Individuality, Hierarchy, and Dilemma: the Making of Confucian Cultural Citizenship in a Contemporary Chinese Classical School

Abstract

Is Confucianism compatible with citizenship? If yes, how? Cultural transformation in recent citizenship studies provides a theoretical junction to bring the two concepts together. In terms of cultural citizenship, this paper explores the making of Confucian cultural citizens by analyzing students' discourses in a Chinese Confucian classical school. It reveals (1) the process of moral self-transformation, whereby the individualities are embedded into ethical relations by the extensive readings of classical literature; (2) practically discursive contradictions between individualism and authoritarianism that is based on the notion of a cultural hierarchy; and (3) the institutional predicament in striving for the recognition of cultural citizenship by the state and society. Finally, it concludes that the dilemmas in discourses and status are part of the contradictions in the overall Chinese party-state's management of individualization.

Do the conditions in Chinese secondary school education imply a need for global citizenship education? An exploration of six secondary schools in Jiangsu

“…As a place where education affects citizens through their ways to cope with the increasing freedom of mobility, communication and economic conditions (Featherstone 2002;Podoshen et al 2011), the Chinese case merits attention. After reviewing academic literature that focuses on the Chinese case, several explanations were found for the negligence of GCE, including the goal of educating 'people' rather than 'citizens' (Zhao 2010), the emphasis on patriotism and nationalism in Moral Education (Li 2003), the priority of national citizenship learning (Wang 2019), the government's advocating of socialist-oriented citizenship and oppression of globalist views (Law 2006), the choice of promoting a type of anti-feudal Moral Education under the influence of the New Culture Movement (Wang 2016), and the long-lasting impact of political hegemony in Chinese people's discourse (Gow 2017). It seems that the advocacy type of GCE has not been fully explored at the theoretical level because of the institutional restrictions imposed on academics.…”

The interplay between anxiety, fear, protective behaviors, compassion, and resilience among older adults during a COVID-19 lockdown: a structural equation modeling study

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Reinventing Confucian Education in Contemporary China: New Ethnographic Explorations

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“…A body of research based on intensive ethnographic surveys has started to be published on the topic in recent years. It analyses the specificities of Confucian education within the overall framework of Confucian revival (Billioud and Thoraval 2015;Hammond and Richey 2015;Billioud 2018Billioud , 2021; the striking diversity of the pedagogical enterprises carried out in the name of tradition (Elizondo 2021); the links between Confucian education and the making of Chinese citizenship (Wang 2016(Wang , 2020(Wang , 2022c, moral anxieties (Wang 2022b), or utopianism (Gilgan 2022b); and the promotion of Confucian education within religious groups such as the Yiguandao (Billioud 2020) and Buddhist movements (Dutournier and Ji 2009;Ji 2018) or within the corporate world (Jiang Fu 2021).…”