection represents an important argument about trust in the context of state-society relations, which underscores trust as either based on calculated individual interests or norms and obligations bound up with citizenship. According to Levi, governments guarantee trust through regulatory oversight (i.e., overseeing contracts), which enables otherwise risk-taking activities. Here, the foundations of trust are located in institutions. See V. A. Braithwaite, "Institutionalizing Distrust, Enculturating Trust," in Trust and Governance, edited by V. A. Braithwaite and Margaret Levi (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1998), 295-314; Geoffrey Brennen, "Democratic Trust: A Rational-Choice Theory View," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 197-217; Russell Hardin, "Trust and Governance," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 9-27; Magaret Levi, "A State of Trust," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 77-103; Philip Petit, "Republican Theory and Political Trust," in Braithwaite and Levi, eds., Trust and Governance, 295-315. A number of other researchers examine the formation of trusting relations as a source of social capital, which shapes patterns of economic activity. Most widely familiar is probably Putnam's analysis of the connections between divergent civic traditions and social capital in northern and southern Italy, as well as his thesis that links declining trust or "social capital" to U.S. economic performance. Whereas Putnam locates social capital in enduring civic traditions, Sabel argues that, with the proper institutions, any society can generate the social trust necessary for economic enterprise. See Charles Sabel, "Studied Trust: Building New Forms of Cooperation in a Volatile Economy," Human Relations 46, no. 9 (1993): 1131-70. Others analyze how institutional mechanisms and specific cultural configurations of trust shape economies. For example, Fukuyama holds that hierarchically organized voluntary associations form the foundations for large enterprises in Japan, while the absence of voluntary associational activity explains the primacy of small business in Spain, France, China, and Taiwan. See Francis Fukuyama, Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (New York: Free Press, 1996). Focusing on the problem of the absence of trust in market exchanges in southern Italy, Diego Gambetta's study examines the emergence of the mafia to protect market exchange. See Gambetta, The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993). In contrast to the abundant literature on the role of trust in shaping the economy, there is not much discussion on trust and civil society. This literature tends to adopt an individualistic perspective, viewing trust as a function of a society made up by free, private, and rational individuals. See Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society. Our analysis of guanxi civility joins recent attempts at critiquing the individualistic perspective for not recognizing the diversity of forms and sources of cooperation and solidarity. For example, see Natalie Fenton, "Critical Perspectives on Trust and Civil Society," in Trust and Civil Society, edited by F. Tonkiss et al. (London: Macmillan, 2000), 151-74; for a range of critiques of the rational choice perspective, which recognizes non-self-interested sources of motivations and institutions that guide social cooperation, see Jane Mansbridge, ed., Beyond Self-Interest (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990).
86. The issue of social cohesion has been central to the philosophical discussion of civil society. How does an aggregate of individuals engage with one another, if free from external constraints? There are a variety of answers to this question that can be found in the Western tradition. For Locke, what held human beings together in the form of a civil society was their shared fear for the Christian God. For most of the Scottish Enlightenment scholars, civil society was held together by the interdependence of need. Hegel found both answers insufficient. He claimed to have produced a political equivalent of the Christian community, "united not by fear of God but by belief in the divinity of the political community itself." See Sunil Khilnani, "The Development of Civil Society," in Civil Society: History and Possibilities, edited by Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 24; for an extensive discussion of the issue of community, see Adam Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society,
87. The issue of social cohesion has been central to the philosophical discussion of civil society. How does an aggregate of individuals engage with one another, if free from external constraints? There are a variety of answers to this question that can be found in the Western tradition. For Locke, what held human beings together in the form of a civil society was their shared fear for the Christian God. For most of the Scottish Enlightenment scholars, civil society was held together by the interdependence of need. Hegel found both answers insufficient. He claimed to have produced a political equivalent of the Christian community, "united not by fear of God but by belief in the divinity of the political community itself." See Sunil Khilnani, "The Development of Civil Society," in Civil Society: History and Possibilities, edited by Sudipta Kaviraj and Sunil Khilnani (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 24; for an extensive discussion of the issue of community, see Adam Seligman, The Idea of Civil Society,
88. Andrew Kipnis asserts, "There was a congruence between the size of gifts, the burden of obligation, the strength of feeling that either existed or that the parties hoped to develop, the closeness of the guanxi, and the dependability of the guanxi." See Kipnis, Producing Guanxi: Sentiment, Self, and Subculture in a North China Village, 73; see also Yang, Gifts, Favors, and Banquets.
