Confucian Ideals Research Articles

Competition between Politicized and Depoliticized Versions of Civic Education Curricula: The Case of Hong Kong

This article discusses the influence of Confucianism on civic education, focusing on Hong Kong as a particular case of concern. The development of Hong Kong's civic education is sketched, highlighting the competitions between the politicized and depoliticized versions of the civic education curriculum. The notion that a depoliticized civic education, supported by Confucian ideals, is necessarily a distinctive feature of Asian civic education, is then critiqued. Finally, the article argues that an eclectic version of civic education, comprising both political and moral components, is warranted. This is what Confucian tenets really mean. It is hoped that the discussion here will help reflect whether Confucian tenets justify depoliticization of education and civic education. This is important given the growing aspiration for democracy and citizens' participation in civil societies, particularly those whose cultural roots are in the Confucian tradition. Moreover, the authors hope that the dialogues between Confucian traditions and the Western traditions discussed in the article can shed light on some thought-provoking issues of interest to an international readership, particularly as China is becoming more influential globally.

Creativity and Confucianism Among American and Korean Educators

The purpose of this study was to examine differences in creative styles and Confucian ideas between Koreans and Americans and to examine the relationship between creativity and Confucianism. A total number of 579 educators (227 American and 352 Korean) participated in this study. Eastern-Western Perspective Scale was used to measure participants’ level of Confucianism and the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking-Figural was used to measure participants’ level of creative potential. The results indicate that Koreans have strikingly more Confucian ideals than Americans, whereas Americans have more creative strengths and are more adaptively creative than Koreans. The results also indicate higher levels of Confucianism relate to lower levels of creativity. The Confucian elements that show negative relationships with creativity are suppression of expression, gender inequality, gender role expectations, and filial piety.

The Performance of Virtue and the Loss of Female Individuality in Chosŏn Korea

The Tale of Ch’unhyang is perhaps Korea’s most well known and oft repeated folk story. Originating in the middle of the Chos?n dynasty, it has persisted in various forms for nearly four hundred years in part because it is replete with moral lessons, including notions of filial devotion, obedience, and faithfulness; but none is as enduring and fundamental to the plot as the concept of womanly virtue. This paper will provide a feminist reading of the story to articulate the mandates of Chos?n Confucian society on women. We argue that the Tale of Ch’unhyang reveals that the price of fulfilling the Confucian ideal of womanhood lies in the sublimation of female self and in the loss of individuality. Taking a historical approach, the paper contextualizes the Confucian ideals of female virtue, discusses performative acts of gender, and analyzes the ways in which the traditional narrative art of p’ansori continually rearticulates historical norms of those ideals. It concludes with an extended feminist reading of particular p’ansori versions of the tale.

Sexual revolution in China: implications for Chinese women and society

China is undergoing rapid changes in sexual mores due to several reasons such as decreasing control of the state over private lives of individuals, globalization of its economy, and some policies initiated by the state. There is increased acceptance of premarital sex and extramarital sex in China, especially among youth. In historically conservative China, influenced by Confucian ideals of patriarchal dominance for centuries, the sexual freedom currently enjoyed by many is unprecedented. This has impacted women's status and sexual lives in several positive ways such as increasing freedom of sexual expression, control over their bodies, sexual choices, and increasing equality with men in all spheres of life. However several negative consequences such as a rise in STD/HIV prevalence, commercial sex, and divorce rates have also been attributed to the ongoing sexual revolution in China. Recommendations combating these and suggestions for directions in future research are discussed.

Dictionary of Louisiana French: As Spoken in Cajun, Creole, and American Indian Communities ed. by Albert Valdman, Kevin J. Rottet

