Unpacking Discourses On Chineseness

This book examines the complexity of Chineseness in China and the Chinese diaspora. Using critical sociolinguistic and discourse analytical approaches, the chapters reveal the power dynamics and ideologies underlying the varied ways Chineseness is performed, represented and contested. Together they highlight four perspectives on Chineseness: the multiplicity of Chineseness, aspirational Chineseness, chronotopes of Chineseness and the cultural politics of Chineseness. It is argued that Chineseness is best understood as an ideologically-constructed variable, the articulation of which is deeply embedded within the dynamics of neoliberal globalization, rising nationalism, persistent Western hegemony, and shifting global geopolitics.

The essays in Discourses of Cultural China in the Globalizing Age examine the discourses of Cultural China from a glocalization perspective, and attempt to understand contemporary Cultural China by recording, describing and explaining its current discourses. The book also analyses how the interpretation of Cultural China is connected with its past and how its discourses are reconstructed with those of other cultures in the age of accelerated globalization. The chapters here provide fresh empirical data and thought-provoking assessments of current discursive patterns in the Greater China region. This book is the second title in the Studying Multicultural Discourses series, which promotes a new, multiculturalist orientation in discourse studies. Discourses of Cultural China in the Globalizing Age is ideal for students, researchers, and scholars who would like to know more about the discursive practice and changes in one of the fastest-growing regions in the world.

Happiness is on China’s agenda. From Xi Jinping’s “Chinese Dream” to online chat forums, the conspicuous references to happiness are hard to miss. This groundbreaking volume analyzes how different social groups make use of the concept and shows how closely official discourses on happiness are intertwined with popular sentiments. The Chinese Communist Party’s attempts to define happiness and well-being around family-focused Han Chinese cultural traditions clearly strike a chord with the wider population. The collection highlights the links connecting the ideologies promoted by the government and the way they inform, and are in turn informed by, various deliberations and feelings circulating in the society. Contributors analyze the government’s “happiness maximization strategies,” including public service advertising campaigns, Confucian and Daoist-inflected discourses adapted for the self-help market, and the promotion of positive psychology as well as “happy housewives.” They also discuss forces countering the hegemonic discourse: different forms of happiness in the LGBTQ community, teachings of Tibetan Buddhism that subvert the material culture propagated by the government, and the cynical messages in online novels that expose the fictitious nature of propaganda. Collectively, the authors bring out contemporary Chinese voices engaging with different philosophies, practices, and idealistic imaginings on what it means to be happy. “This distinctive volume creates sustained dialogues around a substantive debate. Rejecting the conventional contrasts between China and the West, and yet deeply immersed in sinophone media, the authors understand Chinese discourse on happiness as multiple but interconnected conversations within a globally shared production of knowledge. Equally concerned with text and image, they exhibit an ethnographic eye as sharp as any orthodox ethnography.” —Deborah Davis, Yale University “Wielander and Hird have put together a superbly researched and thoughtfully written set of essays on the multiple ways in which that most elusive of all states—happiness—is understood and pursued in contemporary China. A volume that should become required reading for all interested in Chinese society today.” —Julia C. Strauss, SOAS, University of London “Chinese Discourses on Happiness is a timely new collection of essays edited by two sinologists based in Britain, Gerda Wielander and Derek Hird. It explores how China’s propaganda machine devotes extraordinary efforts to promoting the idea that the Chinese people enjoy good and meaningful lives under Communism—precisely because economic growth alone does a poor job of generating happiness.” —The Economist

This book focuses on developments and trends pertaining to online falsehoods and mobile instant messaging services (MIMS), the impact of online falsehoods transmitted via MIMS, and practice and intervention. As the reliance on mobile devices for news seeking and information sharing continues to grow, the spread of online falsehoods on MIMS is a problem that confounds academics, practitioners, and policymakers. Recent developments in countries such as Brazil and India demonstrate how MIMS facilitate the spread of online falsehoods. Given that a number of non-academic and non-governmental institutions in the region are doing important work in countering the influence of online falsehoods, this book also includes contributions by practitioners who design initiatives and programmes in this area. The book is a timely contribution in addressing the distinct issues of online falsehoods in a large, technophilic region such as Asia, grappling with problems of online falsehoods on so many fronts, including ideological extremism, political opportunism, cyberscams, political activism, digitalised learning, geopolitical tensions, and more. Relevant to researchers and policymakers, this book provides a timely and critical analysis of both research and practice conducted in the Asian context by scholars hailing from a range of disciplines such media studies, political communication, cultural studies, and cognitive science.