89. Andrew Kipnis asserts, "There was a congruence between the size of gifts, the burden of obligation, the strength of feeling that either existed or that the parties hoped to develop, the closeness of the guanxi, and the dependability of the guanxi." See Kipnis, Producing Guanxi: Sentiment, Self, and Subculture in a North China Village, 73; see also Yang, Gifts, Favors, and Banquets.
90. Hsing, Making Capitalism in China, 135.
91. Yan, "The Culture of Guanxi in a North China Village."
92. I b i d.
93. Hsing, Making Capitalism in China.
94. Ibid., 137-38
95. Ibid., 137. This is one way that guanxi can be distinguished from bribery; exchanges are never final or singular - they are always part of a larger series of future and past exchanges through which mutual obligation is accumulated.
96. Smart, "Guanxi, Gifts, and Learning from China," 562-63.
97. Yang, Gifts, Favors, and Banquets, 42.
98. Kipnis, Producing Guanxi; Yan, "The Culture of Guanxi in a North China Village."
99. Kipnis, Producing Guanxi; Yan, "The Culture of Guanxi in a North China Village."
100. Yan, "The Culture of Guanxi in a North China Village," 14. One scholar succinctly sums up the principle embodied in this detailed protocol: "mianzi . . . functions as a site from which hierarchical communication is possible" (Angela Zito, "City Gods, Filiality, and Hegemony in Late Imperial China, Modern China," 13, no. 3 [1987]: 119, quoted in Kipnis, Producing Guanxi, 43).
101. Yan, "The Culture of Guanxi in a North China Village," 14. One scholar succinctly sums up the principle embodied in this detailed protocol: "mianzi . . . functions as a site from which hierarchical communication is possible" (Angela Zito, "City Gods, Filiality, and Hegemony in Late Imperial China, Modern China," 13, no. 3 [1987]: 119, quoted in Kipnis, Producing Guanxi, 43).
102. Yan, "The Culture of Guanxi in a North China Village," 14. One scholar succinctly sums up the principle embodied in this detailed protocol: "mianzi . . . functions as a site from which hierarchical communication is possible" (Angela Zito, "City Gods, Filiality, and Hegemony in Late Imperial China, Modern China," 13, no. 3 [1987]: 119, quoted in Kipnis, Producing Guanxi, 43).
103. Hsing, Making Capitalism in China, 9.
104. This is yet another factor that distinguishes guanxi from bribery. A respect for face and mutual obligation works against extortion; see Yan, "Reform, State, and Corruption." Even high-ranking officials adhere to the mutuality implicit in guanxi; to maintain face, they must follow through on their commitments.
105. Doug Guthrie, Dragon in a Three-Piece Suit: The Emergence of Capitalism in China (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).
106. Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, "Rebuttal: The Resilience of Guanxi and Its New Deployments: A Critique of Some New Guanxi Scholarship," China Quarterly 170 (2002): 459-76.
107. Ibid., 459.
108. You-tien Hsing, Making Capitalism in China (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998); Smart and Smart, "Obligation and Control"; Wank, "Institutional Process of Market Clientelism."
109. You-tien Hsing, Making Capitalism in China (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998); Smart and Smart, "Obligation and Control"; Wank, "Institutional Process of Market Clientelism."
110. You-tien Hsing, Making Capitalism in China (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998); Smart and Smart, "Obligation and Control"; Wank, "Institutional Process of Market Clientelism."
