LAW, TRANSLATION, AND VOICE

Abstract

The channeling of popular struggles through legal cases is central to the strategy of the emerging “rights defense” movement in China, linking grassroots contention with professional mediators who translate grievances into the institutional environment of law. This was the case in an unusual, ultimately unsuccessful campaign in 2005 to remove an elected village chief in Taishi Village in Guangdong, China, by legal means. While the grievances that sparked the campaign were about the unequal distribution of the benefits from village development, the strategy of instituting a recall procedure and the framing of the campaign in terms of democracy and rule of law obscured distinctly gendered issues of poverty and inequality in the village, even though women were among the most visible protesters. This article employs a “sociology of translation” to link framing processes and power dynamics, thus proposing a methodological approach to reconnecting framing with other aspects of movements. In the Taishi case, the translation of the dispute into the language of law had contrary effects: it opened the door to a legitimate, if temporary, public space for the airing of villagers' claims. At the same time, translation legitimized the voices of “experts” who then became de facto leaders in this public space; it also increasingly shifted the action to the internet, to which the villagers apparently had no access. This analysis raises questions about whether such strategies may result in either the formation of durable rights-based identities among grassroots participants or a sense of being connected to a broader social movement.

Acknowledgments:

I am grateful to Rima Wilkes, Alex Carr, Kerry Watts, Ben Cushing, Amy Hanser, Fu Hualing, Pitman Potter, James Kennedy, Renisa Mawani, members of the UBC China Studies Group, CAS editor TomFenton, and this journal's two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

Notes

^1. Guo 2005 (Wo), unpaginated.

^2. Feng Shanshu 2005.

^3. This is not the term used by the villagers. As noted by Wong, the phrase “social justice” is not commonly used in mainland China (2004, 152). I am using it here to summarize the types of grievances raised in the Taishi protests.

^4. The protagonists of this self-styled “movement”—which includes lawyers, academics, journalists and semi-professional activists—generally date its emergence to 2003, when the death of a young migrant in police custody provoked a nationwide campaign on the internet. See for example Fu and Cullen 2008.

^5. Feng 2009, 161; see also Fu and Cullen 2008; Mosher and Poon 2009.

^6. Chung, Lai, and Xia 2006; Tanner 2004.

^7. Lee and Friedman 2009; O'Brien 2009; Lee 2007.

^8. Perry 2002.

^9. Lee 2007.

^10. O'Brien and Li 2006, 126-27.

^11. Chung, Lai and Xia 2006, 30.

^12. Béja 2009.

^13. Snow and Trom 2002, 158–59.

^14. Callon 1986; Latour 2005.

^15. Callon 1986.

^16. Chatterjee 2004; Merry 2006 (Transnational) and 2006 (Human); Stern 2005.

^17. Aside from the texts cited here (which were all put online by others), I did not find any postings by Taishi villagers, and there are none in the compilation of internet postings (Fan 2005).

^18. Baiocchi 2005; Johnston 2000.

^19. Its application to contention in China is fairly recent. See, for example, various chapters in O'Brien 2008; Thornton 2002 (Framing); and Thornton 2002 (Insinuation).

^20. Benford and Snow 2000, 614.

^21. Benford 1997.

^22. Latour 2005, 108, 39.

^23. Tarrow 1994, 134.

^24. Callon 1986, 203–11.

^25. Latour 2005, 83.

^26. Merry 2006 (Transnational), 39-40; Stern 2005.

^27. Wilson 2007, 342.

^28. Merry 2006 (Human).

^29. Johnston 2000.

^30. As Melucci cautions, the collective “we” of a social movement is never a given (1995).

^31. McCann 2006.

^32. Friedman 2009.

^33. Zhao 2000.

^34. Diamant et al. 2005; Lee 2007; Feng 2009.

^35. O'Brien and Li 2006.

^36. Lee 2007; Thireau and Hua 2005.

^37. Goldman 2005, 223.

^38. McCann 2006.

^39. Gallagher 2006, 810.

^40. Michelson 2006.

^41. Diamant et al. 2005, 11.

^42. Feng 2009, 163.

^43. Perry 2001 and 2002; Lee 2007.

