Searching for Chinese identity in the People’s Republic [ECR]

The Manchester China Institute (MCI)promotes excellence in China studies at the University of Manchester. MCI hosts in-person talks, workshops, and roundtables, and well as webinars with a global reach. Our public events are free and open to all. The University of Manchester is committed to academic independence and thefreedom of speech. The views speakers present are entirely their own, and do not represent those of the University of Manchester or the Manchester China Institute and its directors.

Manchester China Institute

In this ECR Workshop, Dr Edwin Jiang explores "Chinese identity in the People’s Republic: romanticism beyond naïve naturalism/culturalism".

Drawing on a Weberian conception of modernity, I suggest that contemporary moral and political educational initiatives within the People’s Republic of China seek to promote a Chinese identity amongst the youth that is “found” and not “made,” a meta-ethical distinction which I describe, drawing on the philosophy of action, as a pre-modern romanticised “world-to-self” direction of normative fit. While other anthropological studies of romantic primordialist or essentialist conceptions of romantic identity in different ethnographic contexts—ones based on “blood,” “soil,” or even “cultural logics”—might seem to share this direction of normative fit too, I argue what is unique in the Chinese case today is its complete lack of a singular defining characteristic of Chineseness. By focussing on the “why” and “how” instead of the “what,” of “being Chinese,” I argue that although my informants did not identify and could not agree on any single putative trait that made someone Chinese, their romantic conception of their own natural identity was not weakened by this epistemic shortcoming in the slightest. The ethnography motivates a novel conception of essentialist nationalist identity that goes beyond the “naïve” natural/cultural picture of romantic “essence,” as some nameable x, a position critiqued in the past by philosopher Michael Thompson and Bruce Kapferer, respectively, albeit in entirely different contexts.

About the SpeakerDr Edwin Jiang is a PhD graduate in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge.

NotesMCI’s ECR Workshops are lunchtime seminars held in person at the <a href="https://www.mci.manchester.ac.uk/" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Manchester China Institute</a>. They seek to bring together students, faculty, and staff who can best provide feedback as Early Career Researchers develop their ideas. Free lunch will be provided.

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Searching for Chinese identity in the People’s Republic [ECR]

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Searching for Chinese identity in the People’s Republic [ECR]

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