111. For example, the central government now taxes a relatively small fixed sum of local revenues; local governments can use the remainder as they see fit. In addition, local governments are free to approve and regulate all small- and medium-size enterprises. See Hsing, Making Capitalism in China; Wank, "The Institutional Process of Market Clientelism"; Jieh-Min Wu, "Strange Bedfellows: Dynamics of Government-Business Relations between Chinese Local Authorities and Taiwanese Investors," Journal of Contemporary China 6, no. 15 (1997): 319-46.
112. For example, the central government now taxes a relatively small fixed sum of local revenues; local governments can use the remainder as they see fit. In addition, local governments are free to approve and regulate all small- and medium-size enterprises. See Hsing, Making Capitalism in China; Wank, "The Institutional Process of Market Clientelism"; Jieh-Min Wu, "Strange Bedfellows: Dynamics of Government-Business Relations between Chinese Local Authorities and Taiwanese Investors," Journal of Contemporary China 6, no. 15 (1997): 319-46.
113. For example, the central government now taxes a relatively small fixed sum of local revenues; local governments can use the remainder as they see fit. In addition, local governments are free to approve and regulate all small- and medium-size enterprises. See Hsing, Making Capitalism in China; Wank, "The Institutional Process of Market Clientelism"; Jieh-Min Wu, "Strange Bedfellows: Dynamics of Government-Business Relations between Chinese Local Authorities and Taiwanese Investors," Journal of Contemporary China 6, no. 15 (1997): 319-46.
114. Peter Evans, Embedded Autonomy; States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). Jean Oi explains that the local state in rural China plays an entrepreneurial role, fostering business enterprises and making investment decisions. She indicates that the institutional changes created by market reform "made local governments in China full-fledged economic actors, not just administrative-service providers as they are in other countries." See Jean Oi, "The Role of the Local State in China's Transitional Economy," China Quarterly 141 (1995): 1137. As a result, local governments have an enormous amount of discretion in investing resources. Other scholars have coined the term "bureaucratic entrepreneurs" to describe these local state actors. See Hsing, Making Capitalism in China; Lance L. P. Gore, Market Communism: The Institutional Foundation of China's Post-Mao Hyper-Growth (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998).
115. Peter Evans, Embedded Autonomy; States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). Jean Oi explains that the local state in rural China plays an entrepreneurial role, fostering business enterprises and making investment decisions. She indicates that the institutional changes created by market reform "made local governments in China full-fledged economic actors, not just administrative-service providers as they are in other countries." See Jean Oi, "The Role of the Local State in China's Transitional Economy," China Quarterly 141 (1995): 1137. As a result, local governments have an enormous amount of discretion in investing resources. Other scholars have coined the term "bureaucratic entrepreneurs" to describe these local state actors. See Hsing, Making Capitalism in China; Lance L. P. Gore, Market Communism: The Institutional Foundation of China's Post-Mao Hyper-Growth (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998).
116. Peter Evans, Embedded Autonomy; States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). Jean Oi explains that the local state in rural China plays an entrepreneurial role, fostering business enterprises and making investment decisions. She indicates that the institutional changes created by market reform "made local governments in China full-fledged economic actors, not just administrative-service providers as they are in other countries." See Jean Oi, "The Role of the Local State in China's Transitional Economy," China Quarterly 141 (1995): 1137. As a result, local governments have an enormous amount of discretion in investing resources. Other scholars have coined the term "bureaucratic entrepreneurs" to describe these local state actors. See Hsing, Making Capitalism in China; Lance L. P. Gore, Market Communism: The Institutional Foundation of China's Post-Mao Hyper-Growth (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998).
