| This study examines the Chinese concept of 'face' (mianzi or lian, one's positive social image) and its deployment in everyday social interaction. The concept is relevant to virtually all encounters among Chinese people and powerfully shapes their conduct vis-a-vis one another. In spite of a few social scientific studies, there has not yet been an ethnographically-grounded, systematic treatment of this subject. Based on data collected during twelve months' fieldwork in the city of Beijing, this study attempts first to describe and analyze the two major Chinese terms for 'face' (mianzi and lian), states of 'face' as captured by indigenous expressions, and local understandings of 'face' as a dominant social motive. It then examines how a concern with 'face' shapes people's actual social interaction by analyzing features of 'face'--relevant events, emotive experiences in various states of 'face,' tactics of 'face'--management, and strategic uses of other people's concern with 'face.' To help explicate the Chinese preoccupation with 'face,' this thesis also attempts to show, on the one hand, how Confucianism and Chinese social structure have promoted an extensive emphasis on social performance and, on the other, how a concern with 'face' is explicitly inculcated in individuals. A number of recent theoretical approaches including interpretive anthropology, practice theory, and the anthropology of emotion, are brought to the subject under study. |
