The Exemplary Society

Human Improvement, Social Control, and the Dangers of Modernity in China
Erscheinungsjahr 2000
ISBN: 978-0-19-829523-5
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 532 Seiten, Format (B × H): 161 mm x 240 mm, Gewicht: 963 g

Reihe: Studies on Contemporary China

In modern China, technocratic utopias go side by side with moral panics. The modernization process is seen as creating the `disorders' of criminality, sex, and modern youth culture. The official answer to disorder is an exemplary societyan educative and disciplinary society where `human quality' and model behaviour is advocated. Modern Chinese society, however, resists being reduced to the exemplary discipline of its social engineers, and strategies of `lying' and
resisting control are routine.

This pathbreaking study analyses traditional and modern Chinese beliefs about and reactions to education, discipline, human improvement, and social control. Although these reactions to modernity have a Chinese colouring, they are not exclusive to the Chinese culture. By describing the terra incognita of China, The Exemplary Society also describes something about ourselves.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bakken, Borge

Bakken, Børge

Bakken, B/Orge

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Moderne Philosophische Disziplinen Philosophische Anthropologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Soziale Fragen & Probleme

Über Autor(innen)

Børge Bakken is Senior Researcher at the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies (NIAS) in Copenhagen. He has previously been Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Oslo and Research Fellow in the Norwegian Research Council.