117. Peter Evans, Embedded Autonomy; States and Industrial Transformation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995). Jean Oi explains that the local state in rural China plays an entrepreneurial role, fostering business enterprises and making investment decisions. She indicates that the institutional changes created by market reform "made local governments in China full-fledged economic actors, not just administrative-service providers as they are in other countries." See Jean Oi, "The Role of the Local State in China's Transitional Economy," China Quarterly 141 (1995): 1137. As a result, local governments have an enormous amount of discretion in investing resources. Other scholars have coined the term "bureaucratic entrepreneurs" to describe these local state actors. See Hsing, Making Capitalism in China; Lance L. P. Gore, Market Communism: The Institutional Foundation of China's Post-Mao Hyper-Growth (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998).
118. Smart, "Obligation and Control"; Wank, "The Institutional Process of Market Clientelism." While local state leaders' newly acquired autonomy gives their government offices exclusive access to many capital resources, they are also responsible for promoting growth of their locales. Since the central government now provides minimal subsidies or infrastructure to local governments, local bureaucrats are invested in maximizing local revenues for the survival and well-being of their own government. See Nan Lin, "Local Market Socialism: Local Corporatism in Action in Rural China," Theory and Society 24, no. 3 (1995): 301-54; "The Role of the Local State in China's Transitional Economy"; Wu, "Strange Bedfellows." While control of property, licensing, utilities, customs, taxes, and employment through government offices allows local officials to seek rents of various sorts from investors, the opportunities for rent seeking are limited by the same local government institutions that enable them. The combination of resources controlled and disbursed through the local state means that, while some corruption exists, officials are less likely to sabotage public assets by selling them off and pocketing the profits, as in Russia.
119. Smart, "Obligation and Control"; Wank, "The Institutional Process of Market Clientelism." While local state leaders' newly acquired autonomy gives their government offices exclusive access to many capital resources, they are also responsible for promoting growth of their locales. Since the central government now provides minimal subsidies or infrastructure to local governments, local bureaucrats are invested in maximizing local revenues for the survival and well-being of their own government. See Nan Lin, "Local Market Socialism: Local Corporatism in Action in Rural China," Theory and Society 24, no. 3 (1995): 301-54; "The Role of the Local State in China's Transitional Economy"; Wu, "Strange Bedfellows." While control of property, licensing, utilities, customs, taxes, and employment through government offices allows local officials to seek rents of various sorts from investors, the opportunities for rent seeking are limited by the same local government institutions that enable them. The combination of resources controlled and disbursed through the local state means that, while some corruption exists, officials are less likely to sabotage public assets by selling them off and pocketing the profits, as in Russia.
120. Smart, "Obligation and Control"; Wank, "The Institutional Process of Market Clientelism." While local state leaders' newly acquired autonomy gives their government offices exclusive access to many capital resources, they are also responsible for promoting growth of their locales. Since the central government now provides minimal subsidies or infrastructure to local governments, local bureaucrats are invested in maximizing local revenues for the survival and well-being of their own government. See Nan Lin, "Local Market Socialism: Local Corporatism in Action in Rural China," Theory and Society 24, no. 3 (1995): 301-54; "The Role of the Local State in China's Transitional Economy"; Wu, "Strange Bedfellows." While control of property, licensing, utilities, customs, taxes, and employment through government offices allows local officials to seek rents of various sorts from investors, the opportunities for rent seeking are limited by the same local government institutions that enable them. The combination of resources controlled and disbursed through the local state means that, while some corruption exists, officials are less likely to sabotage public assets by selling them off and pocketing the profits, as in Russia.
121. Smart, "Obligation and Control"; Wank, "The Institutional Process of Market Clientelism." While local state leaders' newly acquired autonomy gives their government offices exclusive access to many capital resources, they are also responsible for promoting growth of their locales. Since the central government now provides minimal subsidies or infrastructure to local governments, local bureaucrats are invested in maximizing local revenues for the survival and well-being of their own government. See Nan Lin, "Local Market Socialism: Local Corporatism in Action in Rural China," Theory and Society 24, no. 3 (1995): 301-54; "The Role of the Local State in China's Transitional Economy"; Wu, "Strange Bedfellows." While control of property, licensing, utilities, customs, taxes, and employment through government offices allows local officials to seek rents of various sorts from investors, the opportunities for rent seeking are limited by the same local government institutions that enable them. The combination of resources controlled and disbursed through the local state means that, while some corruption exists, officials are less likely to sabotage public assets by selling them off and pocketing the profits, as in Russia.
