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Literatization vs. Civilization: A Preliminary Comparison of the Development of Sport in China and the West with a Focus on Violence

  • Chih-Chieh Tang, Research Fellow of the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica (Taiwan). His research interests include sociological theory, historical, political, and economic sociology, and sociology of religion and sport. Recent publications: A Rewriting Experiment of Modernity from the Perspective of Connected Histories: Taiwan as a Laboratory of Modernity, in: Journal of Historical Sociology 31(3), 330–345 (2018); The Necessity to Re-cognize Modernity Again: Some Preliminary Reflections from the Conceptual History and Sociology of Knowledge, in: SOCIETAS: A Journal for Philosophical Study of Public Affairs 64(1), 49–112 (2018); China: Ancien Régime, Revolution and After, in: William Outhwaite/Stephen Turner (eds.) (2018), The Sage Handbook of Political Sociology, pp. 1128–1153, London: Sage (with Fengtsan Lin und Hung-Chang Wu); A New Interpretation of Secularization in China: The Significance to World History of the Rise of Popular Religions after the Tang-Song Transition, Taiwanese Sociology 39, 89–136 (2020); A Concise History of Sociology’s ‘Indigenization’ in Postwar Taiwan: Emergence, Transformation and Invisiblization, in: International Sociology Reviews (forthcoming) (with Fengtsan Lin und Hung-Chang Wu).

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Published/Copyright: June 11, 2021
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Abstract

This article highlights the differences in the civilizing process in China by examining the development of sport. Focusing on the problem of violence, it shows how the evolution of forms of differentiation caused the decline of the violent game jiju and the rise of the elegant game chuiwan as China transformed from a strictly stratified mendi rank society to an open gentry society of greater functional differentiation. The development of the entertainment industry of cuju rather than a function system of sport documented an idiosyncratic literatization. This resulted from the structure of the first post-aristocratic society as a meritocratic commoner society. The unique yin/yang dual structure as a compromise of functional differentiation with hierarchical order brought about a paradoxical domestication of violence.


Article Note

This project was supported by the National Science Council, Taiwan (NSC99-2410-H-001-074-MY2). I thank the comments of Macabe Keliher, Gunter Schubert, Hans Ulrich Vogel and the participants of the conference “Variants of Differentiation in the Regions of World Society.”


About the author

Prof. Dr. Chih-Chieh Tang

Chih-Chieh Tang, Research Fellow of the Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica (Taiwan). His research interests include sociological theory, historical, political, and economic sociology, and sociology of religion and sport. Recent publications: A Rewriting Experiment of Modernity from the Perspective of Connected Histories: Taiwan as a Laboratory of Modernity, in: Journal of Historical Sociology 31(3), 330–345 (2018); The Necessity to Re-cognize Modernity Again: Some Preliminary Reflections from the Conceptual History and Sociology of Knowledge, in: SOCIETAS: A Journal for Philosophical Study of Public Affairs 64(1), 49–112 (2018); China: Ancien Régime, Revolution and After, in: William Outhwaite/Stephen Turner (eds.) (2018), The Sage Handbook of Political Sociology, pp. 1128–1153, London: Sage (with Fengtsan Lin und Hung-Chang Wu); A New Interpretation of Secularization in China: The Significance to World History of the Rise of Popular Religions after the Tang-Song Transition, Taiwanese Sociology 39, 89–136 (2020); A Concise History of Sociology’s ‘Indigenization’ in Postwar Taiwan: Emergence, Transformation and Invisiblization, in: International Sociology Reviews (forthcoming) (with Fengtsan Lin und Hung-Chang Wu).

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Published Online: 2021-06-11
Published in Print: 2021-06-26

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