Sacredness and the ritual process in collective action: The 1989 Chinese student movement

Abstract

The 1989 Chinese student movement in Beijing captured the attention of the world. Student activities began with the death of the former Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang in mid-April and ended in a bloody crackdown on 4 June 1989. The movement has given rise to a number of scholarly works that have attempted to explain the outbreak of the movement, the scale of public involvement, and the resulting crackdown. The movement has been explained mainly in terms of changes in the social and economic environment, power struggles at the top echelons, and value conflicts between the students and the authorities. This paper explains the scale of mobilization and the crackdown from a cultural perspective. Acknowledging that Pye, Esherick and Wasserstrom, Calhoun, and Pieke have all taken culture seriously in their studies of the movement, this paper makes use of Victor Turner's concept of the ritual process to present an alternative to these other studies. The paper argues that by leading society through a ritual process, the students were able to attach a sense of sacredness to themselves. This change in the status of the students was, however, double-edged. Beijingers were willing to risk their lives to protect these “sanctified” students, but this change reinforced the determination of the authorities to put an end to the movement so as to crush the sacredness associated with the students.

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Notes on contributors

Elaine Chan

The author is grateful to Jeffrey Alexander, Anita Chan, T. C. Lam, Eric Rambo, Jeffrey Wasserstrom, and three anonymous BCAS reviewers for their critical and constructive comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.