Marius Meinhof
Bielefeld University, Faculty of Sociology, Faculty Member
This chapter employs discourse analysis to show how state discourses in China depict the promotion of filial piety xiao as part of a larger civilizational project. We argue that state discourses extend xiao so that xiao within the family... more
This chapter employs discourse analysis to show how state discourses in China depict the promotion of filial piety xiao as part of a larger civilizational project. We argue that state discourses extend xiao so that xiao within the family is depicted as a source of relations between citizens and the state, relations between younger and elder generations in the overall society, and as a basis for civil behavior in public. Based on the extension of xiao, an appellation of xiao as a principle organizing care and respect for the elderly in general, beyond support in kinship networks, takes place. Thus, the promotion of xiao as a traditional virtue of the Chinese people is at once part of a shift in Chinese state discourse toward tradition since the turn of the century, and at the same time connected to older discourses on improving the spiritual civilization of the Chinese people. This is put into practice through various localized approaches that are often based on high-modernist administrative tools, as we will show on the example of local volunteering projects.
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Article written mid-2020 on the rewriting of the pandemic into a triumphalist story in Chinese online discourses. "To permit voices that would imagine the pandemic as a failure is important not only to resist a collective amnesia, but... more
Article written mid-2020 on the rewriting of the pandemic into a triumphalist story in Chinese online discourses.
"To permit voices that would imagine the pandemic as a failure is important not only to resist a collective amnesia, but also useful in stifling the egregious Chinese triumphalists and nationalists. Such imagination intends for survivors and witnesses to remain alarmed, reflexive, and critical, to resist the collectivizing of memories, to refuse to come to terms with past traumas, so as to refrain from repeating them. (...) Maybe we need to remember that the countries most successful in fighting the pandemic were those that were alert because they remembered the failures of fighting SARS—and those who arrogantly believed to own a superior system or be superior modern were those who failed hardest"
"To permit voices that would imagine the pandemic as a failure is important not only to resist a collective amnesia, but also useful in stifling the egregious Chinese triumphalists and nationalists. Such imagination intends for survivors and witnesses to remain alarmed, reflexive, and critical, to resist the collectivizing of memories, to refuse to come to terms with past traumas, so as to refrain from repeating them. (...) Maybe we need to remember that the countries most successful in fighting the pandemic were those that were alert because they remembered the failures of fighting SARS—and those who arrogantly believed to own a superior system or be superior modern were those who failed hardest"
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My Paper from March 2020 on representations of Covid-19 in Chinese and in "Western" (Anglo-American and German) debates. It first describes the struggle for articulating critique and demanding accountability from the government in Chinese... more
My Paper from March 2020 on representations of Covid-19 in Chinese and in "Western" (Anglo-American and German) debates. It first describes the struggle for articulating critique and demanding accountability from the government in Chinese online discourses. Then it looks at how "Western" discourses "delegated the virus into the sphere of the Other" through racialization, orientalism and colonial temporality.
https://archive.discoversociety.org/2020/03/21/othering-the-virus/
https://archive.discoversociety.org/2020/03/21/othering-the-virus/
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This article analyses how public debates about filial piety, xiao (孝), in China negotiate an obligation to have children. I will identify three key arguments. Firstly, that filial piety implies a non-negotiable obligation to have children... more
This article analyses how public debates about filial piety, xiao (孝), in China negotiate an obligation to have children. I will identify three key arguments. Firstly, that filial piety implies a non-negotiable obligation to have children which is depicted as an inextricable part of Chinese tradition and identity. Secondly, that due to the sacrifices that parents make when raising children these children have obligations towards their parents. Thirdly counter-discourses that stress the obligation of parents towards their children. They argue that giving birth is not an obligation without conditions. These arguments constitute a broad discourse in which the notion of xiao as a "traditional virtue" is rarely contested, but the practical consequences of this "virtue" are constantly negotiated
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In this essay, we structure the ongoing discussion on postcolonial sociology taking place in Soziologie since 2018 in terms of key theoretical presuppositions about space, knowledge, and power, as well as in terms of underlying... more
In this essay, we structure the ongoing discussion on postcolonial sociology taking place in Soziologie since 2018 in terms of key theoretical presuppositions about space, knowledge, and power, as well as in terms of underlying epistemological interests. We focus on the misunderstandings that can arise from a lack of clarification of theoretical presuppositions. In doing so, we address what we consider to be the main arguments in the debate as well as the German-language postcolonial sociology landscape and argue for a post- and decolonial perspectivization of sociology as an epistemological method. In our view, this allows for two things: on the one hand, to reflect on blind spots in sociology as products of a particular institutional constitutional process of this discipline; on the other hand, to systematically rethink sociology as a relational, historically sensitive, global sociology of power.
