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Theoretical Poverty in the Research on Chinese Civil Society*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 October 2012

TARU SALMENKARI
TARU SALMENKARI*
Affiliation:
Department of World Cultures, University of Helsinki Email: taru@salmenkari.name
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Abstract

This paper critiques current academic usage of the analytic category of ‘civil society’ in recent studies of contemporary China. The problem is not the lack of good empirical work (which abounds), but rather the way in which understandings of ‘civil society’ as applied to China have remained insulated from wider theoretical debates emerging from other parts of the world which have queried the productive utility of these understandings. Specifically, recent studies of China continue to define civil society through its alleged autonomy from the state. This definition has led to unsettling discrepancies between theory and empirical knowledge about Chinese society. Moreover, it has caused researchers to pay little attention to the equally complicated question of whether there are sufficient horizontal linkages among various social actors to constitute a civil society in China in the first place. This paper will argue that lessons learned from the rich civil society tradition and scholarship from other parts of the world may be adapted fruitfully to generate more meaningful and nuanced analyses of Chinese associations.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , March 2013 , pp. 682 - 711
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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Footnotes

*

This research was supported by the Joel Toivola Foundation. Please note that most interviews were granted on condition that the interviewees remained anonymous.

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