Wicked citizens and the social origins of China's modern authoritarian state: Civil strife and political control in Republican Beiping, 1928--1937.

详细信息   

• 作者：Xu ; Yamin.
• 学历：Doctor
• 年：2002
• 导师：Wakeman, Frederic, Jr.
• 毕业院校：University of California
• 专业：History, Asia, Australia and Oceania.;Political Science, Public Administration.;Sociology, Social Structure and Development.
• CBH：3082468
• Country：USA
• 语种：English
• FileSize：21395190
• Pages：610

文摘

This dissertation explores the social origins of the Chinese Nationalist authoritarian state; it argues that the rise of the Nationalist authoritarian state in the 1920s and 1930s was a response to an urgent need to control an increasingly disordered Chinese society.;With the Manchus' livelihood gradually becoming bankrupted, socioeconomic and demographic conditions continually deteriorated and pushed the majority of Beiping residents into a poverty-stricken status in the early twentieth century. As the struggle for survival by ordinary citizens intensified, and with basic civility being disregarded, the situation created a host of what state authorities denounced as “wicked people”—ordinary citizens turned bandits, thieves, quacks, con-artists, wife-beaters, litterbugs, and street corner urinators. Their rampant activities created tremendous tension and uncertainty in already deeply pauperized families and neighborhoods, which prompted a vigorous response from the state, whose goal was to save a society that was on the brink of total collapse.;With the fall of the Qing dynasty, previously segregated neighborhoods were opened up, more heterogeneous immigrants flooded into the city, market activities increased, and families fragmented. As ethnic, familial and native-tie based urban identities became less pronounced, traditional particularistic orders further disintegrated. These developments fundamentally changed the character of Beiping urban society. To meet these changes, a new municipal authority was called upon to manage and regulate city life, particularly in areas such as public security and public health.;Constrained by financial resources and a hostile social environment, the Beiping municipal government was poorly equipped, and its police force and public-health inspectors heavily burdened. Reflecting a desperate struggle to increase the government effectiveness to control both society and state agents, the Nationalists stressed group organizations, militarization of society, discipline, social conformity, and harsh punishment.;While the Nationalist efforts ultimately proved ineffective, they presaged new and more comprehensive approaches to state building and state control in the People's Republic under the Communists and post-Communist reformers. In that sense, the imposition of state control under the socialist regime after 1949 was not such a sharp break with the past; but rather a continuation of trends that began much earlier with the Nationalists themselves.