Ritual Capital
The present analysis of the practice and rationales of la guanxi finds that ritual is vital in all forms of la guanxi (instrumental guanxi practice) and that ritual exists at almost every stage of this process. The practice of ritual becomes an important
- PDF / 158,868 Bytes
- 14 Pages / 419.53 x 595.28 pts Page_size
- 29 Downloads / 202 Views
Ritual Capital
The present analysis of the practice and rationales of la guanxi finds that ritual is vital in all forms of la guanxi (instrumental guanxi practice) and that ritual exists at almost every stage of this process. The practice of ritual becomes an important way of using and developing one’s guanxi capital. This chapter will discuss this finding in detail, and propose the new concept of “ritual capital”. Ritual capital refers to that part of an individual’s social capital that is mainly established and maintained by the practice of proper ritual; namely, the ability to use ritual to gain resources or benefits from one’s social network.
6.1
RITUAL IS VITAL FOR LA GUANXI
In contrast to the existing literature, the research presented here has found that there are at least four forms of la guanxi: (1) ritualistic customs; (2) money giving; (3) use of power; and (4) guanxi–guanxi. All forms of la guanxi are full of ritual. In common parlance, a ritual is a formal ceremony, the going through of a set of stereotyped actions (see Chap. 3). However, an interaction ritual is the process by which participants develop a mutual focus of attention and become engrained in each other’s bodily micro-rhythms and emotions. Rituals can improve solidarity, symbolism, and individual emotional energy (Collins 2004, p. 67). The following section discusses research findings about the use of guanxi to gain school places, in order to show the key role of ritual. © The Author(s) 2017 J. Ruan, Guanxi, Social Capital and School Choice in China, Palgrave Studies on Chinese Education in a Global Perspective, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40754-8_6
121
122
J. RUAN
6.1.1
Ritualistic Customs Are Full of Ritual
Ritualistic customs observed in la guanxi include gift giving, entertaining, renqing exchange, giving face and using ketao. All are full of ritual, as well as highly tactical and instrumental, and the use of ritual to gain social resources seems to be one of the unique properties of guanxi. Gift giving is a ritual activity that involves etiquette, politeness, propriety and so on. Miss Zhang, a teacher in City B, often received gifts from parents. One evening, a mother visited Zhang with a big red plastic bag of gifts and put it on a corner of the tea table. Then they started to talk about the student’s education. When the mother was about to leave, Zhang carried the gift to the mother and said in a low voice: “Please don’t. Please take it back.” “Please keep it. It is nothing expensive, just some tea. A mere trifle!” exclaimed the mother. “You shouldn’t have,” replied Zhang. “Please don’t do that again.” She presented a pen container as a small gift to the mother. “No, no, don’t. How can we receive gifts from a teacher?” exclaimed the mother. Finally, however, she accepted the small gift from Zhang and Zhang kept the mother’s large gifts too. The first step in the process of gift giving is to prepare gifts; the content and packaging of gifts should be well prepared. Expensive gifts are for big favours; cheap gifts are for small
Data Loading...