the second half of his book to this peculiar scholar and to the organizations and legislation that his work inspired. Are Anglicisms a problem? Every language includes words from other languages. The metaphors used to describe the phenomenon are reflective of the ways such words are considered: borrowing, lending, and indebtedness, from the sphere of the marketplace; “intrus” (68), “titre de nationalité” (18), and “droit de cité” (66), from the naturalization and citizenship of immigrants; “résistance” (71) and “défense” from the language of war; “santé de la langue” (134) from medicine and particularly epidemiology; “métissage” (149) from the discourse of race. The prevalence of such terms, even occasionally by Bogaards himself, reveals just how difficult it is to approach this topic with scientific objectivity. Much of the metaphoric creativity applied to this subject can be attributed to Etiemble. Bogaards traces Etiemble’s career as a sinologist, noting the paradoxical relationship between his embrace of Confucian ideals and his fanatical and unbalanced anti-Americanism. Some people travel abroad to learn about another culture from the inside; others go simply to have their preconceived prejudices confirmed. Etiemble’s six-year stay in the United States was clearly in the latter category. Indicative of his odd sense of values is his preference for the Nazis over the Americans, because at least the Nazis wrote their horrible decrees in good French (131). Etiemble had no use for linguists, whose disinterest in prescriptivism made them fellow travelers of the evil Yankee imperialists. Prescriptivism deserves a place as an object of study in linguistics, but Etiemble is a good example of why linguists try to avoid the issue. Despite his tenuous relationship to rationality and lack of scientific method, Etiemble’s work led to the institutionalization of efforts to create alternatives to English words. A variety of organizations, both public and private, are enumerated in chapters 12 and 13, along with the two major pieces of anti-Anglicism legislation (Loi Bas-Lauriol [1975] and Loi Toubon [1994])—all to little effect. Overall, the lack of impact is rather striking, given the millions of Euros spent in terminological commissions and Francophone summits. For every success (e.g., logiciel), there are hundreds of failures. This short and readable presentation provides a concise and wellreasoned summary of the research to date, along with a few nuggets of original scholarship, particularly word-frequency studies based on corpora now available. University of Illinois Douglas A. Kibbee Methods and Materials edited by Sarah Jourdain VALDMAN, ALBERT, and KEVIN J. ROTTET, eds. Dictionary of Louisiana French: As Spoken in Cajun, Creole, and American Indian Communities. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2010. ISBN 978-1-60473-403-4. Pp. 892. $38.00. This edited book is an indispensable reference tool. It provides the most complete inventory of French vocabulary in the five broad regions of Louisiana (the coastal marshes, the banks of the Mississippi River, the central area, the north, and the western prairie). The vocabulary presented accurately reflects the speech of this region from 1930 to the present day. 826 FRENCH REVIEW 84.4 Beyond the fact that the Dictionary of Louisiana French has the largest number of words and expressions available in this type of reference dictionary, what distinguishes it is the detailed information provided for each entry. Each entry contains the word in its conventional French spelling, the word’s pronunciation and attested variants, its parts-of-speech classification, its English equivalent, and its current usage in common phrases. The introductory three-page “A User’s Guide to the Dictionary” (XV–XVII) illustrates the organization of each of the dictionary’s entries. The headword is in boldface, the spelling variants follow the headword entry in parenthesis, then come the phonetic transcription, part of speech, information about the connotations of certain words, the English equivalent, an example sentence of the headword used in context, translation of the example sentence, the code for the source of the example, and the list of parishes and textual sources where the headword was found. For example, the following is provided for the adjective “soûlard, soûleuse (souleur, -euse)”: “[sular, suløz, suloer] adj. habitual drinker, drunkard, alcoholic Il a eu le malheur de...

Chinese Street Opera in Singapore (review)

Reviewed by: Chinese Street Opera in Singapore Grant Shen Chinese Street Opera in Singapore. By Tong Soon Lee. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 2009, 218 pp. Cloth, $40. This book aims to "examine the cultural perspectives of nationalism in Singapore since its independence in 1965 through a study of Chinese street opera to understand the impact of changing cultural aesthetics on music and society" (p. 1). The author has collected substantial data from historical records, scholarly publications, and his own fieldwork. He has made a timely contribution to a relatively little-known field and a declining genre. One of the historical records, for instance, is the register of actors, artists and musicians found in the 1881 Census of Singapore, conducted by the British colonial government. The document shows that 240 out of the 285 registered arts professionals were Chinese, while all the rest, comprising Europeans, Americans, Eurasians, Malays, Indians, and other minorities, numbered only 45 (p. 21). This finding helps confirm the popularity and significance of Chinese opera among immigrants from China, in absolute and relative terms. The references Lee makes to prior scholarship are extensive. At one point, studies on amateur musicians in Afghanistan, recreational participants in nō theatre in Japan, and the avocational performers of kunqu opera in China are cited to place the Singaporean Chinese opera amateurs in perspective (p. 93–94). The author's protracted field research in the late 1990s represents probably one of the last attempts to study at close hand the shrinking professional troupes and their aging performers. Supported by his comprehensive data collection, Lee is able to chronicle the genre's development in Singapore since the 1840s, from its social and religious functions for nostalgic early immigrants to its heyday when Chinese street opera had a huge following and on to its gradual decline in recent decades. The author then provides a political-ideological backdrop against which the rise of amateur groups may be understood. He has painstakingly pieced together evidence of the state's anxiety over being the smallest and [End Page 198] most dependent (thus vulnerable) country in Southeast Asia, the dilemma it faced in matching the economic development of the West while resisting the perceived negative influences of materialism and individualism, and its solution in promoting and modifying Confucianism in order to propound "traditional Asian values." Interestingly, Lee draws a clever parallel between the Confucian ideals of the arts in human life and the amateurs' practice of Chinese opera. Just as Confucianism values education and promotes the arts as a means of self-cultivation for, and manifestation of, the gentleman, but not as a means of livelihood, so too do amateur groups, comprising mostly educated members of the middle class, conform to these Confucian criteria by learning Chinese opera for personal refinement and performing it for leisure and charitable events. Consciously and openly pursuing Confucian goals in the arts, four amateur groups—Er Woo, Lak Aik, Han Hwa, and Thau Yong—no less have named themselves ruyue she (Confucian musical/dramatic associations). Lee provides sufficient documentation for the conditions under which the professionals in Chinese opera have survived. With little formal education, they perform solely for functional reasons, for rituals associated with custom or religion, and personally to make a living. As such, the professionals have a low social status, at least partially, because they are unable to embody or convey the Confucian ethos as the amateurs do. These findings provide convincing proof that it is the Chinese opera amateurs, rather than the professionals, who better serve the purposes of the state in its endorsement of Confucianism, as well as in promotion of cultural nationalism and tourism. As is to be expected, this predominantly sociological study focuses on, and succeeds in clarifying, the historical and cultural aspects more than the art form per se. However, to attribute the rise of amateurs and the decline of professionals almost entirely to non-artistic causes is less than accurate. Moreover, the impression of the artistic supremacy of professional troupes over amateur ones is created through three problematic methods. (1) Lingual Connotation. The terms "professional" and "amateur," owing to their conventional definitions, imply the technical or artistic supremacy of the former over the...

