This book offers the first detailed study of the essential relationship between thought reform and the "dangerous classes"--The prostitutes, beggars, petty criminals, and other "lumpenproletarians" the Communists saw as a threat to society and the revolution. Aminda Smith takes readers inside early-PRC reformatories, where the new state endeavored to transform "vagrants" into members of the laboring masses. As places where "the people" were literally created, these centers became testing grounds for rapidly changing ideas and experiments about thought reform and the subjects they produced. Smit.
In this groundbreaking volume, based on extensive research in Chinese archives and libraries, Jan Kiely explores the pre-Communist origins of the process of systematic thought reform or reformation (ganhua) that evolved into a key component of Mao Zedong’s revolutionary restructuring of Chinese society. Focusing on ganhua as it was employed in China’s prison system, Kiely’s thought-provoking work brings the history of this critical phenomenon to life through the stories of individuals who conceptualized, implemented, and experienced it, and he details how these techniques were subsequently adapted for broader social and political use.
Informed by Erik Erikson's concept of the formation of ego identity, this book, which first appreared in 1961, is an analysis of the experiences of fifteen Chinese citizens and twenty-five Westerners who underwent "brainwashing" by the Communist Chinese government. Robert Lifton constructs these case histories through personal interviews and outlines a thematic pattern of death and rebirth, accompanied by feelings of guilt, that characterizes the process of "thought reform." In a new preface, Lifton addresses the implications of his model for the study of American religious cults.
In The Landscape of Reform Ben Minteer offers a fresh and provocative reading of the intellectual foundations of American environmentalism, focusing on the work and legacy of four important conservation and planning thinkers in the first half of the twentieth century: Liberty Hyde Bailey, a forgotten figure in the Progressive conservation movement; urban and regional planning theorist Lewis Mumford; Benton MacKaye, the forester and conservationist who proposed the Appalachian Trail in the 1920s; and Aldo Leopold, author of the environmentalist classic A Sand County Almanac . Minteer argues that these writers blazed a significant "third way" in environmental ethics and practice, a more pragmatic approach that offers a counterpoint to the anthropocentrism-versus-ecocentrism—use-versus-preservation—narrative that has long dominated discussions of the development of American environmental thought. Minteer shows that the environmentalism of Bailey, Mumford, MacKaye, and Leopold was also part of a larger moral and political program, one that included efforts to revitalize democratic citizenship, conserve regional culture and community identity, and reclaim a broader understanding of the public interest that went beyond economics and materialism. Their environmental thought was an attempt to critique and at the same time reform American society and political culture. Minteer explores the work of these four environmental reformers and considers two present-day manifestations of an environmental third way: Natural Systems Agriculture, an alternative to chemical and energy-intensive industrial agriculture; and New Urbanism, an attempt to combat the negative effects of suburban sprawl. By rediscovering the pragmatic roots of American environmentalism, writes Minteer, we can help bring about a new, civic-minded environmentalism today.
Preliminary Material /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Opening Remarks /John K. Fairbank --Opening Remarks /John E. Schrecker --The Variety of Political Reforms in Chinese History: A Simplified Typology /James T.C. Liu --Comment /Hoyt Tillman --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Definitions of Community by Ch'i Chi-kuang and Lü k'un /Joanna F. Handlin --Three Images of the Cultural Hero in the Thought of Kung Tzu-chen /Judith Whitbeck --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Economic Aspects of Reform /Albert Feuerwerker --Merchant Investment, Commercialization, and Social Change in the Ningpo Area /Susan Mann Jones --Overseas Chinese Entrepreneurs as Reformers: The Case of Chang Pi-shih /Michael R. Godley --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Imperialism, Sovereignty, and Self-Strengthening: A Reassessment of the 1870s /Saundra Sturdevant --Reform and the Tea Industry and Trade in Late Ch'ing China: The Fukien Case /Robert P. Gardella --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Politics, Intellectual Outlook, and Reform: The T'ung-wen kuan Controversy of 1867 /Kwang-Ching Liu --The Image of the Empress Dowager Tz'u-hsi /Sue Fawn Chung --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --The Social Context of Reform /Marianne Bastid --Local Reform and Its Opponents: Feng Kuei-fen's Struggle for Equality in Taxation /Frank A. Lojewski --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --The Intellectual Context of Reform /Hao Chang --The Ideal of Universality in Late Ch'ing Reformism /Young-tsu Wong --National Image: Missionaries and Some Conceptual Ingredients of Late Ch'ing Reform /Suzanne Wilson Barnett --Kung as an Ethos in Late Nineteenth-Century China: The Case of Wang Hsien-ch'ien (1842-1918) /I-fan Ch'eng --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Reflections on an Aspect of Modern China in Transition: T'an Ssu-t'ung (1865-1898) as a Reformer /Luke S.K. Kwong --Some Western Influences on T'an Ssu-t'ung's Thought /Richard H. Shek --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Reform at the Local and Provincial Level /James Polachek --Gentry-Official