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"Public Sphere "/"Civil Society" in China?: The Third Realm between State and Society
Abstract
The concepts of bourgeois public sphere and society as they have been applied to China presuppose a dichotomous opposition between state and society. If we adhere to such a presupposition, we run the risk of reducing the debate here to little more than an argument over whose influence was greater in the phenomena under discussion, society's or the state's. I suggest here that Habermas himself in fact proposed a more sophisticated alternative construct that can be developed into a resolution of the issues at hand. The binary opposition between state and society, I argue, is an ideal abstracted from early modern and modern Western experience that is inappropriate for China. We need to employ instead a trinary conception, with a third space in between state and society, in which both participated. This third realm, moreover, took on characteristics and institutional forms over time that need to be understood on their own terms. I discuss briefly some examples of this third realm in imperial, Republican, and contemporary China. The ideas and empirical information come from my two current projects, on civil justice and on the changing rural community, as well as from my past work on rural North China (Huang, 1985) and the Yangzi delta (Huang, 1990).
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In late imperial China, 'private' (minban) associations were more likely to be integrated into the state than adversarial to it.
“It is easy to construe the growth of ' private ' ( minban 民 办 ) associations in late imperial China as something comparable to European-style civil society, but it is important to remember that such organisations were more likely to be integrated into the state than adversarial to it (Huang, 1993).”
From Before the NGO: Chinese Charities in Historical Perspective (2015) · cites this paper as Huang, 1993
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No references could be resolved yet.
Research works printed but not linked: 15
- Allee, Mark Anton, 1987, Law and society in late imperial China: Tan-shui subprefecture and Hsin-chu County, Taiwan, 1840-1895
- Bernhardt, Kathryn, 1992, Rents, Taxes, and Peasant Resistance: The Lower Yangzi Region, 1840-1950, 10.1515/9780804785365 · DOI
- 1990, Zhongguo tongji nianjian (Statistical Yearbook of China
- Habermas, Jürgen, 1989, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society
- Huang, Philip C.C., 1985, The Peasant Economy and Social Change in North China, 10.1515/9780804780995 · DOI
- — (1990) The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350-1988. Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press.
- 10.1177/009770049101700301 · DOI
- Kathryn Bernhardt, Codified law and magisterial adjudication in the Qing,"
- Rankin, Mary Backus, 1986, Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China: Zhejiang Province, 1865-1911
- Rowe, William T, 1984, Hankow: Commerce and Society in a Chinese City, 1796-1889
- 1989, Hankow: Conflict and Community in a Chinese City, 1796-1895
- Scott, James C., 1976, The Moral Economy of the Peasant: Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia
- 10.1525/9780520913875 · DOI
- Tianjinshi dang'anguan [Tianjin Municipal Archives] et al., 1989, Tianjin shanghui dang'an huibian, 1903-1911 (Collection of Archival Materials on the Tianjin Chamber of Commerce, 1903-1911
- Zhang Kaiyuan et al. [eds.], 1991, Suzhou shanghui dang'an congbian, 1905-1911 (Collection of Archival Materials on the Suzhou Chamber of Commerce, 1905-1911
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Steinmetz, G. (2004) · Sociological Theory · doi:10.1111/j.0735-2751.2004.00225.x · Cited by 320
Before the NGO: Chinese Charities in Historical Perspective
DuBois, T. D. (2015) · Asian Studies Review · doi:10.1080/10357823.2015.1081870 · Cited by 26
Metadata
- Authors
- Huang, P. C. C.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
- Corresponding author
- Huang, Philip C.C.
- Venue
- Modern China
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 1993-04
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 216-240
- ISSN
- 0097-7004 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-6836
- OpenAlex
- W1991330790
- Cited by
- 275
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 37 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 14 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 13 · 2015: 11 · 2014: 13 · 2013: 11 · 2012: 16
- FWCI
- 23.80
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Modern China (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History › Chinese history and philosophy
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › China's Socioeconomic Reforms and Governance
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Political Theory and Democracy
- Keywords
- public sphere, civil society, Jürgen Habermas, civil justice, rural communities, imperial China, Republican China, contemporary China, Yangtze River Delta
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