Guanxi and Moral Articulation:Strategies of Corruption During China’s Anti-Corruption Drive

主講人：呂青湖（國立臺灣大學社會學系副教授）

主持人：劉紹華（中央研究院民族學研究所研究員）

主辦單位：中央研究院民族學研究所「世界化中國研究群」

時間：2022年4月22日（五）15:00-17:00

地點：中研院民族所新館三樓第三會議室R2319(本場次為實體演講)

報名網址：https://forms.gle/QDaL9H3ZGFfrXHZ76

報名截止日期：4/17（日）止（因會議室有人數限制，報名截止後將寄送報名成功信）

*本場次為實體演講，中英文同時進行

會議聯絡Email：gcstudies@gate.sinica.edu.tw

摘要：

What explains failures of large-scale anti-corruption campaigns in reducing corruption? Theories on developing country corruption see corruption as either a problem of weak formal institutions that incentivize naturally opportunistic actors or as remnants of traditional behaviors that persist despite changing modern state boundaries and regulations. Neither helps explain how participants continuously strategize to reframe and articulate the morality of those questionable transactions.

    This paper, through multi-year fieldwork and 34 interviews with business elites in China’s Guangdong province, examines how officials and businesses reconfigured their strategies of corruption during a recent anti-corruption campaign. We find that key actors engaged in ‘moral articulation’ – devising moral repertoires and realigning common exchange practices to accepted meaning frames to safeguard interests and obfuscate their activities. In doing so, they challenged some aspects of state-initiated definitions of corruption while embracing others. Rather than eliciting conformity, the campaign prompted new ingenious action frames that helped internally justify corruption and allowed questionable exchange practices to continue on.