First published in 1992, The Discourse of Race in Modern China rapidly became a classic, showing for the first time on the basis of detailed evidence how and why racial categorisation became so widespread in China. After the country's devastating defeat against Japan in 1895, leading reformers like Yan Fu, Liang Qichao and Kang Youwei turned away from the Confucian classics to seek enlightenment abroad, hoping to find the keys to wealth and power on the distant shores of Europe. Instead, they discovered the notion of 'race', and used new evolutionary theories from Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer to present a universe red in tooth and claw in which 'yellows' competed with 'whites' in a deadly struggle for survival. After the fall of the empire in 1911, prominent politicians and writers in republican China continued to measure, classify and rank people from around the world according to their supposed biological features, all in the name of science. Racial thinking remains popular in the People's Republic of China, as serologists, geneticists and anthropometrists continue to interpret human variation in terms of 'race'. This new edition has been revised and expanded to include a new chapter taking the reader up to the twenty-first century.

This collection critically examines tourism as a site of intercultural communication, drawing on the analytical tools afforded by the discipline toward better understanding contemporary tourism discourses and the broader societal structures of power and ideologies in which they are situated. The volume interrogates culture and interculturality in tourism in detailed analyses of discursive details in tourism interactions and focuses on the notion of culture as a process or phenomenon engaged in or enacted on by individuals. Drawing on discourse analytic and ethnographic approaches, the book brings together perspectives from the lived experiences of residents, hosts and ethnographers to explore the extent to which linguistic and cultural differences are constructed, identities negotiated, and power relations maintained and perpetuated in tourism encounters. The volume draws on insights from those working across a range of geographic contexts and explores the interplay of these issues in English as well as other languages and language varieties used in tourism interactions. With its focus on critical approaches to understanding language and culture, this book will appeal to students and scholars in intercultural communication, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, discourse analysis, and tourism studies.

This book explores the relationship between Confucianism and citizenship and the rise of Confucian citizens in contemporary China. Combining theoretical and empirical approaches to the topic, the book constructs new frameworks to examine the nuances and complexities of Confucianism and citizenship, exploring the process of citizen-making through Confucian education. By re-evaluating the concept of citizenship as a Western construct and therefore challenging the popular characterization of Confucianism and citizenship as incompatible, this book posits that a new type of citizen, the Confucian citizen, is on the rise in 21st-century China. The book’s clear, accessible style makes it essential reading for students and scholars interested in citizenship, Confucianism and Chinese studies, and those with an interest in religion and philosophy more generally.

Woo investigates examples of the Chinese government using methods normally associated with deliberative democracy to involve their citizenry in decision-making at a sub-national level. Despite the tightening of civil society under Xi there are still some opportunities for the Chinese people to articulate their opinions and participate in decision making. The proliferation of deliberative democratic practices is motivated by the CCP’s strong governance logic, to strengthen regime legitimacy and stability. Woo examines deliberative participation through the lens of participatory budgeting in China, and investigates its impact on local governance. To make sense of this model of deliberative democratic governance in China, she unpacks the relationship between deliberative democracy and governance. This requires delving into the forms and functions of deliberation with Chinese characteristics, especially to show how they depart from the Western deliberative democratic experiences. What is the Chinese deliberative discourse in relation to the Western conception of deliberative democracy? How can the Chinese deliberative experience contribute to the concept of deliberative governance? How does deliberation impact upon local governance in China? An intriguing read both for scholars of Chinese politics and for political scientists looking at comparative examples of deliberative governance.