Shaoying Zhang

Nurturing resilient future citizens through value consistency vs. the retreat from multiculturalism and securitisation in the promotion of British values in schools in the UK

Abstract The controversial duty to promote British values in Schools and Further Education Colleges in England, Scotland and Wales was introduced in the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015. This duty is described by some as the introduction of securitising mechanism into British Schools, for others it is a symptom of the UK Government’s further retreat from Multiculturalism. In this article, we present the duty as the most recent reconstructive intervention designed to remedy alleged failings in the education system to produce liberal British citizens and to counter the growth of extremism. In the article, we will explore how local institutions such as schools and colleges have implemented the duty in a way that defuses some of the securitising aspects of the Statutory Duty through celebrating the UK as a multi-racial, multi-faith and multi-cultural society and through ensuring that their promotion of British values is consistent with their existing value system and ethos which includes the promotion of pupils’ Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Development.

Regaining honour and regaining legitimacy: shame, obedience and risk practices amongst Chinese communist officials

Abstract As part of its anti-corruption campaigns in China, the Communist Party of China (CCP) provides officials opportunities to redeem themselves and renew their vows of loyalty to the Party and the people they serve. Officials must regain honour through a process of self-confrontation and self-renunciation in compulsory meetings in which they are encouraged to transform their immoral thoughts and behaviours through confessional criticism and self-criticism practices. These meetings facilitate officials’ redemption through a divinized, ritualistic and theatrical process. In the process of confession and penance, officials must expose themselves to a type of ritual martyrdom, which combines elements of shame, a commitment to absolute obedience and exposure to risk. This paper is based on original fieldwork comprising 50 interviews with high-, mid- and low-level officials across China during 2014 and 2015.

Technologies of the Self

This chapter, following the discussion of the institutionalization of techniques through criticism and self-criticism study sessions in Chap. 7, will examine in detail how the care of the self is to be practised within the self through the culture of “self-cultivation.” The question that drives this chapter is: how is the governing of the self, or the care of the self, to be achieved within the self? We show from our participants’ perspectives that learning “the code” (Party decrees and regulations) is linked with techniques of knowing oneself through the processes of self-criticism and criticism. We examine our participants’ experiences of these complex combinations of techniques associated with moral guidance, the examination of conscience, memorization (and remembering) and avowal through compulsory study sessions. We will show that the process of self-cultivation includes (1) turning one’s gaze towards the self through remembering; (2) revealing truths through self-criticism; (3) knowing the self through the criticism and guidance of others; (4) knowing the self through the politics of shame, sincerity and honesty; (5) internalization and reconciliation of the relations to the self. By so doing, these processes are an attempt by the Party to try and ensure that its dictates are thoroughly processed and that officials internalize the code in all aspects of their lives.

Discourse of Hedonism and Extravagance: Tension Between the Agency and the Actor

This chapter will show that the discourse on hedonism and extravagance is about the tension between the subject’s agency and the self in the struggle for balance between the restrictions laid down by the Party and the freedom officials enjoy (or more accurately, enjoyed). In this struggle, the normative power of the Party “works on” its members who live hedonistically and extravagantly through reinforcing “their duty to be.” Thus, as we will show, the new disciplinary measures adopted by the Party are dedicated to the regulation of officials’ individual behaviours in order to turn officials’ gaze towards their corrupt self as the site from whence their ethical self might emerge.

Remnant and Hybridization: The Effects of Governing

This chapter will show that the compulsory criticism and self-criticism study sessions were designed for the officials “to bathe the soul,” in order to perform penance and ultimately to transform the self; however, officials can and do create “multiple sites of resistances” that undermine the hegemonic control of the Party. For example, sometimes they neither follow what the Party requires nor refuse to act, but act in an empty form without meaningful ends. This is also called “using formalism to counter formalism.” The anti-corruption campaign has created a sense of fear among officials and the eight-point code has attempted to impose an institutionalized process whereby new identities and interests can be internalized by officials. However, according to our participants, these processes often are the cause of a kind of inactivity, rather than facilitating the presumed ethical subjects. As well as examining the creative resistance to the ethical revolutionary processes explored in this book, we also explore the hybridizations that can emerge in the context of the apparent incompatibility between Asian and Western philosophical traditions. We examine how these contradictory practices can also produce various hybridizations which we explore in this chapter: the linking of science and technology with national development, termed “techno-nationalism”; and the linking of neoliberalism and socialism, termed “patriotic professionalism.”

Comparisons, Paradigms and the Remnant of Division: Our Approach

This chapter will present the theoretical framework of our book, that is, a paradigmatic approach that moves beyond linear comparison. Based on this approach, we will present our research questions: How is it that Chinese officials will be “socialized” into the practices and norms of extant institutions for the purpose of fulfilling the potential of the China Dream? In other words, how is the China Dream discourse operationalized through Party instruments, namely the communist members? In this chapter, we will contextualize the discourse and explain its articulation in three interdependent subdiscursive fields: anti-corruption, anti-four undesirable working styles and the Mass Line Education Programme.

The China Dream, History, Religion and Modernization

This chapter will introduce the background of President Xi’s initiatives and the discourse of the China Dream. We examine various academic attempts to explain the discourse of the China Dream as one of the causes of the revival of traditional culture in the era of globalization. We argue that the discourse on the revival of culture is in fact a resistant discourse to modernization, while the discourse on the “China Model” that uses the “Washington Consensus” as its reference point is based on the consciousness of colonial modernity.

The Discourse of Formalism and Bureaucratism: The Contest of Order Within the Party

This chapter will examine various tensions within the Party that in combination forms the discursive field of formalism and bureaucratism. In this process, we will critically examine how “desirable working styles” and “undesirable working styles” are being articulated. As we explore below, all of these problems are closely associated with the current Party structure, which we suggest is a virtuecratic-like political system. Unlike the problem of corruption as explored in Chaps. 4 and 5, with which the authority of the Party is taken as a referent object, the problem of the “four undesirable working styles” refers to the dysfunctions within the hierarchical order of the Party (which is perceived as another symptom of the Party’s moral ecology). These problems although not punishable by law are being tackled by the Party’s disciplinary mechanisms through the introduction of a series of prohibitions.

Discourses of Corruption: The Contest Between Different Authorities

This chapter will examine participants’ views on the corruption and anti-corruption crackdown in China. As will be demonstrated, the configuration of knowledge on corruption is a rather complicated process, in which officials use legal, moral, economic and political discourses (or a mixture of them) to depict the enemies of the Party as “corrupt.” We will examine the various tensions that exist in the relationships between the public and private, moral and legal, top and bottom, tradition and modern, which in combination form the discourse on corruption.

State of Exception: The Examination of Anti-Corruption Practices

This chapter will examine how the Party uses coercive punishment against officials identified as corrupt, so as to create a sense of uncertainty and fear among other officials, who as a consequence, it is assumed, will cease or avoid corrupt activities. As we will show, anti-corruption practices in China become a state of exception in the name of the moral emergency of the Party, through which the maintenance of the continuing legitimacy of the Party justifies the necessity of the state of exception. As a result, those officials suspected of corruption become remnants who lack any legal rights.