Im vorliegenden Aufsatz strukturieren wir die seit 2018 in der Soziologie geführte, anhaltende Diskussion um postkoloniale Soziologie anhand zentraler theoretischer Vorannahmen zu Raum, Wissen und Macht, sowie in Bezug auf zugrundeliegende Erkenntnisinteressen. Wir fokussieren uns auf Missverständnisse, die durch mangelnde Klärung theoretischer Vorannahmen entstehen können. Dabei gehen wir auf die für uns wesentlichen Argumente in der Debatte sowie auf die deutschsprachige postkoloniale Soziologie-Landschaft ein und plädieren für eine post- und dekoloniale Perspektivierung der Soziologie als Erkenntnismethode. Dies erlaubt aus unserer Sicht zweierlei: einerseits, blinde Flecken der Soziologie als Produkte eines bestimmten institutionellen Konstituierungsprozesses dieser Disziplin zu reflektieren; andererseits, die Soziologie systematisch als relationale, geschichtssensibilisierte, globale Soziologie der Macht neu zu denken.
Im vorliegenden Aufsatz strukturieren wir die seit 2018 in der Soziologie geführte, anhaltende Diskussion um postkoloniale Soziologie anhand zentraler theoretischer Vorannahmen zu Raum, Wissen und Macht, sowie in Bezug auf zugrundeliegende Erkenntnisinteressen. Wir fokussieren uns auf Missverständnisse, die durch mangelnde Klärung theoretischer Vorannahmen entstehen können. Dabei gehen wir auf die für uns wesentlichen Argumente in der Debatte sowie auf die deutschsprachige postkoloniale Soziologie-Landschaft ein und plädieren für eine post- und dekoloniale Perspektivierung der Soziologie als Erkenntnismethode. Dies erlaubt aus unserer Sicht zweierlei: einerseits, blinde Flecken der Soziologie als Produkte eines bestimmten institutionellen Konstituierungsprozesses dieser Disziplin zu reflektieren; andererseits, die Soziologie systematisch als relationale, geschichtssensibilisierte, globale Soziologie der Macht neu zu denken.
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This essay introduces the concept of colonial temporality to make sense of Chinese modernization discourses. Although institutional discourses on modernization and development in China are largely nationalist and tightly entangled with... more
This essay introduces the concept of colonial temporality to make sense of Chinese modernization discourses. Although institutional discourses on modernization and development in China are largely nationalist and tightly entangled with state authority, they nevertheless draw on conceptions of temporality that are colonial in character and origin. I will introduce three features of this temporality that make it colonial and highly ambivalent for the Chinese state: Firstly, it was created by colonial encounters in history in which it was used and co-produced by various groups that used it for various power projects. Secondly, it provides China with a »story« of future progress by placing it in the middle of history. And thirdly, it revolves around discourses of deficiency that compel Chinese institutional discourses to constantly compare China to the West. In consequence, the »quest« for a Chinese modernity also includes a search for narratives of a better future that can imagine improvement but are not based on colonial temporality. Paying more attention to this problem would permit scholars to better understand the positions of the Chinese state and of Chinese intellectuals within modernization discourses, and to better conceptualize the historic and transnational character of these discourses.