Chinese Civil Justice, Past and Present (review)

Reviewed by: Chinese Civil Justice, Past and Present Xiaoqun Xu (bio) Philip C. C. Huang . Chinese Civil Justice, Past and Present. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010. xviii, 297 pp. Hardcover $59.95, ISBN 978-0-7425-6769-6. The final volume of a trilogy on Chinese civil justice,1 Philip Huang's new book completes his research on the subject over the past twenty years and enriches Chinese legal history and legal studies with new perspectives. The most significant contribution of the book lies in the arguments and evidence presented that compel one to move beyond a binary view, informed by Max Weber, of the modernist Western legal system vis-à-vis the traditionalist Chinese legal system. At the same time, based on substantial case records, some of which are also found in Huang's earlier works, the book reveals convincingly the continuity in Chinese civil justice from the Qing dynasty to the post-Mao reform era, both in legal practices and in an underlying mode of thinking. Huang calls his methodology the "history-of-practice approach" (p. 1). Essentially, he pays greater attention to the actual practices of civil dispute resolution than to theories, representations, and institutions. That is, to grasp how civil disputes were actually resolved, he looks beyond, without dismissing a rational-formalist theory of law, official representations of legal ideals and the formal court system. His central argument is that Chinese civil justice involved both adjudication in court and mediation in or outside court, from the Qing to the present, often in ways that manifested compromises between Confucian (and Maoist) moral ideals and social realities, especially of peasant society. Huang uses several concepts, such as "practical moralism," "Confucianized legalism," and "centralized minimalism," to characterize the ideological and institutional features of imperial China that were relevant to civil justice practices. By [End Page 129] "practical moralism," Huang highlights the Qing law of "merging moral representations with practical action, the two being at once inconsistent and yet combined together." Huang characterizes these concerns succinctly: "[W]hat this system said was one thing, what it did was another, but these two combined was yet another thing" (p. 10). Furthermore, he uses this concept to identify a particular mode of thinking in Chinese legal practices that starts from facts rather than from theory. By "Confucianized legalism," Huang describes a combination of legalist ideology of government by laws, punishments, and bureaucracy with Confucian ideals of benevolent government. This approach was reflected in the metaphor of government as a parent and subjects as children. If this formulation is familiar, what Huang analyzes with it is illuminating. In the Confucian ideal, society was a moral universe in which disputes, if they arose because of moral failings, would be resolved by societal mechanism of mediation without government interference; court adjudication was necessary only when the mechanism failed. Therefore, civil disputes over property, debt, marriage, and inheritance were considered minor matters, to be resolved initially through community mediation. By "centralized minimalism," Huang means the institutional reasons for the Qing state preferring to leave civil disputes for community mediation. Beyond judicial matters, nonsalaried, quasi-officials in sub-county society took care of local affairs (usually without paperwork), from village schools to collective responsibility (tax and security) arrangements. Constrained by the Confucian minimalist ideals, the Qing dynasty operated a limited governmental apparatus with the county magistrate at its lowest level. This system created a need for quasi-officials and dispute resolution by community mediation at the county level and below. Furthermore, by using the concept of "centralized minimalism," Huang wants to capture not only "how formal government was organized but also how semiformal governance was practiced in the gray zone between the formal state and informal society" (p. 78). One of the refreshing insights Huang offers from this perspective is that the commune system in the countryside during the Mao era could be considered a continuation of the minimalist administration, in that cadres at the village level (production brigades and teams) were not funded by the state but self-funded—"eating collective grain" (p. 81). These cadres had a stake in the local community's well-being despite the line of control through Party organization to which...

