Building on research that analyzes how social relations and networks shape the Chinese market, this article asks a less-studied question: How is the market changing guanxi? The authors trace the transformation of guanxi from communal, kin-based ties to a cultural metaphor with which diverse individuals build flexible social relationships in late-socialist China. As a “generalized particularism,” this cultural metaphor provides something analogous to the culture of civility in Western societies. The authors discuss the political potential of guanxi in terms of (...) its dual tendency toward the “publicization” and “privatization” of power. The development of guanxi civility suggests the diverse cultural origins of civility and serves as a reminder of the particularistic roots in the universalistic assumption of Western civility. (shrink)

Elite domination is recognized as a significant downside of “linking social capital,” but its remedies are under-theorized and scarcely documented. Addressing this gap, we argue that bonding or bridging ties characterized by strong reflexivity, awareness of the state’s symbolic violence, and rich cultural resources for cross-fertilization serve as countervailing mechanisms against unresponsive linking ties. If bonding and bridging ties lack these characteristics, even when those ties are numerous, they are unlikely to challenge unresponsive linking ties. Our theoretical argument is substantiated (...) through a three-village comparison in Taiwan during the post-Typhoon Morakot reconstruction period, where linking ties among most disaster areas, state agencies, and large NGOs were deployed to promote elite agendas. Based on forty-five in-depth interviews, our findings suggest that in Namaxia, where all three features identified in our framework were absent in bonding and bridging ties, grassroots resistance against unresponsive linking ties largely failed. In Jialan, bonding networks displayed strong social reflexivity, but neither bonding nor bridging ties cultivated awareness of the state’s symbolic violence or cultural resources for cross-fertilization. The village only partially succeeded in challenging unresponsive linking ties. In Ali, where local bonding and bridging networks developed all three features mentioned above, the village successfully transformed unresponsive linking ties. The conceptual delinking of network homogeneity/heterogeneity and exclusivity/inclusivity in this study bears broader implications for social capital theories. (shrink)

Scholars have established that cultural codes and styles of expression in civil society must be recognized as informal mechanisms of exclusion, calling into question the possibility of the Habermasian normative ideal of the public sphere. This article joins theoretical discussions of how to remedy this problem. Going beyond Alexander's model of "multicultural incorporation" and borrowing from Sewell's theory of the duality of structure, we develop a theoretical framework of code hybridization to conceptualize how civil society participants achieve civil solidarity amid (...) multiple, potentially contradictory cultural legacies. Code hybridization is a process whereby social actors not only incorporate the cultural codes of subordinate groups into the public sphere, but in doing so also potentially transform dominant codes. We conceptualize code hybridization in terms of three analytic steps: enlargement of the terrains of signification; reinterpretation of codes; and mixing of schemas. The resulting hybridized schemas and frameworks are particularly useful cultural tools for developing visions of civil inclusiveness for young, unstable civil societies. Using a brief comparative study of the representation of women in political cartoons in Hong Kong and Taiwan, we offer a concrete example of code hybridization—a process linking the codes of liberty and caring while producing alternative and more inclusive narratives during moments of political agitation. (shrink)