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This article discusses debates found on Chinese university discussion boards, and considers why narratives about ‘modernisation’ and Chinese ‘deficiency’ and ‘backwardness’ constitute such powerful discourses at the grassroots level in... more
This article discusses debates found on Chinese university discussion boards, and considers why narratives about ‘modernisation’ and Chinese ‘deficiency’ and ‘backwardness’ constitute such powerful discourses at the grassroots level in China. This is notable because these discourses adapt a hierarchy of modernity from colonial discourses and they refer to colonial experiences in order to prove that a backward China has to change urgently. The article argues that discourses about modernisation and Chinese deficiency can become immensely pervasive because they are reproduced by authors on the internet in their attempts to produce a counter-discourse against either Western or Chinese institutional discourses. These counter-discourses are, however, caught within a dual power structure: on the one hand, the dominance of Chinese state discourse within China itself, and, on the other hand, the global dominance of Western discourses, often set in opposition to the Chinese government. In order to articulate a critique of either of these discourses authors appropriate concepts from the oppositional institutional discourse. Yet both of these seemingly ‘contradictory’ institutional discourses reproduce a hierarchy of modernity in which China is portrayed as backwards and therefore inferior. Thus while apparent counter-discourses are trapped between seemingly alternative positions they nevertheless both reproduce the same discourse of modernity and backwardness.
If possible, please download the text from the journal website: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13688790.2018.1507620
If possible, please download the text from the journal website: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13688790.2018.1507620
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This article analyzes the colonial foundation of discourses on modernity and backwardness in late 19 th and early 20 th century China. At that time new discourses which explained Chinese defeat by colonial powers and pointed out... more
This article analyzes the colonial foundation of discourses on modernity and backwardness in late 19 th and early 20 th century China. At that time new discourses which explained Chinese defeat by colonial powers and pointed out strategies of decolonization emerged after the Sino-Japanese War and were shaped in the context of Western and Japanese colonialism. These discourses implied a colonial notion of temporality which classified the world into modern and backward peoples. This notion of colonial temporality was not based on a diffusion of Western discourses to China but emerged as new Chinese theories from a complex process of asymmetric entanglements. Yet, Chinese authors nevertheless reproduced some of the most basic colonial worldviews, most noticeably the notion of the backwardness of the colonized. Colonial temporality shaped discourses and experiences of Chinese modernity and inscribed coloniality deeply onto Chinese attempts to undertake anti-colonial modernization.
(In German)
(In German)
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This article (in German) analyzes the discourse of Chinese social scientists promoting pluralization as an instrument for the modernization of economy and population. It deals with Chinese theories of consumer pluralization and with new... more
This article (in German) analyzes the discourse of Chinese social scientists promoting pluralization as an instrument for the modernization of economy and population. It deals with Chinese theories of consumer pluralization and with new classifications for population groups in Chinese sociology.
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This article is a summary of the book Shopping in China, by Marius Meinhof, which won the dissertation award of the German Association for Sociology in 2018. It highlights three of the key arguments of the book: firstly, that consumerist... more
This article is a summary of the book Shopping in China, by Marius Meinhof, which won the dissertation award of the German Association for Sociology in 2018. It highlights three of the key arguments of the book: firstly, that consumerist subjectivation occurs in everyday practices of shopping which utilize the non-verbal practices of gazing at and touching oneself as well as the objects consumed. This can and should therefore be analyzed using videographic approaches. Secondly, in China, these everyday practices of subjectivation do not add up to a whole dispositive; rather, they build a fragmented assemblage of microdispositives which are diverse in a way not considered in conventional concepts of “pluralization,” therefore requiring new concepts to describe them. Thirdly, discourses produced by state institutions as well as by people in interviews do not recognize these multiplicities, rather purifying them into clear-cut types of “modern” and “backward” practices based on a normative discourse of “colonial temporality” – a discourse of a backward China in need of modernization – an inheritance from the colonial era in China.