The Dao Is Not for Sale 道是不賣的

167 The Dao Is Not for Sale 道是不賣的 HARRISON MORETZ I have a pine breeze for sale, would you like to buy some? For thirty thousand taels of gold, I shall give you one gourd full. – Lü Dongbin In the sixties, Zen Buddhism became popular in the West. While some students practiced authentically and attained real accomplishment—as seen in the thriving Zen communities that continue their tradition—there also arose a popular (mis)understanding of Zen. Certain notions from Zen had appeal for Westerners and casual interpretations worked their way into the mainstream, as evidenced by a plethora of books entitled “The Zen of ___ (fill in the blank)”. That was Zen; this is Dao. The Dao is the new Zen. Just as with Zen, many people think the Dao is whatever they want it to be. Although Zen became a marketing device for many products, the austere nature of its practice kept it somewhat insulated from “brand” commercialization. Daoist practices are more diverse and more susceptible to abuse. There is a saying: “Those outside the field judge by flashiness; those in the field judge by skill/knowledge” 外行看熱鬧，內行看門道. Popular‑ ity comes from flash; depth comes from proper method and context. Students get excited when offered secret teachings on esoteric knowl‑ edge, but true accomplishment does not rely solely on technique. Rather, it relies on the greater context of the Daoist teaching and the character of the practitioner’s awakening (wu 悟) and connection (tong 通). The con‑ text and manner, therefore, in which the teaching is delivered can hinder or facilitate true penetration and awakening: these are not for sale—in essence, they cannot be purchased, bartered, or acquired materially. 168 / Journal of Daoist Studies 2 (2009) Cultivating Virtue There are two important categories of Daoist cultivation. The one more familiar to people in the West is inner cultivation (neigong 內功). It in‑ cludes both stillness and moving practices, such as meditation, internal alchemy, life‑nourishing, qigong, and internal martial arts. Inner cultiva‑ tion has its counterpart in outer cultivation (waigong 外功), which in‑ cludes the cultivation of virtue and the accumulation of merit (gongde 功 德), as well as doing good works (xingshan 行善). An essential part of cultivation is doing things for the benefit of others — both individuals and community. Virtue (de 德)—understood as a high level of personal integrity, responsibility for self and society, honesty, decency, truthful‑ ness, as well as the classic Confucian ideals of filiality, loyalty, benevo‑ lence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom—is essential to cultivating the Dao. As already the fourth‑century alchemist Ge Hong says: If one seeks to become an immortal it is necessary to be first of all loyal, filial, harmonious, compliant, benevolent, and sincere. If one does not engage in the cultivation of virtue but only practices methods [fangshu 方術], one never realizes long life. If a person desires to attain earthly immortality, he or she must perform 300 good deeds [shan 善]; if they wish to become a celestial immortal, they need 1,200 good deeds; if at 1,199, they do not keep the middle and commit even one bad deed, they must begin the count all over again. Thus good deeds are [not measured by] greatness; evil deeds [are not measured by] smallness. The character of a person determines the extent to which his or her inner cultivation bears fruit. If one is sincere and consistent and acts outwardly for the benefit of all, then inner cultivation will bear fruit. Thus, if one only practices internal cultivation without pursuing outer cultivation, it is not possi‑ ble to achieve genuine attainment. (Baopuzi 3.6) Similarly, the seventh‑century Dajiao yishu 道教義樞 (Pivotal Mean‑ ing of the Daoist Teaching) says: “Dao and virtue have one body but two aspects; they are one but not one, two but not two” (ch. 1). Dao and vir‑ tue are inner and outer aspects: Dao is unmanifest and ineffable while Moretz, “The Dao Is Not for Sale” / 169 virtue is its expression in the world of phenomena. Dao is the unformed source; virtue, its function in the world, the expression of the innate po‑ tency of Dao. The Daode jing 道德經 (Book of the Dao and Its Virtue) notes that “Dao produces—virtue nourishes...

Common culture: Asia rhetoric in the beginning of the 20th century

The essay analyses the history of geopolitical conceptualizations of Asia a century ago, found in the texts of Japanese Okakura Tenshin, Indian Rabindranath Tagore, and Chinese Sun Yatsen. They are not only classics in formulating new meanings for Asia, but they are also relevant nowadays in the light of contemporary attempts to advance Asian cooperation. During both periods, a crucial aspect of the discussion was conceptual: what to include and what to exclude from Asia, and on what grounds. In their own time all three authors appeared as innovative ideologists, who rhetorically redescribed the concept of Asia. That was necessary, because the whole geopolitical construction named Asia had thus far been dominated by European civilizational discourse, where Asia was seen as an aggregate of everything geographic, racial, and cultural that did not fit within Europe. It was a residual category, not containing anything that would make Asia into a common entity, except its essentialized non‐Europeanness. Culture, in the sense of the existence of a high civilization different from the dominating European one, became the central concept on which the three authors began to build a new understanding of Asian commonality. Because they were early pioneers, they often had to proceed metaphorically, using imaginative leaps of thought to fill the empty places necessarily appearing in such a new endeavour. Occasionally they also run into conceptual problems, which are as interesting as their usually quoted slogans. The problems were caused by the fact that they were Western educated and had to base their thinking on Western concepts, while at the same time attempting to proceed with classical Buddhist and Confucian ideals. It is exactly these conceptual difficulties that are relevant nowadays, when there is again a need to create Asian commonalities, while Asian relations with the rest of the world make these common aspects relative and contextual.

