The contested reality of China's transformation since economic reformation: Examination of Chinese modernity using articulation theory

This dissertation engages the problematic of Chinese modernity in order to provide a better understanding of China's transformative process and suggest a different way to conceptualize modernity in general. Many Western scholars, Giddens (1991) for example, equalize modernization to Westernization. This ethnocentric model was criticized by many on the ideological, empirical, and meta-theoretical levels (Tipps, 1973). In response, alternative notions of modernity were developed, in which Third World countries' historical traditions were made obvious. However, these so-called alternatives are laden with their own biases and interests. Informed by articulation theory (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985), I look at Chinese modernity as articulation and field of contestation. Guided by the theory's sensitivity to power and oppression, I also pay particular attention to hegemonic articulatory practices that attempt to fix meanings and reduce "distinct moments to the interiority of a closed paradigm" (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, p. 93). Data was collected by investigating the relocation practices in which transnational corporations relocate their expatriate employees to Beijing. I selected relocation as the site of investigation because it is through such practices that China and the World come into direct contact, and the meaning of Chinese modernity is sure to be contested and reshaped in such interactions. Based on the analysis of expatriates' relocation, I argue that the understanding of Chinese modernity as a process of standardization and development has acquired a hegemonic position. The common perceptions of desirable life style and good business activities were all structured and informed by the association of modernity to living up to standards and progressing forward. Such a hegemonic formation, I argue, reduces diverse positions to a single one; ignores other important issues such as equality; lends Chinese modernity to Westernization; creates a new distinction between the haves and have-nots in Chinese society; and makes competition the only imaginable relationship between and among people, organizations, regions, and countries.;Keywords: Chinese modernity, articulation theory, hegemony, transnational corporations, relocation, ethnography, multi-sited imaginary...