Dissertation Information for Guangyuan ZhouNAME:
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SCHOOL: ADVISORS: COMMITTEE MEMBERS: MPACT Status: Fully Complete Title: Beneath the law: Chinese local legal culture during the Qing dynasty Abstract: This study delineates and analyzes the performances of Chinese courts and litigants at the local level through a cultural perspective. Based on the archival case records of the Dan-Xin courts during the nineteenth century and various writings of local legal practitioners, it aims at exploring different dimensions of law in action. It argues that anti-litigation ideology and participation of informal mechanisms of social control in the formal legal process substantially debilitated the local courts as a formal institution for resolving disputes and repressing criminals as the top rulers demanded, while hostile institutions against litigation ironically brought about a litigation industry with litigation masters (or litigation tricksters) playing the crucial role of liaison between the courts and litigants. The institutional weakness of the local courts, however, implies the cultural strength of the law. The co-working of the courts and local notables created a large space for the constitutive relation between the formal law and informal social orderings, with the working of one drawing strength and logic from the other. When the local courts worked hard to achieve consensus and agreements among the parties in conflict, legal practices contributed a great deal to the legitimacy of the law. Through a textual analysis of complaint writing, court instructions, and production of legal fictions and other types of legal decisions in the local courts, the study further argues that what were seemingly shared were also subtly manipulated and intentionally asserted in an unequal power structure. The local courts gained power through working on cultural beliefs and consciousness of the local people instead of following the letter of the law. The research thus tries to expose the cultural myth of the law, stabilizing the empire for thousands of years as it disregarded myriad other possibilities of social orderings persisting in local society. |
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