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.