122. Smart, "Obligation and Control"; Wank, "The Institutional Process of Market Clientelism." While local state leaders' newly acquired autonomy gives their government offices exclusive access to many capital resources, they are also responsible for promoting growth of their locales. Since the central government now provides minimal subsidies or infrastructure to local governments, local bureaucrats are invested in maximizing local revenues for the survival and well-being of their own government. See Nan Lin, "Local Market Socialism: Local Corporatism in Action in Rural China," Theory and Society 24, no. 3 (1995): 301-54; "The Role of the Local State in China's Transitional Economy"; Wu, "Strange Bedfellows." While control of property, licensing, utilities, customs, taxes, and employment through government offices allows local officials to seek rents of various sorts from investors, the opportunities for rent seeking are limited by the same local government institutions that enable them. The combination of resources controlled and disbursed through the local state means that, while some corruption exists, officials are less likely to sabotage public assets by selling them off and pocketing the profits, as in Russia.
123. In China, this particular fusion of culture and institution has generally served the economy well, and while the specter of corruption lurks, the problem is clearly not as great as in Russia and various eastern European transitional states. In Russia, the weakening of state institutions has resulted in an institutional power vacuum to be filled by the Russian mafia, which controls much of economic exchange through extortion. In comparison, graft on the part of local officials is relatively minor. See Sun Yan, "Reform, State and Corruption: Is Corruption Less Desctructive in China Than in Russia? Comparative Politics 32 (1999): 1-29.
124. Frank Trentmann, "Introduction: Paradoxes of Civil Society," in Paradoxes of Civil Society: New Perspectives on Modern German and British History, edited by Frank Trentmann (New York: Berghahn, 2000), 17.
125. Ryan, "Civil Society as Democratic Practice," 229.
126. Trentmann, "Introduction," 23.
127. Ibid., 17.
128. Ryan, "Civil Society as Democratic Practice"; see also Charles Taylor, "Two Theories of Modernity," Public Culture 11, no. 1 (1999): 153-74.
129. Ryan, "Civil Society as Democratic Practice"; see also Charles Taylor, "Two Theories of Modernity," Public Culture 11, no. 1 (1999): 153-74.
130. "The WH was supported by funds that . . . [were] raised largely from the United States" and functioned under the supervision of the state. See Virginia Cornue, "Practicing NGOness and Relating Women's Space Publicly: The Women's Hotline and the State," in Spaces of Their Own: Women's Public Sphere in Transnational China, edited by Mayfair Mei-hui Yang (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 72. As a nongovernmental organization (NGO), the hotline receives no state money, but "it is subject to varying degrees of state intervention" (ibid., 73).
131. Cornue, "Practicing NGOness."
132. Ibid., 80.
133. Ibid, 90, no. 11.
134. 82. Author's field notes, 1999.
135. Migrant women, with their long hours of work in the city and the isolation from friendship and kinship, experience a sense of anomie. One migrant woman expressed this feeling eloquently: "I feel like I have no roots: It's like a sharp wind cut me from my string and now I'm left to float in the empty sky." Eileen M. Otis, "The Construction of a Gendered Space of Liminality in China's Unregulated Service Sector" (unpublished manuscript, 2002).
136. Cornue, "Practicing NGOness," 86.
137. Ibid., 88.
138. Richard Madsen, China's Catholics: Tragedy and Hope in an Emerging Civil Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Thomas Gold, "Bases for Civil Society in Reform China," in Reconstructing Twentieth-Century China: State Control, Civil Society, and National Identity, edited by Kjeld Erik Brodsgaard and Davis Strand (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1988), 163-88.
