A Contextualized Approach: Theory of Social Censure
The approaches reviewed in the Chapter two share one point that corrupt individuals do something wrong according to ruling group’ standards, no matter whether their behavior is against norms, laws, ethics, public interest, public opinion, or principle’s o
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A Contextualized Approach: Theory of Social Censure
3.1
Social Censure Theory
The approaches reviewed in the Chap. 2 share one point that corrupt individuals do something wrong according to ruling group’ standards, no matter whether their behavior is against norms, laws, ethics, public interest, public opinion, or principle’s objectives. In other words, their analyses are inner institutional. As pointed out in the earlier chapter, a commonly missed point in their analyses is that the ruling group’s standards or positions are always right with no challenge. Such a class bias is commonly presumed. It might be overstated to refer it to “false consciousness.” Nevertheless it is inappropriate not questioning ruling group’s ideology and entrenched interests at all; after all, the ruling group’s standards may not represent the whole society’s interests. Social censure theory goes beyond it by rejecting the ruling group’s normative assumption or behavioral prerequisite about corruption. “Given the impossibility of using the social categories of crime and deviance as scientific categories or observational terms with definable, constant and consistent behavioral referents (Sumner 1990:26), Lo (1993) examines corruption in a societal (social, political and economic) structure and historical background with the ruled group’s interests and political economy taken into account instead of analyzing corruption following the ruling group’s logic. As Sumner (1990:26) states, “it makes most sense to treat them as elements of highly contextualized moral and political discourses, i.e. negative ideological categories with specific, historical applications” (Sumner 1990:26). As we know, “the categories of the criminal law and common morality are hopelessly inadequate as empirical descriptions of specific social behaviors” (Sumner 1990:25). Therefore, definitions of criminal or deviant behavior, including corruption, even within a single society, exclude what should be included, include what should be excluded, and generally fail to attain unambiguous, consistent and settled social meanings. To this we can add massive cross-cultural differences in the meaning, enforcement and even © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017 G. Jiang, Corruption Control in Post-Reform China, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4050-4_3
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3 A Contextualized Approach: Theory of Social Censure existence of categories of deviance, and endless instances of resistance to them involving alternative categories (Sumner 1990:25).
What should be included, what should be excluded, and what criterion to be used are in the hands of the ruling group. In the 1970s, Scott finds that previous scholars implicitly give “normative value to whatever standards of official conduct happen to prevail” and thereby fail to “treat corruption as an integral part of politics” (Scott 1972:5). Indeed, “the determination of whether a particular action is corrupt depends very much on the direction in which political groups seek to influence public opinion” at specific historical stages (Lo 1993:153).
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