The Divine Nature of Power: Chinese Ritual Architecture at the Sacred Site of Jinci (review)

Reviewed by: The Divine Nature of Power: Chinese Ritual Architecture at the Sacred Site of Jinci Shuishan Yu (bio) Tracy Miller . The Divine Nature of Power: Chinese Ritual Architecture at the Sacred Site of Jinci. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2007. xx + 265 pp., 66 color and 14 b/w illus. Hardcover $45.00, ISBN 978-0-674-02513-4. Ritual architecture, or lizhi jianzhu 禮制建築, is a unique category in traditional Chinese architecture. Compared to other traditional Chinese architectural types-for instance, Buddhist architecture 佛教建築, palace architecture 宮殿建築, or mausoleum architecture 陵墓建築-ritual architecture is not as clearly defined and contains a much broader range of buildings with a variety of functions.1 Ritual architecture originally refered to structures built to fulfill the Confucian ideals. However, since Confucianism as a religious practice is not as specifically defined as Buddhism or Daoism, structures for worship, ritual sacrifice, or memorial function that cannot be fitted into Buddhism or Daoism are all grouped under the category of ritual architecture, including such diverse building types as the memorial archways for chaste women, shrines dedicated to gods of the five sacred peaks, Confucian temples, and the Altars of Heaven. The complicated nature of ritual architecture originates from the diversity of local beliefs in traditional Chinese society, which cannot be simplified as merely "Confucian." Tracy Miller's book The Divine Nature of Power: Chinese Ritual Architecture at the Sacred Site of Jinci takes up the challenge and makes a fine contribution to our understanding of the complexity of both ritual practices in ancient China and the physical environment that was created by and for such diverse and often contradictory practices. The main argument of the book is that the original source of divinity at the site of modern day Jinci is neither the founder of the Jin state, Shu Yu of the Zhou Dynasty, nor his mother, Yi Jiang, as is widely assumed,2 but the life-giving water as represented by the local water goddess-the Spirit of the Jin Springs (pp. 10, 178). Such a conclusion is supported by recent archaeological discoveries (p. 177), a closer examination of historical documents (p. 178), and the extant buildings, sculptures, and paintings in and the general layout of the Jinci complex (pp. 12-13, 179-184). What led to the confusion and opposition about the identity of the main deity worshiped at Jinci are the competing local patronages, whose wills were materialized in various documents and folklores as well as art and architectural forms (pp. 13-14, 181-183). Such a thesis and reasoning procedure are clearly delineated in the introduction and conclusion of the book. Like other ritual architecture throughout China, Jinci is a collection of shrines and temples dedicated to a variety of deities. The most important ones and at the same time the most relevant to the thesis of the book are the Sage Mother Hall 聖母殿 and the Shu Yu of Tang Shrine Complex 唐叔虞祠, on which most of the chapters of this book focus. Chapter 2 discusses the ambiguous meaning of [End Page 407] the name "Jinci 晉祠" and its potential for different interpretations on the identity of main deities. The author argues that the term "Jinci" allows the site to be interpreted as either dedicated to the rulers of Jin State or the Spirit of the Jin Springs. It also provides a general introduction of the present physical layout of the complex in the beginning section. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the changing significance of Shu Yu across time and the impact that had on the shrine complex built for him. Chapter 3 also discusses the significance of the Taiyuan city, where Jinci is located, as a seat of local power, and suggests that this might be the reason why it was misunderstood as the place where the Jin State was originally founded. In chapter 4, based on historical documents from official dynastic histories to stele inscriptions, the author tries to delineate a picture of both an idealized Shu Yu shrine and the evolvement of the cult of Shu Yu as a state founder. Chapters 5 and 6 turn to the worship of the Spirit of the Jin Springs. Chapter 5 focuses on the textual...