Conflict in the Restoration Kiangsu Countryside /Jonathan Ocko --The Formation of a Province: Reform of Frontier Administration in Sinkiang /Nailene Chou --Local Reform Currents in Chekiang before 1900 /Mary Backus Rankin --Chihli Academies and Other Schools in the Late Ch'ing: An Institutional Survey /Richard A. Orb --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Women and Reform /Linda P. Shin --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --The New Coastal Reformers /Paul A. Cohen --Wu.T'ing-fang: A Member of a Colonial Elite as Coastal Reformer /Linda P. Shin --Foreign Policy Interests and Activities of the Treaty-Port Chinese Community /Louis T. Sigel --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --The Reform Movement of 1898 and the Ch'ing-i: Reform as Opposition /John E. Schrecker --On the Hundred Days Reform /Huang Chang-chien --Reform Through Study Societies in the Late Ch'ing Period, 1895-1900: The Nan hsueh-hui /Sung Wook Shin --Chang Chih-tung after the "100 Days": 1898-1900 as a Transitional Period for Reform Constituencies /Daniel H. Bays --Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Closing Discussion /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Notes /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker --Glossary /Paul A. Cohen and John E. Schrecker.
A noted Chinese economist examines the mechanisms behind China's economic reforms, arguing that universal principles and specific implementations are equally important. As China has transformed itself from a centrally planned economy to a market economy, economists have tried to understand and interpret the success of Chinese reform. As the Chinese economist Yingyi Qian explains, there are two schools of thought on Chinese reform: the “School of Universal Principles,” which ascribes China's successful reform to the workings of the free market, and the “School of Chinese Characteristics,” which holds that China's reform is successful precisely because it did not follow the economics of the market but instead relied on the government. In this book, Qian offers a third perspective, taking certain elements from each school of thought but emphasizing not why reform worked but how it did. Economics is a science, but economic reform is applied science and engineering. To a practitioner, it is more useful to find a feasible reform path than the theoretically best way. The key to understanding how reform has worked in China, Qian argues, is to consider the way reform designs respond to initial historical conditions and contemporary constraints. Qian examines the role of “transitional institutions”—not “best practice institutions” but “incentive-compatible institutions”—in Chinese reform; the dual-track approach to market liberalization; the ownership of firms, viewed both theoretically and empirically; government decentralization, offering and testing hypotheses about its link to local economic development; and the specific historical conditions of China's regional-based central planning.
Parents and community activists around the country complain that the education system is failing our children. They point to students' failure to master basic skills, even as standardized testing is widely employed in efforts to improve the educational system. Contradictions of Reform is a provocative look into the reality, for students as well as teachers, of standardized testing. A detailed account of how student improvement and teacher effectiveness are evaluated, Contradictions of Reform argues compellingly that the preparation of students for standardized tests engenders teaching methods that vastly compromise the quality of education.
Throughout this century, reformers have fought to eliminate party control of city politics. As a result, the majority of American cities today elect council members in at-large and nonpartisan elections. This result of the turn-of-the-century Progressive movement, which worked for election rules that eliminated the power of the urban machine and the working class on which it was based, is today still a subject of lively debate. For example, in the mid-1980s, regular Democrats in Chicago sought to institute a nonpartisan mayoral election. Supporters thought that reform would make the electoral process more democratic, while opponents charged that it was meant to dilute the voting powers of blacks. Clearly, the effect of urban reform remains an important issue for scholars and politicians alike. Susan Welch and Timothy Bledsoe clarify a portion of the debate by investigating how election structures affect candidates and the nature of representation. They examine the different effects of district versus at-large elections and of partisan versus nonpartisan elections. Who gets elected? Are representatives' socioeconomic status and party affiliation related to election form? Are election structures related to how those who are elected approach their jobs? Do they see themselves as representatives concerned with the good of the city as a whole? Urban Reform and Its Consequences reports an unprecedented wealth of data drawn from a sample of nearly 1,000 council members and communities with populations between 50,000 and 1 million across 42 states. The sample includes communities that use a variety of election procedures. This study is therefore the most comprehensive and accurate to date. Welch and Bledsoe conclude that nonpartisan and at-large elections do give city councils a more middle- and upper-middle-class character and have changed the way representatives view their jobs. Reform measures have not, however, produced councils that are significantly more conservative or more prone to conflict. Overall, the authors conclude that partisan and district elections are more likely to represent the whole community and to make the council more accountable to the electorate.
