UMD Theses and Dissertations
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Item THE ANTI-CONFUCIAN CAMPAIGN DURING THE CULTURAL REVOLUTION, AUGUST 1966-JANUARY 1967(2011) Zhou, Zehao; Gao, James; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation examines the attacks on the Three Kong Sites (Confucius Temple, Confucius Mansion, Confucius Cemetery) in Confucius's birthplace Qufu, Shandong Province at the start of the Cultural Revolution. During the height of the campaign against the Four Olds in August 1966, Qufu's local Red Guards attempted to raid the Three Kong Sites but failed. In November 1966, Beijing Red Guards came to Qufu and succeeded in attacking the Three Kong Sites and leveling Confucius's tomb. In January 1967, Qufu peasants thoroughly plundered the Confucius Cemetery for buried treasures. This case study takes into consideration all related participants and circumstances and explores the complicated events that interwove dictatorship with anarchy, physical violence with ideological abuse, party conspiracy with mass mobilization, cultural destruction with revolutionary indoctrination, ideological vandalism with acquisitive vandalism, and state violence with popular violence. This study argues that the violence against the Three Kong Sites was not a typical episode of the campaign against the Four Olds with outside Red Guards as the principal actors but a complex process involving multiple players, inner-party strife, Red Guard factionalism, bureaucratic plight, peasant opportunism, social ecology, and ever-evolving state-society relations. This study also maintains that Qufu locals' initial protection of the Three Kong Sites and resistance to the Red Guards were driven more by their bureaucratic obligations and self-interest rather than by their pride in their cultural heritage. Finally, this study introduces the concept of "Qufu exceptionalism," namely, the unassailability and invulnerability of Confucius's birthplace throughout Chinese history, and provides the reasons why Qufu exceptionalism ultimately succumbed to the Cultural Revolution.Item An East and West Debate on Human Rights(2011) Chan, Benedict Shing Bun; Morris, Christopher W.; Philosophy; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In an East and West debate on human rights, scholars from different cultures disagree on whether all civil and political rights are human rights. While they generally agree that basic civil rights such as rights against torture and slavery (i.e., physical security rights) are human rights, some of them argue that traditional political rights in the West such as freedom of speech and political participation (i.e., liberal rights) are not human rights. Some scholars, such as Daniel A. Bell, argue that liberal rights are not human rights because liberal rights conflict with some East Asian cultures. In this dissertation, I argue that both physical security rights and liberal rights are human rights, and explain the relationship between these rights and East Asian cultures. First, I argue that if liberal rights are not human rights because they conflict with some East Asian cultures, then physical security rights are also not human rights because physical security rights also conflict with some East Asian cultures. Next, I discuss the idea from Daniel Bell and Michael Walzer that physical security rights are human rights because they are minimal values. Based on their idea, I explain what minimal values are, and why it is possible to develop some maximal theories of physical security rights in East Asian cultures. I argue that since physical security rights are minimal values, they are still human rights even they conflict with some East Asian cultures. I then argue that liberal rights, similar to physical security rights, are also minimal values, and it is possible to develop some maximal theories of them in East Asian cultures. Therefore, similar to physical security rights, liberal rights are also human rights even they also conflict with some East Asian cultures. I also discuss other human rights debates, especially the debates between Daniel Bell and other philosophers. Charles Taylor argues for an overlapping consensus approach on human rights; Jack Donnelly argues for a Western liberalist approach on human rights. I explain the relationship between these approaches and my arguments, and how my arguments can help them to reply to the challenges from Daniel Bell.Item Understanding Chinese public relations education: A critical and cultural perspective(2009) Zhang, Ai; Toth, Elizabeth; Communication; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Public relations entered China in the 1980s. Formal education in public relations started in the 1980s. The field has experienced evolutionary changes over the past 2 decades. However, not much scholarly attention has been paid to this area of research. The most notable article that examines Chinese public relations education was published in 1994. After more than 10 years, it is disheartening to note that no published works have updated the status quo of Chinese public relations education. Within this context, the present study undertakes the initiative to offer a rich account of and a critical and cultural analysis of Chinese public relations education. Specially, the purpose of this dissertation was to understand how Chinese public relations educators, students, and practitioners make meaning of Chinese public relations education through the theoretical lens of the circuit of culture model and within the context of Confucianism. The present study adopts qualitative methodology as the means to explore the study's research questions. It employs two concrete qualitative methods--in-depth interview and focus groups. Participants were selected from three major cities in China: Beijing, Shanghai, and Hang Zhou, which host the major of universities and colleges that offer public relations programs, majors, or concentrations. Forty-nine people took part in the present study, including 34 in-depth interviews--20 interviews with public relations educators, 7 with practitioners, and 7 with students--and two focus groups with 7 students and 8 students in each group. Specifically, the study aims to answer two research questions: 1) How does the circuit of culture model help explore and understand the tensions, complexities, and contradictions implicit in Chinese public relations educators', practitioners', and students' meaning making of Chinese public relations education? How does the model help understand the interplay of culture, power, and identity, within which context participants negotiate and construct meanings and identities for Chinese public relations education? 2) What is the role of Confucianism in Chinese public relations education? To what extent and in what aspects have Confucian values influenced participants' understanding of Chinese public relations education? Research findings offer insights into the above research questions. Most interestingly, the findings help identify a hybrid identity for Chinese public relations education, which is neither purely Chinese nor American but a combination of values from both countries. This finding calls for a changed mindset to approach the relationship between Chinese and U.S. public relations scholarly communities from a dichotomous either-or to an embracing both-and mindset. The findings also help update and enrich the existing literature on Chinese public relations education, respond to the timely call for diversifying public relations scholarship in the U.S., and complicate and modify the existing circuit of culture model. The culmination of the study also helps identify possible avenues in which Confucianism can serve as a potential philosophy guiding public relations education and practice.Item A POST-CONFUCIAN CIVIL SOCIETY: LIBERAL COLLECTIVISM AND PARTICIPATORY POLITICS IN SOUTH KOREA(2007-11-14) Kim, Sungmoon; Alford, Fred; Government and Politics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation explores how South Koreans have creatively appropriated the meanings of democratic civility and national citizenship using Confucianism-originated familial affectionate sentiments (chŏng), while refusing their liberal individualistic counterparts through a cross-cultural and comparative theoretical approach. By investigating four recent civil-action cases in South Korea, it argues that the chŏng-induced politico-cultural practice of collective moral responsibility (uri-responsibility), which transcends the binary of individualism and collectivism and of liberalism and nationalism, represents the essence of Korean democratic civility. It theorizes the ethical quality that uri-responsibility generates, when practiced in the public sphere of a national civil society, in terms of "transcendental collectivism," and claims that unlike a liberal civil society aiming to empower the independent self's individual agency, the post-Confucian dialectic between agency and citizenship is focused on the interdependent selves' shard cultural-political identity, collective freedom, and democratic citizenship. This dissertation generalizes the liberal yet non-individualistic political practices that transcendental collectivism promotes in terms of "liberal collectivism" as opposed to liberal individualism, and argues that liberal collectivism has great potential to contribute to both liberal nationalism and participatory democracy in post-Confucian Korea.