Thinking Like a Man: Tadano Makuzu (1763-1825) (review)

Reviewed by: Thinking Like a Man: Tadano Makuzu (1763-1825) Marcia Yonemoto Thinking Like a Man: Tadano Makuzu (1763-1825). By Bettina Gramlich-Oka. Leiden: Brill, 2006. 319 pages. Hardcover €89.00/$116.00. In the first full-length study in a Western language of the writer Tadano Makuzu (1763-1825), Bettina Gramlich-Oka offers a valuable analysis of an eclectic and original thinker who was also a woman, a daughter, and a wife. In doing so, she illuminates the challenges facing Tokugawa intellectuals who, while steeped in Confucian ideals and conforming to them in fundamental ways, were also extremely critical of the political and social world in which they lived. Gramlich-Oka seeks to examine Makuzu first and foremost as a thinker and attempts to link her ideas and texts to major intellectual currents and movements of the time. At the same time she foregrounds issues of gender, for it was Makuzu's status as a woman, Gramlich-Oka argues, that both circumscribed and enabled her extraordinary literary production. In the introduction, Gramlich-Oka situates Makuzu's work in the two major genres and analytical categories in which it has generally been placed: "Japanese literature" [End Page 363] and "Japanese intellectual history." In the first instance, Gramlich-Oka shows that although Makuzu was an accomplished writer of wabun, placing her writings in the category of joryū bungaku, or "women's literature," as has often been done, is inadequate and inappropriate, for Makuzu also wrote essentially political treatises such as Hitori kangae (Solitary Thoughts, 1817-1818), in which she criticizes everything from Confucian notions of human relations to bakufu monetary policy. In the confines of mainstream Japanese intellectual history, Makuzu has fared no better. Although she was a student of Kokugaku, she did not espouse any single intellectual orthodoxy. Rather, her writings reflect a wide range of ideas and influences, culled from her studies of Kokugaku, Rangaku, and the mercantilist theories of thinkers like Kaiho Seiryō (1755-1817). While Makuzu's eclecticism links her to various schools of thought, she was for the most part barred from direct participation in academic debate by virtue of her gender, her family circumstances, and her residence in the far northeast, in Sendai. And yet, as Gramlich-Oka points out, although she was widowed and isolated after the death of her parents, husband, and many of her siblings, Makuzu transformed her place on the geographic, academic, and social margins into a unique vantage point from which to observe and critique the world as she saw it. Because Makuzu's texts are so intimately linked to events in her life, Gramlich-Oka devotes the first half of Thinking Like A Man to discussing Makuzu's biography and its relationship to her thought and writing. In chapter 1 she shows how the figure of Makuzu's father, Kudō Heisuke (1734-1800), a physician and scholar in the service of the Date house of Sendai who was posted in Edo, dominated her personal and intellectual universe. Heisuke's intellectual interests were wide-ranging, and he consorted with some of the brightest and most open minds of his day, from high-ranking officials to eminent Rangaku scholars. He also counted among his close friends famous kabuki actors and female courtesans and performers. Today Heisuke is best known as an expert on Russian affairs and an advocate of engaging in trade relations with the Russians in Ezo, ideas he put forth in Akaezu fūsetsu kō, a work submitted to the shogunal government in 1783 that earned the support of the then senior councillor (rōjū) Tanuma Okitsugu (1719-1788). Until Tanuma's fall from power in the mid-1780s, the future seemed bright for the Kudō family, and it is no wonder that Makuzu spent much of her adult life longing for the vibrant world of her youth, when her father was in his prime and the household thriving. In chapter 2, Gramlich-Oka shows that Heisuke's legacy to Makuzu was built on the strong foundation of formal and informal education he offered his oldest daughter and, perhaps more importantly, the example of wide-ranging curiosity and intellectual ambition he himself provided. As her principal teacher and...

The Dao of Muhammad: A Cultural History of Muslims in Late Imperial China (review)