139. Richard Madsen, China's Catholics: Tragedy and Hope in an Emerging Civil Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); Thomas Gold, "Bases for Civil Society in Reform China," in Reconstructing Twentieth-Century China: State Control, Civil Society, and National Identity, edited by Kjeld Erik Brodsgaard and Davis Strand (Oxford, UK: Clarendon, 1988), 163-88.
140. Gramsci, Habermas, and others tend to regard civil society as the basis of political society, which in turn serves to assert civic power against state power. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cohen and Arato put it succinctly: "The mediating role of political society between civil society and the state is indispensable, but so is the rootedness of political society in civil society." See Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), xi-x.
141. Gramsci, Habermas, and others tend to regard civil society as the basis of political society, which in turn serves to assert civic power against state power. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cohen and Arato put it succinctly: "The mediating role of political society between civil society and the state is indispensable, but so is the rootedness of political society in civil society." See Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), xi-x.
142. Of course, the importance of guanxi for the development of Chinese civil society has been recognized and elaborated by many before us. Due to space limitations, we cannot offer a complete review of this literature. Briefly speaking, scholars hold different views on the potential for a set of guanxi-based associations to develop into a basis of civil society. Many scholars who recognize the importance of guanxi over institutional autonomy in civil society are skeptical of its having much political potential at all. For example, according to Unger and Chan, the rise of independent associations in China should be understood as a sign of corporatism instead of a nascent civil society. See Jonathan Unger and Anita Chan, "China, Corporatism, and the East Asian Model," Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 33 (1995): 29-53. Similarly, for Wank, the emergence of private business does not necessarily empower civil society at the expense of the state: In some key respects the power of the local bureaucracy is buttressed by the emergence of private business even as central state control recedes. . . . The emergence of "autonomy" in the overall political configuration does not so much entail the increasing autonomy of society vis-a-vis the state but rather the heightened autonomy of communities composed of alliances between local officials and certain private actors vis-a-vis the central state. (See David Wank, "Private Business, Bureaucracy, and Political Alliance in a Chinese City," Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 33 [1995]: 71)
143. 88. Of course, the importance of guanxi for the development of Chinese civil society has been recognized and elaborated by many before us. Due to space limitations, we cannot offer a complete review of this literature. Briefly speaking, scholars hold different views on the potential for a set of guanxi-based associations to develop into a basis of civil society. Many scholars who recognize the importance of guanxi over institutional autonomy in civil society are skeptical of its having much political potential at all. For example, according to Unger and Chan, the rise of independent associations in China should be understood as a sign of corporatism instead of a nascent civil society. See Jonathan Unger and Anita Chan, "China, Corporatism, and the East Asian Model," Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 33 (1995): 29-53. Similarly, for Wank, the emergence of private business does not necessarily empower civil society at the expense of the state: In some key respects the power of the local bureaucracy is buttressed by the emergence of private business even as central state control recedes. . . . The emergence of "autonomy" in the overall political configuration does not so much entail the increasing autonomy of society vis-a-vis the state but rather the heightened autonomy of communities composed of alliances between local officials and certain private actors vis-a-vis the central state. (See David Wank, "Private Business, Bureaucracy, and Political Alliance in a Chinese City," Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs 33 [1995]: 71)
