Lehrende: Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Kaske
Veranstaltungsart: Seminar
Orga-Einheit: 03-Ostasienwissenschaften
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Semesterwochenstunden: 2
Unterrichtssprache: Englisch
Offizielle Kursbeschreibung: Corruption talk is everywhere in contemporary China. Western media frequently report the arrest of some high level official for graft, and Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive has become so prominent that it deserves a long Wikipedia entry. However, corruption is not simply a poli-tical reality talked about in the news or over dinner, but also assumes its own life in popular literature and TV drama. Chinese narratives of the state and corruption mobilize both histori-cal and contemporary cases to tell political stories for our time. They have produced cultural icons from theater plays about clean or corrupt officials to how-to handbooks for government employees learning to survive a bureaucratic career. In a country where the lines between bu-reaucrats and politicians are blurred, “officialdom literature” has become a way to criticize politics and also, paradoxically, a means of the Communist Party to legitimize its rule. The goal of this course is to understand the Chinese fascination with bureaucrats from a histo-rical and comparative angle. The course will: 1. introduce methodologies used to define and study bureaucracy and corruption in a global framework of reference; 2. introduce China’s historical political systems with their continuities and discontinui-ties; 3. study Chinese political narratives of corruption to understand how they produce an image of the state and how they are mobilized for political goals; 4. compare the Chinese case with examples from other nations. The course will actively involve students with short exploratory research talks that should lead into an independent research paper. Comparative work will be strongly encouraged. At the end of this course students should be able to discuss narratives of corruption in China with a sound understanding of the political system and the ways Chinese people construct an image of the state. Students should also be able to use the methodologies learned in class to inde-pendently conduct case studies. The seminar is held in English and open to students of other departments. Students of Sinolo-gy will also read and discuss Chinese language materials in the exercise part of the module.
