Abstract
Despite much emphasis on the interplay of class interests, many scholars continue to believe that cultural orientations have greatly influenced the development of Chinese society in premodern and modern times. There is also a considerable consensus that despite China’s cultural heterogeneity, a single, tradition-rooted set of shared orientations has been extremely widespread and has played a leading if not modal role in China’s cultural evolution coming down to the present. Moreover, there is some consensus about the content of this set of orientations. This can be seen from the wide range of writing represented in the following studies: Weber’s classic on Chinese religion (Weber 1951); a symposium volume put out by a group of Chinese behavioral scientists in 1972 and sponsored by the Academia Sinica (Li I-yüan and Yang Kuo-shu 1972); a survey and critique of the literature on Chinese culture written by Morton H. Fried in 1976 (Fried 1976); another such critical survey put out by Wei Yung in 1976 (Wei 1976); an analysis of China’s traditional political orientations written in 1977 by a Chinese historian who has specialized in the premodern history of Chinese government (Chou Tao-chi 1977); and the writings of modern humanists discussing China’s traditional “cultural spirit”, notably those of T’ang Chün-i (see Metzger 1977: 29–47). Leaving aside the more specific research on, say, changes in the life goals of Taiwan students during the span of a few years, we find three main points in this literature.
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Metzger, T.A. (1981). Selfhood and Authority in Neo-Confucian Political Culture. In: Kleinman, A., Lin, TY. (eds) Normal and Abnormal Behavior in Chinese Culture. Culture, Illness, and Healing, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-4986-2_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-4986-2_1
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