144. Heeding the corporatist features of Chinese society, some scholars nevertheless seek to understand ways in which the extensive webs and modularized cultures of guanxi may escape the corporatist order. Mayfair Yang's classic study of guanxi in particular emphasizes the political potential of guanxi networks. Yang argues that guanxi networks serve to neutralize state control; such horizontal ties challenge the mechanism through which state power imposed itself on society. See Yang, Gifts, Favors and Banquets. For other relevant discussions on the nature of Chinese civil society, see Kevin O'Brien and Laura M. Luehrmann, "Institutionalizing Chinese Legislatures: Trade-Offs between Autonomy and Capacity," Legislative Studies Quarterly 3, no.1 (1998): 91-108; Philip C. Huang, " 'Public Sphere'/'Civil Society' in China? The Third Realm between State and Society," Modern China 19, no. 2 (1993): 216-42; Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, "The Resilience of Guanxi and Its New Deployments: A Critique of Some New Guanxi Scholarship," China Quarterly 170 (1999): 459-76; Frederic Wakeman, Jr., "The Civil Society and Public Sphere Debate: Western Reflections on Chinese Political Culture," Modern China 19, no. 2 (1993): 108-39; Gordon White, Judi Howell, and Shang Xiao-yuan, In Search of Civil Society: Market Reform and Social Change in Contemporary China (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
145. Heeding the corporatist features of Chinese society, some scholars nevertheless seek to understand ways in which the extensive webs and modularized cultures of guanxi may escape the corporatist order. Mayfair Yang's classic study of guanxi in particular emphasizes the political potential of guanxi networks. Yang argues that guanxi networks serve to neutralize state control; such horizontal ties challenge the mechanism through which state power imposed itself on society. See Yang, Gifts, Favors and Banquets. For other relevant discussions on the nature of Chinese civil society, see Kevin O'Brien and Laura M. Luehrmann, "Institutionalizing Chinese Legislatures: Trade-Offs between Autonomy and Capacity," Legislative Studies Quarterly 3, no.1 (1998): 91-108; Philip C. Huang, " 'Public Sphere'/'Civil Society' in China? The Third Realm between State and Society," Modern China 19, no. 2 (1993): 216-42; Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, "The Resilience of Guanxi and Its New Deployments: A Critique of Some New Guanxi Scholarship," China Quarterly 170 (1999): 459-76; Frederic Wakeman, Jr., "The Civil Society and Public Sphere Debate: Western Reflections on Chinese Political Culture," Modern China 19, no. 2 (1993): 108-39; Gordon White, Judi Howell, and Shang Xiao-yuan, In Search of Civil Society: Market Reform and Social Change in Contemporary China (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
146. Heeding the corporatist features of Chinese society, some scholars nevertheless seek to understand ways in which the extensive webs and modularized cultures of guanxi may escape the corporatist order. Mayfair Yang's classic study of guanxi in particular emphasizes the political potential of guanxi networks. Yang argues that guanxi networks serve to neutralize state control; such horizontal ties challenge the mechanism through which state power imposed itself on society. See Yang, Gifts, Favors and Banquets. For other relevant discussions on the nature of Chinese civil society, see Kevin O'Brien and Laura M. Luehrmann, "Institutionalizing Chinese Legislatures: Trade-Offs between Autonomy and Capacity," Legislative Studies Quarterly 3, no.1 (1998): 91-108; Philip C. Huang, " 'Public Sphere'/'Civil Society' in China? The Third Realm between State and Society," Modern China 19, no. 2 (1993): 216-42; Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, "The Resilience of Guanxi and Its New Deployments: A Critique of Some New Guanxi Scholarship," China Quarterly 170 (1999): 459-76; Frederic Wakeman, Jr., "The Civil Society and Public Sphere Debate: Western Reflections on Chinese Political Culture," Modern China 19, no. 2 (1993): 108-39; Gordon White, Judi Howell, and Shang Xiao-yuan, In Search of Civil Society: Market Reform and Social Change in Contemporary China (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