Reviewed by: The Dao of Muhammad: A Cultural History of Muslims in Late Imperial China Kevin Caffrey (bio) Zvi Ben-Dor Benite . The Dao of Muhammad: A Cultural History of Muslims in Late Imperial China. Harvard East Asian Monographs 248. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. xii, 280 pp. $45.00, ISBN 978–0–674–01774–0. Zvi Ben-Dor Benite's new book is an investigation of how seventeenth- and eighteenth century Chinese Muslims created Islamic texts that came to be known as the Han kitab—something like a Chinese Islamic canon. More particularly, the author delves into the very Chinese way in which this body of texts was put to work securing Chinese Muslims a particular place in the empire. I have waited for this book for some time, though this is not to say that the author has taken a long time to produce it. I mean rather to say that I was aware of the need for a fine-grained analysis of the Chinese Muslim network in eastern China that produced the Han Kitab, and I was waiting for someone to write on it in a way that I could learn about it and work from it. This is that work. It is a welcome addition to the growing corpus of historical and ethnographic work on Muslims in China, and all the more welcome because it contributes to several ongoing discussions about Chinese social history quite apart from the issue of Muslims. It is common to associate Islam in China with the peoples of Xinjiang, but this book shifts attention away from them toward a community flourishing during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the eastern Chinese heartland. We read of Muslim communities in Nanjing and other cities that supported Islamic schools, scholarship, and publishing endeavors. Leading families in these communities traced their origins to Muslims who had served under past Central Asian rulers of China, and they kept up their traditions by participating both in the Confucian examination system and also producing sons who became experts in Islamic scholarship. Faced with their community's isolation from the wider Islamic world and its limited knowledge of Arabic, these men produced a body of Islamic literature in Chinese. The author documents how this network of literati emerged in the late Ming and early Qing, eventually developing the motivating notion that they were the curators of a specifically Muslim domain of literary Chineseness. The initial focus of the book is on the network of scholars who wrote or translated (from Arabic and Persian) the texts of the Han Kitab. The narrative is an analysis of the ways in which these Chinese Muslim literati negotiated their cosmological position as Chinese in a Confucian moral universe, with their social identity as Muslims and descendents of foreigners. It is most generally about the multivariate nature of identification processes, but more specifically it is a historical account of a dynamic educational network of Chinese Muslim literati in eastern China. The author argues that the Han kitab authors saw themselves as [End Page 376] Chinese literati, and ultimately for them Islam was seen as the completion of Confucian ideals. Built from Chinese Muslim sources and supplemented by imperial records, the picture that emerges in this narrative of the way this Chinese Muslim school of learning was generated does an excellent job of showing a slice of late imperial Chinese life and social history. Scholars who have followed the argument made by Crossley (1990, 1999), Elliot (2001), Rawski (1996), and others about the conceptual appropriateness of ethnicity as a social technology of the time will find in this work an additional vantage from which to evaluate that argument—not necessarily by directly enunciating a position, but by allowing the presentation of the historical facts to speak to that issue. Scholars who have begun to investigate colonialism in China seriously—something quite distinct from the colonialism of China by Western powers—will see here a case example of the means and mechanisms that were at the disposal of Chinese elites and officials by which ideologies and sentiments of affinity and estrangement were deployed in late imperial China. Similarly, in this example we also see the...

The Confucian Ideal of Harmony

This is a study of the Confucian ideal of harmony and harmonization (he ). First, through an investigation of the early development of he in ancient China, the meaning of this concept is explored. Second, a philosophical analysis of he and a discussion of the relation between harmony, sameness, and strife are offered. Also offered are reasons why this notion is so important to Confucian philosophy. Finally, on the basis of value pluralism, a case is made for the Confucian approach of he to the politics of today's world culture.

Cultural attribution of mental health suffering in Chinese societies: the views of Chinese patients with mental illness and their caregivers

This study examined the cultural attribution of distress in the Chinese, the special role of the family in distress and the specific emotional reactions within distress dictated by culture. This phenomenological study illustrated the narrative representation of the experiences of suffering by the Chinese patients with mental illness. Twenty-eight Chinese-Australian patients and their caregivers were interviewed together in their homes. They were invited to talk about the stories of the patients' experiences of suffering from mental illness. The interviews were recorded and transcribed to be further analysed according to the principles of narrative analysis. The results of case narration indicated that (1) because of the influence of Confucian ideals, interpersonal harmony was the key element of maintaining the Chinese patients' mental health, (2) Chinese patients' failure to fulfil cultural expectations of appropriate behaviours as family members contributed to disturbance of interpersonal relationships and (3) Chinese patients' failure to fulfil their familial obligations contributes to their diminished self-worth and increased sense of guilt and shame. The findings of the present study suggest that Chinese people's well-being is significantly determined by a harmonious relationship with others in the social and cultural context. Psychotherapy emphasizing an individual's growth and autonomy may ignore the importance of maintaining interpersonal harmony in Chinese culture. The results of this study contribute to the essential knowledge about culturally sensitive nursing practices. An understanding of patient suffering that is shaped by traditional cultural values helps nurses communicate empathy in a culturally sensitive manner to facilitate the therapeutic relationship and clinical outcomes.

Negotiating Cultural Identities in Conflict: A Reading of the Writings of Paek Kyŏnghae (1765–1842)

Abstract This article examines the life of Paek Kyŏnghae (1765–1842), a late Chosŏn scholar official from P’yŏngan Province, a region popularly conceived as lacking a yangban pedigree and scholarly tradition, so that its inhabitants were subject to ongoing social contempt and political discrimination. Situating Paek within this regional cultural context and also within the dynastic institutional practices of his time reveals the development of subjective expressions of regional belonging by insiders, as well as equally subjective expressions of regional stereotyping by outsiders. Tracing northern regional identities, as constructed and negotiated in reaction to outsiders’ views, and then locating such regional identities and politics in relation to the central court sheds new light on the personal ordeals that Paek was forced to undergo throughout his career. The compromises and choices that he made at every turn were driven by contradictions between Confucian ideals that honored the principle of meritocracy and dynastic practices that hinged upon long-standing aristocratic tradition. This article exposes the integrative power of dynastic ideology and systems (as well as complex institutional processes) that demanded a high level of conformity from individual participants, thus imposing lifelong agony on a gifted man because of his demeaned place of origin and less-than-desirable pedigree. In methodology, this study provides a critique of nation-centered historiography by highlighting views from the periphery.

