EACS-2016. Book of Abstracts

Section 15 21st Biennial Conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies 181 attentive to explication of policies and local perception modes. This form of social positionality helps us to direct our attention to the actual framing of policies by the potential recipients in their needs and political understanding. Second, it gives us access to their insider’s information and assessments as clues to recon- struct the local characteristics of a policy. Lamont Alison (University of Duisburg-Essen) The Power of Nuclear: Reconstructing Families after the 2008Wenchuan Earthquake Key words: Wenchuan earthquake, normality, discourse analysis, nuclear families, According to official statistics almost 70,000 people died in the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, leaving tens of thousands of families missing loved ones. Drawing on an extensive, Foucauldian-inspired discourse analysis of post-Wenchuan media, this paper shows how both in policy and media discourse, central and local governments in China actively promoted the “reconstruction” 重建 of nuclear families composed of a married man and wife and their (preferably biological) child. Mass wedding events were hosted to encour- age husbands and wives bereaved by the earthquake to remarry within a year of the death of their spouse. Furthermore, parents who lost a legally registered child were eligible for financial support and free medical care to have another child, a program funded at a central level. These practices were actively constructed around the concept of the nuclear family as “normal” and built a metaphor of recovery from the earthquake through the recovery of a nuclear family. This paper contributes to sociological understandings of national recovery from catastrophic disasters and explores how “normality” can be (re)constructed from wide-reaching devastation. As a pervasive and powerful institution in contemporary China, the nuclear family came to represent more than individual recovery after the earthquake, but instead was juxtaposed with images and statistics of material rebuilding to symbolise the resumption of everyday life. This paper emerges from my doctoral research, funded by the German Science Foundation (DFG). Lebedintseva Liubov (Saint Petersburg State University) The Chinese Concept of Socio-economic Modernization of Society Key words: China, modernization, harmonious development, sustainable development Modern Chinese sociology is actively exploring the processes of transformation of modern society.Among Chinese sociologists who has been working on these problems are He Chuanqi, Gu Gaojian, Cao Fantszyun etc. The characteristic features and orientation of the Chinese model of modernization is largely based on Confucian way of thinking and worldview. There is an organic and successful combination of opposites in Chinese modernity combines opposites — the socialist system and elements of capitalism, traditions and innovations, Western and the Chinese. In addition to improve living standards and welfare of the people, the purpose of modernization in China is also comprehensive, harmonious and sustainable development, which means harmony between society and nature, man and society, man and others, and finally, between man and his inner world. Simultaneously, the key to understanding the success of the Chinese model of modernization is the principles of independence, practical approach, openness, congruence, continuity and stability. The main problems in the modernization of Chinese society has traditionally attributed the differ- ence in the accelerated development of the Western and Eastern regions of the country; growing income inequality between rich and poor, the income gaps between the richest and poorest quintiles and the gaps between rural and urban areas in terms of quality of life and livelihood opportunities; increasing environ- mental contamination, natural resource depletion, etc. What is harmony — that is the question facing China today. The key to achieving the Chinese dream is balanced development of “material and spiritual civiliza- tion”. It is known that the new content of the modern concept of China's development, based on the idea of co-evolution of economic and social indicators. But it is quite obvious that the modernization of Chinese society is dynamic, complex and lengthy process.