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Der Beitrag stellt Deleuzes Begriff des Mikrodispositives als Konzept vor, das eth-nomethodologische Videoanalyse mit der Analyse von Subjektivationsprozessen, die durch Dispositive gerahmt werden, verbinden kann. Mikrodispositive stehen... more
Der Beitrag stellt Deleuzes Begriff des Mikrodispositives als Konzept vor, das eth-nomethodologische Videoanalyse mit der Analyse von Subjektivationsprozessen, die durch Dispositive gerahmt werden, verbinden kann. Mikrodispositive stehen nicht in Konflikt mit den Annahmen des methodologischen Situationalismus und erlauben es, die empirische Frage nach dem situierten Hervorbringen von Dispositiven zu stellen. Auf diese Weise soll einerseits die theoretische Voreingenommenheit der Dispositiv-analyse überwunden werden, andererseits die Möglichkeit einer kritischen Thematisie-rung der Gesellschaft, die auf Videoanalyse basiert, eröffnet werden.
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This paper draws on an in-depth case study of narrative identity work to explore heuristically the role of host country nationals in the reproduction of orientalist discourses in multinational corporations (MNCs). Based on this analysis,... more
This paper draws on an in-depth case study of narrative identity work to explore heuristically the role of host country nationals in the reproduction of orientalist discourses in multinational corporations (MNCs). Based on this analysis, it presents an identity strategy termed the other Chinese. The other Chinese claims to be in-between the West, that is constructed as superior modern and rational, and China, that is constructed as backwards and chaotic. This in-betweenness allows the other Chinese to take the role of a mediator between locals and expatriates, and at the same time claim superiority towards normal Chinese. Thus, this identity construction is a creative act of hybridization and localization, but it is not subversive to existing power structures in the MNCs. However, as we show, the construction of the other Chinese is not inextricably bound to the field of the MNCs, but is based on a hybrid and creative entanglement of various sources such as class positions and public discourse in China, in which the MNCs only occupy an insignificant role. It is, therefore, to be understood as an aspect of identity construction in China relevant for MNC identity, rather than an aspect of the transnational field of the MNCs.
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Zitieren als: Meinhof, M. 2019. Das Hervorbringen von Vielfalt in der Shoppingmall. Nicole Burzan (Hg.) 2019: Komplexe Dynamiken globaler und lokaler Entwicklungen. Verhandlungen des 39. Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft für... more
Zitieren als: Meinhof, M. 2019. Das Hervorbringen von Vielfalt in der Shoppingmall. Nicole Burzan (Hg.) 2019: Komplexe Dynamiken globaler und lokaler Entwicklungen. Verhandlungen des 39. Kongresses der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie in Göttingen 2018. . 39, (Juli 2019).
Zusammenfassung: Im folgenden Aufsatz ziehe ich videographische Daten von Interaktionen während des Shoppings in Shoppingmallgeschäften in China heran, um die situierte Etablierung von Vielfalt in Shoppingmalls zu untersuchen. Anhand der exemplarischen Daten skizziere ich das Argument, dass in Shoppingmallgeschäften eine bestimmte Art von Vielfalt, und damit indirekt auch eine bestimmte Art von Auswahl hervorgebracht wird. Diese Vielfalt wird auf drei Ebenen hervorgebracht: Die Vielfalt des Angebotes wird in Interaktionen zwischen Kund*innen und Verkäufer*innen als eine geteilte Situati-onsdefinition etabliert; der Geschäftsraum wird so arrangiert, dass seine Waren als vielfältiges Ange-bot erlebbar und erkundbar werden; das Geschäft und sein Angebot werden so designt, dass eine bestimmte, in Marketingdiskursen entworfene Vorstellung von Vielfalt realisiert wird. Die Vielfalt des Angebotes ist damit nicht einfach durch die Anzahl oder Beschaffenheit der Objekte im Geschäft be-dingt, sondern wird sozial konstruiert-und das in einer Weise, die nur eine bestimmte Art von Vielfalt fördert. Das Angebot der Shoppingmall erlaubt dabei eine Vielfalt von Waren und Stilen, aber nicht unbedingt eine Vielfalt von verschiedenen Umgangsweisen mit Waren.
