The Problem of "Civil Society" in Late Imperial China

Bibliographic Data

ID6008409
AuthorsWilliam T Rowe (Johns Hopkins University, corresponding author)
Year1993
Volume19
Issue2
Pages139-157
Publication date1993-04-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueModern China (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0097-7004 • E-ISSN: 1552-6836
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/009770049301900203
OpenAlexW1963875025
LanguageEN
Citations received33
References cited25

The question underlying this and a growing number of other scholarly convocations these days-Did China ever possess a civil society?-is, on the very surface of it, one that I confess is deeply troubling to me. I want to know from the outset why we feel impelled and empowered to ask this question. Are we justified in expecting China (or any other non-Western historical society) to have had, or to have required, anything like the complex of attitudes, values, and institutions that we amalgamate and reify under the term civil society? In simply asking this question are we in fact not presuming a normal path of sociopolitical development, transcending the specificities of local culture? Is what we hope to find simply a projection of our own, culturally specific path of development-or, worse, of what we merely idealize our own path to have been? Is our very inquiry tautological, formed around a noncontrovertible proposition? That is to say, can we even conceive of a set of developments in China substantially differing from the history of early modern Europe of which we might equally approve? I fear the enormous potential for travesty involved in such an inquiry. Consider for example the spectacle of Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba's highly influential 1963 book The Civic Culture, in which the authors, certainly two of the most respected social scientists of the postwar era, trot around the globe toting up on a scorecard the pattern variables present in a range of national cultures, ranking them numerically agaimst an idealized (read: American) standard of values and institutions appropriate for democracy (Almond and Verba, 1963

Ancient history · China · Civil society · History of China · Political science · Politics · China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Public Administration

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