Family and Gender in Famine: Cultural Responses to Disaster in North China, 1876-1879

Imagery used by male local literati to describe the North China Famine of 1876-1879 demonstrates how Confucian ideals and the Chinese family system in the late imperial era should have shaped the moral dilemmas that famine imposed upon women. Local-level Chinese texts about famine place young wives and daughters in physically, morally, and sexually precarious positions during the disaster, but depict elderly mothers as persons with strong claims to a family's dwindling food supply. Demographic studies of famine and gender and observations made by foreign observers, however, call into question the assumption that Chinese families discriminated against young women when dividing a famished household's food supply. They further suggest that the burgeoning trade in women in some cases enabled young women to survive the disaster more successfully than their male counterparts. This article adds a local-level Chinese perspective to the ongoing dialogue on the "feminization of famine."

A Confucian War over Childcare? Practice and Policy in Childcare and Their Implications for Understanding the Korean Gender Regime

AbstractWe ask about the development of childcare policies in Korea and what these mean for our understanding of the gender assumptions of Korean governments. Women's labour market participation has been increasing rapidly, with married women now much more likely to be in the labour market. The provision and regulation around support for women's employment, and especially for mothers’ employment, is a key issue and problem for Korean women and for governments. A number of policies give the impression that the Korean government is moving rapidly towards a policy for reconciling work and family based on a dual‐earner model of the family. But we argue that a close inspection of these policies suggests that the state is still playing a residual role, legislation is not effectively implemented, and government is giving way to the private sector and to the family in responsibility for childcare. Mothers’ accounts of their lives centre on a childcare war played out beneath the apparently harmonious Confucian surface, with resisting husbands supported by powerful mothers‐in‐law, and daily struggles over the management of services. The Korean government and its policy‐makers, far from moving rapidly towards a dual‐earner model of the family, are still rooted in Confucian ideals.

TRAVEL BEHAVIOR AND MIGRANT CULTURES: THE VIETNAMESE IN AUSTRALIA

This article examines the influence of cultural factors on the travel behavior of Vietnamese migrants (Viet kieu) resident in Australia, with particular reference to return visits to Vietnam. A conceptual framework of cultural influence on migrant travel behavior is proposed to explain the relationships between migrant adapted culture and travel behavior. The findings suggest that the Viet kieu maintain certain traditional Vietnamese cultural values and Confucian ideals, while actively adopting behavioral characteristics from mainstream culture during their gradual integration into the adopted society. Significant differences in cultural and travel behavioral characteristics are evident between the Viet kieu, their relatives in Vietnam, and mainstream Australians. Such differences appear to have some connection with the individualism of the West and the collectivism of the East. Issues of identity, rootlessness, belonging, and the relationship between past and present are associated with the decision to travel and subsequent experience of travel to the homeland. The article concludes by discussing implications for future studies.

Gift Giving in Hong Kong and the Continuum of Social Ties

This article explores gift‐giving practices using data collected through interviews in Hong Kong. I argue that Chinese culture promotes the familial over the private self and that the attainment of family‐oriented goals represents an important measure of self‐realization and self‐fulfillment. Although each individual also has a private or inner self (chi), it is also subject to the collective will. This idea is in keeping with Confucian ideals that encourage the individual to focus on developing internal moral constraints and conquering selfishness in the pursuit of social propriety. Furthermore, the boundaries of the familial self are permeable and may include others, such as important romantic partners and, occasionally, close friends who become “like family.” In family and like‐family contexts, reciprocity is discouraged, and there is no need to build relationships through gift giving. Our research also suggests, however, that there are various gradations of intimacy in gift relationships against the b...

Fiduciary Society and Confucian Theory of Xin - on Tu Wei-ming's fiduciarity proposal

This paper evaluates Tu Wei-ming's proposal that the Confucian ideal model of human society should be viewed as a fiduciary community. To do the evaluation, I provide a systematic elaboration of Tu's proposal, which is essentially absent in Tu's writings, and a systematic explication of the Confucian theory of fiduciarity, which is supposed to be the theoretical foundation of Tu's proposal but is completely absent in the studies of Confucianism, including Tu's own. On the basis of these studies, I conclude that the notion of fiduciary community is entailed by the Confucian tradition; tapping the resource of the Confucian tradition for appreciating, supporting and justifying a properly defined model of fiduciary society is practically relevant and important to the modern world; however, given Tu's own definition, the model of fiduciary community does not sufficiently characterise the Confucian ideal society. In the end, I suggest a new way to study Confucian social ideals.