147. Heeding the corporatist features of Chinese society, some scholars nevertheless seek to understand ways in which the extensive webs and modularized cultures of guanxi may escape the corporatist order. Mayfair Yang's classic study of guanxi in particular emphasizes the political potential of guanxi networks. Yang argues that guanxi networks serve to neutralize state control; such horizontal ties challenge the mechanism through which state power imposed itself on society. See Yang, Gifts, Favors and Banquets. For other relevant discussions on the nature of Chinese civil society, see Kevin O'Brien and Laura M. Luehrmann, "Institutionalizing Chinese Legislatures: Trade-Offs between Autonomy and Capacity," Legislative Studies Quarterly 3, no.1 (1998): 91-108; Philip C. Huang, " 'Public Sphere'/'Civil Society' in China? The Third Realm between State and Society," Modern China 19, no. 2 (1993): 216-42; Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, "The Resilience of Guanxi and Its New Deployments: A Critique of Some New Guanxi Scholarship," China Quarterly 170 (1999): 459-76; Frederic Wakeman, Jr., "The Civil Society and Public Sphere Debate: Western Reflections on Chinese Political Culture," Modern China 19, no. 2 (1993): 108-39; Gordon White, Judi Howell, and Shang Xiao-yuan, In Search of Civil Society: Market Reform and Social Change in Contemporary China (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
148. Heeding the corporatist features of Chinese society, some scholars nevertheless seek to understand ways in which the extensive webs and modularized cultures of guanxi may escape the corporatist order. Mayfair Yang's classic study of guanxi in particular emphasizes the political potential of guanxi networks. Yang argues that guanxi networks serve to neutralize state control; such horizontal ties challenge the mechanism through which state power imposed itself on society. See Yang, Gifts, Favors and Banquets. For other relevant discussions on the nature of Chinese civil society, see Kevin O'Brien and Laura
149. Heeding the corporatist features of Chinese society, some scholars nevertheless seek to understand ways in which the extensive webs and modularized cultures of guanxi may escape the corporatist order. Mayfair Yang's classic study of guanxi in particular emphasizes the political potential of guanxi networks. Yang argues that guanxi networks serve to neutralize state control; such horizontal ties challenge the mechanism through which state power imposed itself on society. See Yang, Gifts, Favors and Banquets. For other relevant discussions on the nature of Chinese civil society, see Kevin O'Brien and Laura M. Luehrmann, "Institutionalizing Chinese Legislatures: Trade-Offs between Autonomy and Capacity," Legislative Studies Quarterly 3, no.1 (1998): 91-108; Philip C. Huang, " 'Public Sphere'/'Civil Society' in China? The Third Realm between State and Society," Modern China 19, no. 2 (1993): 216-42; Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, "The Resilience of Guanxi and Its New Deployments: A Critique of Some New Guanxi Scholarship," China Quarterly 170 (1999): 459-76; Frederic Wakeman, Jr., "The Civil Society and Public Sphere Debate: Western Reflections on Chinese Political Culture," Modern China 19, no. 2 (1993): 108-39; Gordon White, Judi Howell, and Shang Xiao-yuan, In Search of Civil Society: Market Reform and Social Change in Contemporary China (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).
150. Li Zhang, "Migration and Privatization of Space and Power in Late Socialist China," American Ethnologist 28, no. 1 (2001): 179-205.
151. Zhang, "Migration and Privatization of Space and Power in Late Socialist China,"193.
152. Ibid., 193
153. 92. Author's field notes, 1999.
154. Tamara Jacka, "Other Chinas' China's Others: A Report on the First National Forum on the Protection of the Rights of Migrant Women Workers, June 16-18, 1999, Beijing," New Formations 40 (2000): 129.
155. In a similar example, Elizabeth Perry studies the role of native-place connections in early-twentieth-century labor activism in Shanghai. Perry argues that native-place networks, which tended to channel workers from similar regions of origin into similar occupations, shaped worker movements and political outcomes. While native-place networks did sometimes fragment workers based on their region of origin, it did as much to mobilize workers along the very same lines of identity. Shared occupation and residence reinforced bonds of solidarity, which proved a power resource for labor activism. In fact, when workers from similar native places were placed in different lines of work, they were often able to ally across these occupational boundaries. Perry argues that native-place alliances account for the more than two thousand strikes in Shanghai between 1918 and 1940. Although this article focuses on late-socialist China, Perry's study shows that the potential for guanxi networks to serve as a site of collective action could already be documented in the interregnum between dynastic and communist rule. See Elizabeth J. Perry, Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993).
156. Gellner, "The Importance of Being Modular."
157. Zaret, "Petitions and the 'Invention of Public Opinion' in the English Revolution," 1541.
158. I b i d.