Abstract
The long-term biographical consequences of political activism, raises two questions: What remains of the political passions after social movements subside and why does this occur? Scholars have pointed to the transformative power of participation in social movements. Some participants may experience a transformation in values and beliefs, while others have formed enduring social networks and sustained social activism (Rupp and Taylor 1987; Fantasia 1988; McAdam 1988, 1989; Calhoun 1994; Whittier 1995, 1997; Lichterman 1996; Robnett 1997). Such transformation is related to the liminal features of movement experience (Yang 2000). The greater the contrast between pre-participation structural embeddings and the leveling effects unleashed in collective action, the bigger the liminal effect, and the deeper the transformative power of participation. Similarly, the deeper the level of activist involvement, the stronger the liminal effect and the greater its transformative power (Yang 2000). In Griffin’s words, “highly charged events” shape consciousness and memory particularly strongly (2004, 544).
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Notes
- 1.
Guenther Roth’s (1975) study of charismatic communities provides support for viewing the Red Guard Movement itself as involving an ideological charismatic community, whose members, not just leaders may be regarded as charismatic virtuosi.
- 2.
In social movement literature, activism is usually taken to mean political activism. Thus when scholars study sustained activism among former movement participants, they ask whether these former activists are still involved in movement-related activities (McAdam 1988; Friedman and McAdam 1992). Such an approach assumes that the persistence of activism is manifest only in the continual involvement in explicitly political and often organized and directly confrontational activities. However, sociologists have begun to rethink activism (Abrahams 1992). Social movements may exist as “submerged networks” and “invisible laboratories” (Melucci 1989, 205). Many activities are not explicitly political challenges, but involve the display of unorthodox lifestyles, the uses of new symbols, and the adoption of cultural practices which jar with the tastes and values of the mainstream society. Some scholars study everyday life (Taylor and Whittier 1992) and cultural politics (Taylor and Rupp 1993) as political activism. Almanzar et al. (1998), for example, have examined everyday behaviors of conserving energy and water as environmental activism. Whittier argues that the persistence of the radical women’s movement should be seen “not just through the organizations it establishes, but also through its informal networks and communities and in the diaspora of feminist individuals who carry the concerns of the movement into other settings” (1995, 23).
- 3.
Data for the analysis consist of media materials, eyewitness accounts of historical events, biographical and autobiographical materials such as diaries and letters, and in-depth interviews with former Red Guards and sent-down youth.
- 4.
Chinese social scientists argued, for example, “we must give full play to the initiative of the unemployed in solving their own job problems;” “with the socialist economy playing the leading role, we must adopt more liberal policies and develop non-exploitative individual commerce and industry” (Feng and Zhao 1982, 133; 134). Recent studies by Western social scientists have also drawn attention to this issue. For example, Gold (1990, 162) suggested, “...urban private business offered one way to help the newly established reform elite solve inherited problems and thereby stabilize society and stimulate the economy while consolidating its own power.” Shirk (1993, 42) made a similar point when she wrote: “The reform-minded CCP leadership actively encouraged collective and private enterprises after 1978. The main rationale for this policy was the need to provide for jobs for millions of unemployed urban youth.”
- 5.
By semi-private business, I refer mainly to what is called the minban qiye (collective-run enterprises). Thomas Gold defines them as “cooperatives formed by young people waiting for work who raised their own funds” (1990, 162, note 9). By private business, I refer to what Solinger calls practices of the “petty private sector.” This sector consists of “the very small-scale commercial activity that individual peasants, peddlers, young people without state-sector jobs, and retired persons engage in at fairs, on city streets, or as itinerant hawkers in the rural areas” (Solinger 1993, 250).
- 6.
“Internal publications” (neibu shuji) were published for a limited readership, usually cadres and professional researchers. From 1949 to 1979, 18,301 titles of “internal publications” were published. See Quanguo neibu faxing dushu zongmu: 1949–1979 (1988). Also see Link (2000) and Kong (2002).
- 7.
For example, the newspaper Tianjin New Literature and Arts (Tianjin xin wenyi) carries a special issue titled “Open Fire against Soviet Revisionist Literature and Arts” in its March 1968 issue. See Yuan Zhou (ed.), A New Collection of Red Guard Publications (Xin bian Hong wei bing zi liao. (Oakton, VA: Center for Chinese Research Materials 1999), Vol. 13, p. 6096.
- 8.
Attesting to the historical (and commercial) value of these stories was the publication in 2002 of a collection of seven manuscripts of entertainment fiction (Bai 2002).
- 9.
See, for instance, Shi Weimen (1996a), Shi Weimin.
- 10.
One letter collected in Minjian shuxin runs up to 10 pages in print. See Xu (2000, 223–233).
- 11.
See, for example, Bei Dao (1988), and Morin et al (1990).
- 12.
A CD album of educated youth songs, titled Zhiqing laoge (Old Educated Youth Songs), was issued in 1998 in Guangzhou.
- 13.
See Ren Yi, Sheng si bei ge.
- 14.
James Scott, an astute analysis of forms of resistance, similarly argues that a generation is a “community of fate” whose members “are all under the same authority, run the same risks, mix nearly exclusively with one another, and rely on a high degree of mutuality.” (Scott 1990, 134)
- 15.
Correspondence to author from Ji Liqun, May 12, 2000. Ji is the author of “Chadui shengya” (Life in the Countryside), in Xin Qun (ed.), Wuhui nianhua–baiming zhiqing hua dangnian (Years of No Regret: One Hundred Educated Youth on Their Past) (Shenyang: Shenyang chubanshe 1998), pp. 12–21.
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Yang, G. (2011). The Routinization of Liminality: The Persistence of Activism Among China’s Red Guard Generation. In: Broadbent, J., Brockman, V. (eds) East Asian Social Movements. Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09626-1_19
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