Activity: External talk or presentation › Invited talk
Description
How do citizens learn to speak, act, and remain silent as citizens in contemporary China? This talk advances a linguistic approach to citizenship by examining how Confucianism operates as a resource for citizen-making. Drawing on state discourse and long-term ethnographic research on grassroots Confucian education, it argues that civic formation unfolds through two structurally asymmetric yet interconnected mechanisms: an authorised language of citizenship at the state level, and a more indirect language for citizenship articulated from below. While the former re-codes citizenship in moral–civilisational terms, the latter enables practices of “civicness without naming” under conditions of constrained speakability. By foregrounding language as a site of power, mediation, and agency, the talk rethinks how citizenship is produced across uneven state–society relations.
Period
4 Feb 2026
Event title
Confucianism and the Dual Linguistic Mechanisms of Citizenship in China