Interaction Rituals in Guanxi Practice and the Role of Instrumental Li

Abstract

Although some scholars have discussed the concept of the “interaction ritual”, the question of how interaction rituals operate within differential closeness levels of guanxi in China has not yet been thoroughly explored. This study aims to fill this gap. It draws its data from two ethnographic studies of school place allocation in two Chinese cities during 2012 and 2013, and additional post-fieldwork in 2014. The research finds that the use of interaction rituals in la guanxi could be a profitable social investment, and that the interaction ritual chain is usually more powerful than a single instance of ritual. Instrumental li is the shared value behind this type of ritual practice, which has the function of exaggerating the actors’ moral obligation and emotional attachment, and masking rational calculation, in order to justify the practice. Expressive ritual is less valued, and occurs less frequently, with distance. Instrumental ritual is more workable and occurs more frequently in moderate guanxi (a relationship neither close nor distant) than in close and distant guanxi, thus following a “weak-strong-weak” pattern. These findings suggest that instrumental ritual plays a more important role than expressive ritual in building strong social capital, due to “the strength of weak ties”.

Keywords:

• Guanxi
• social capital
• interaction ritual
• Confucianism
• China
• schools
• li
• school entry
• corruption
• gift giving

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my mother Su ShuYin and my father-in-law Ding QiongYa, who are in the Pure Land. I also want to express my gratitude to my family for their support and Professor Peter Taylor-Gooby (OBE), Professor Michael Calnan, and Dr Joy Zhang for their guidance in this research. I would also like to thank the journal’s anonymous reviewers for their suggestions.

Notes

1. A high school teacher’s monthly salary was around 1,500 yuan in 2006 in the two cities studied here.

2. In 2013 a high school teacher’s monthly salary in the two cities was around 2,000 yuan.