
Disciplining the State
Virtue, Violence, and State-Making in Modern China
Patricia M. Thornton(Author)
Harvard University, Asia Center (Publisher)
Published on 1. May 2007
Book
Hardback
275 pages
978-0-674-02504-2 (ISBN)
Description
What are states, and how are they made? Scholars of European history assert that war makes states, just as states make war. This study finds that in China, the challenges of governing produced a trajectory of state-building in which the processes of moral regulation and social control were at least as central to state-making as the exercise of coercive power.
State-making is, in China as elsewhere, a profoundly normative and normalizing process. This study maps the complex processes of state-making, moral regulation, and social control during three critical reform periods: the Yongzheng reign (1723-1735), the Guomindang's Nanjing decade (1927-1937), and the Communist Party's Socialist Education Campaign (1962-1966). During each period, central authorities introduced-not without resistance-institutional change designed to extend the reach of central control over local political life. The successes and failures of state-building in each case rested largely upon the ability of each regime to construct itself as an autonomous moral agent both separate from and embedded in an imagined political community. Thornton offers a historical reading of the state-making process as a contest between central and local regimes of bureaucratic and discursive practice.
State-making is, in China as elsewhere, a profoundly normative and normalizing process. This study maps the complex processes of state-making, moral regulation, and social control during three critical reform periods: the Yongzheng reign (1723-1735), the Guomindang's Nanjing decade (1927-1937), and the Communist Party's Socialist Education Campaign (1962-1966). During each period, central authorities introduced-not without resistance-institutional change designed to extend the reach of central control over local political life. The successes and failures of state-building in each case rested largely upon the ability of each regime to construct itself as an autonomous moral agent both separate from and embedded in an imagined political community. Thornton offers a historical reading of the state-making process as a contest between central and local regimes of bureaucratic and discursive practice.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Illustrations
none
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
544 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-674-02504-2 (9780674025042)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Patricia M. Thornton is University Lecturer in the Politics of China at Oxford University.