Zusammenfassung: Im folgenden Aufsatz ziehe ich videographische Daten von Interaktionen während des Shoppings in Shoppingmallgeschäften in China heran, um die situierte Etablierung von Vielfalt in Shoppingmalls zu untersuchen. Anhand der exemplarischen Daten skizziere ich das Argument, dass in Shoppingmallgeschäften eine bestimmte Art von Vielfalt, und damit indirekt auch eine bestimmte Art von Auswahl hervorgebracht wird. Diese Vielfalt wird auf drei Ebenen hervorgebracht: Die Vielfalt des Angebotes wird in Interaktionen zwischen Kund*innen und Verkäufer*innen als eine geteilte Situati-onsdefinition etabliert; der Geschäftsraum wird so arrangiert, dass seine Waren als vielfältiges Ange-bot erlebbar und erkundbar werden; das Geschäft und sein Angebot werden so designt, dass eine bestimmte, in Marketingdiskursen entworfene Vorstellung von Vielfalt realisiert wird. Die Vielfalt des Angebotes ist damit nicht einfach durch die Anzahl oder Beschaffenheit der Objekte im Geschäft be-dingt, sondern wird sozial konstruiert-und das in einer Weise, die nur eine bestimmte Art von Vielfalt fördert. Das Angebot der Shoppingmall erlaubt dabei eine Vielfalt von Waren und Stilen, aber nicht unbedingt eine Vielfalt von verschiedenen Umgangsweisen mit Waren.
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The article puts forward the ethnomethodological concept of procedural consequentiality as a proposed methodology for the study of objects. Instead of determining a universal relationship between discourses, practices and objects through... more
The article puts forward the ethnomethodological concept of procedural consequentiality as a proposed methodology for the study of objects. Instead of determining a universal relationship between discourses, practices and objects through a logically deduced social
theory, this concept asks what effects discourses, practices or objects have on the course of observable, situated events. This takes into account the possibility that seemingly identical objects can give rise to very different consequences in different situations, or even that their material properties can be rendered completely irrelevant. In order to elucidate this approach, the article sketches out the procedural consequentiality of imitation products in three different situations in China. What purports to be the ‘same’ object has a completely different relevance in the different situations. Therefore, instead of developing an overarching phenomenology of imitation, the more productive approach appears to be a study of the situation-specific procedural consequentiality of things. (Paper in german language).
theory, this concept asks what effects discourses, practices or objects have on the course of observable, situated events. This takes into account the possibility that seemingly identical objects can give rise to very different consequences in different situations, or even that their material properties can be rendered completely irrelevant. In order to elucidate this approach, the article sketches out the procedural consequentiality of imitation products in three different situations in China. What purports to be the ‘same’ object has a completely different relevance in the different situations. Therefore, instead of developing an overarching phenomenology of imitation, the more productive approach appears to be a study of the situation-specific procedural consequentiality of things. (Paper in german language).
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This are content and introduction of my book "Shopping in China", as well as a subchapter that will give an impression of the general style of argumentation. The book employs video data in order to elaborate how different shopping... more
This are content and introduction of my book "Shopping in China", as well as a subchapter that will give an impression of the general style of argumentation. The book employs video data in order to elaborate how different shopping environments persuade young consumers in China to enact themselves as modern consumer subjects. It is written in german and it attempts to connect ethnomethodological videography to recent theoretical debates on poststructuralist sociology in germany.
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[Informal summary in english]: This book is a case study on a non-profit, network-shaped organization operating in a country foreign to its management staff. Drawing its data from interviews with staff members of the organization, the... more
[Informal summary in english]:
This book is a case study on a non-profit, network-shaped organization operating in a country foreign to its management staff. Drawing its data from interviews with staff members of the organization, the book uses Luhmans system theory approach to ask, how this organization can accomplish the following three operations: (1) draw distinctions between organization and environment, (2) selectively construct knowledge about certain aspects of it's environment and (3) successfully act upon this knowledge. [Book is written in german language]
This book is a case study on a non-profit, network-shaped organization operating in a country foreign to its management staff. Drawing its data from interviews with staff members of the organization, the book uses Luhmans system theory approach to ask, how this organization can accomplish the following three operations: (1) draw distinctions between organization and environment, (2) selectively construct knowledge about certain aspects of it's environment and (3) successfully act upon this knowledge. [Book is written in german language]