Elusive Democracy
Conceptual Change and the Chinese Democracy Movement, 1978-79 to 1989
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6007935 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lei Guang (University of Minnesota System, corresponding author), Lei Guang Lei Guang (University of Minnesota) |
| Year | 1996 |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 417-447 |
| Publication date | 1996-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Modern China (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0097-7004 • E-ISSN: 1552-6836 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/009770049602200403 |
| OpenAlex | W2048959343 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 21 |
| References cited | 18 |
is a communicatively constituted activity. This claim has been taken to heart by many scholars who pay attention to linguistic actions in political practice (Habermas, 1984; Ball and Pocock, 1988: 1; Skinner, 1988). Politics may be about asserting one's rights against a dominant power or making allocative decisions or organizing and building coalitions for a common purpose. Undergirding all these activities are concepts, words, and speech that make possible the asserting, the decision making, the organizing, and the coalition building. With an eye to the significance of the communicative dimension of politics, this article revisits two rhetorical sites of China's decade-long democracy movement from 1978-79 to 1989. One is the Democracy Wall movement of the winter of 1978-79; the other is the student-led Pro-Democracy movement of 1989. On both occasions, democracy was the rallying cause for tens of thousands of participants. The word minzhu-the closest Chinese translation of democracy-was repeatedly invoked by the activists. In this article, I try to analyze and understand this central concept in the context of these two movements. I retain the Chinese word minzhu whenever possible and use democracy only when the word minzhu gets in the way of presentation
China · Context (archaeology · Democracy · Linguistics · Mainland China · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Rhetorical question · Sociology · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Law · Philosophy
Bulgaria
Ukraine
Yugoslavia
Romania
China
Russia
Slovakia
Reassessing Trust in the Central Government
The Cultural Logic of Politics in Mainland China and Taiwan
Political legitimacy and china’s transition
Chinese opinion on human rights
Post-Communist Democratization
The Structure and Strength of Regime Support in China
Measuring Political Attitudes with Word Association
The battle of ideas and discourses before democratic transition
Refocusing democracy
Popular understanding of democracy in contemporary China
Conviction of Multiparty Competition and Elections among Chinese College Students
Democracy and Chinese Political Discourses
Individual and Collective Identities of the Beijing Democracy Wall Movement Activists, 1978-1981
Gangster capitalism' and peasant protest in China
Political innovation and conceptual change
Keywords (Routledge Revivals)
Participation and Democratic Theory
Democracy and Its Critics
The theory of communicative action
Three Principles of the People
Contemporary Chinese Politics in Historical Perspective
Tiananmen and Chinese Political Culture
Keeping Democracy Safe from the Masses
Men and Ideas, an Informal History of Chinese Political Thought
Acting Out Democracy
Concept Misformation in Comparative Politics
Conceptual "Stretching" Revisited
The Crisis of Leninism and the Decline of the Left
| Unique citing works | 21 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,75 |
| Citation span | 1998 - 2026 (29) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 21 |