Re-theorizing civil society in China: Agency and the discursive politics of civil society engagement

Abstract

Scholarship on Chinese civil society has produced rich empirical studies, but there have been few attempts to theorize the empirical knowledge acquired. Moreover, the question of how to conceptualize the political agency of civil society in a non-democratic context has received limited systematic attention. In this conceptual article, we draw on a discursive approach to politics to analyse the political agency of Chinese civil society. Our analysis is based on synthesizing insights gained through three separate research projects. We propose a conceptual framework which focuses on how civil society actors position themselves within a structured political space, how they represent social groups and issues through advocacy, how they care for these groups, and how they engage in processes of identity formation. Taken together, these four modalities constitute a framework for analysing the different political dimensions of civil society agency.

Toward discourse involution within China’s Internet: Class, voice, and social media

“…The Internet has become a place where contentions among different social classes, communities, and groups emerge. As Gleiss et al (2019) stated, "there is a struggle between different discourses to define the social reality" (p. 8), because those from different social groups may develop and imagine distinctive social orders and circulate their opinions online. In a historical perspective, this is echoed by subaltern studies which break away from an elite orientation and retake the history of underclasses (e.g.…”

“…As aforementioned, this study employs an applicable approach to convert online social media content into class-based representation. Here, we define discursive power on the Internet as a "dispersed force" (Gleiss et al, 2019) that enables a reconstruction of voices among different social classes. In this light, class-based voice makes sense of itself as it can be understood as public discourses endowed with affective dimensions to claim their presence and sentiment in society.…”

Praying for Blue Skies: Artistic Representations of Air Pollution in China

“…In this article, we adopt an agency-oriented approach (Gleiss, Saether, and Fürst, 2019) to show how artists in Beijing have engaged with the issue of air pollution within a restricted political space. We argue that, in contrast to much of the resistance documented in the literature on China that relies upon making specific claims to government officials, artistic expression bypasses the authorities and appeals instead to public opinion.…”