^44. The intense interest among “rights defense movement” activists in this case meant that efforts were made to preserve the related texts, even after the ban on circulating information on the protests. I use the comprehensive compilation of documents, “Memorandum on the Taishi Village Incident,” compiled by Fan Yafeng, a legal scholar who wrote commentaries on Taishi (Fan 2005). I supplemented this by checking chronologies and accounts prepared by others, including the Wikipedia entry which contains links to important texts (2005). I conducted individual searches to find key texts mentioned in a number of documents but missing from the Memorandum. In the China context,Wikipedia is a repository of information the state will not allow and thus a key resource for materials on protests and collective actions.

^45. All translations in this article are my own.

^46. Some Taishi Villagers 2005. “Open Letter” hereafter.

^47. Feng Qiusheng 2005. “Speech” hereafter.

^48. Feng and Liang 2005. “Declaration” hereafter.

^49. Ai 2005 (Taishi); Ai 2005 (Wo linjin).

^50. Lü 2005 (Jueshi), 2005 (9 yue).

^51. Chai 2004.

^52. I am indebted to Fu Hualing for this characterization of Guo.

^53. Guo 2005 (Wo); Guo 2006.

^54. Fan 2005.

^55. Unless otherwise stated, the account of events is based on theWikipedia chronology (2005). A detailed account of the whole campaign in English is available: “In Chinese Uprisings, Peasants Find New Allies: Protesters Gain Help of Veteran Activists,” Washington Post, 26 November 2005, A1.

^56. Ai 2005 (Wo linjin).

^57. At the time of the dispute the dividends were only about 1,000 yuan per person per year (from which local taxes and fees would be deducted) (ibid.). This amounted to between US$74 and $86. In August 2005, one U.S. dollar was equivalent to 8.10 yuan.

^58. Villager committees were written into the 1982 Chinese Constitution as elected “mass organizations of self-management at the grassroots level” (Art. 111). They are not technically organizations of government, but a kind of executive of village self-governance. But villager committee members are agents of the state: they transmit government policies to villagers and ensure their compliance with those policies.

^59. Art. 16 of the 1998 PRC Organic Law on Villager Committees stipulates: “A joint petition signed by 20 percent or more of the electors in the village may demand recall of a member of the vil lager committee. A recall demand must provide the reasons for the recall. Any member of a villager committee whose recall is demanded has the right to put forward opinions in his/her defense. The villager committee must, in a timely fashion, organize a meeting of the villagers' assembly to vote on the recall demand. A motion to recall a villager committee member must be passed by a majority of the village's electors.” Of the Taishi population, 1502 were counted as electors, so a recall motion required at least 301 signatures.

^60. While the law gives villagers the right of recall, in cases when they wish to recall the villager committee chief or the whole committee, they are supposed to act under the “guidance” of local government. Since the villager committee convenes the meeting of the villager assembly to debate the recall, some outside intervention is inevitable.

^61. Some Taishi Villagers 2005.

^62. This is supposed to be composed of all adult villagers or their representatives.

^63. “Bringing cheer to the neediest households” (gei tekunhu song wennuan) is a communist ritual that involves top state leaders visiting poor families (with media in tow), especially around Chinese New Year, to bring gifts, thus showing their concern about poverty and inequality.

^64. Some Taishi Villagers 2005.

^65. Feng Qiusheng 2005.

^66. O'Brien and Li 2006, 5-9.

^67. Merry 2006 (Transnational), 39.

^68. Thireau and Hua 2005.

^69. The proper relationship between villager assemblies and villager committees is unclear: the law has little to say about the former bodies. This reflects larger tensions within the idea of villager self-government; crucially, the relationship between villager committees and Party branches.

^70. O'Brien and Li 2006.

^71. Feng and Liang 2005.

^72. Guo 2005 (Taishicun)

^73. Feng Qiusheng 2005.

^74. Some Taishi Villagers 2005.

^75. Ai 2005 (Wen Jiabao).

^76. Ai 2005 (Wo linjin).

^77. Ibid.

^80. Ibid.

^78. Lü 2005 (Jueshi); Lü 2005 (9 jue).

^79. Lü 2005 (Jueshi).

^81. Lü 2005 (Baisui).

^82. Guo 2005 (Qu).

^83. Ai 2005 (Taishi).

^84. Guo 2006.

^85. Ibid.

^86. Ibid.

^87. Guo 2005 (Wo).

^88. Guo 2005 (Jinzao).

^89. Guo 2005 (Wo).

^90. Ibid.

^91. Yang 2003, 461, 463.

^92. Fan 2005.

^93. Ibid.

^94. Ibid.

^95. O'Brien and Li 2006, 13-14.

^96. Feng Qiusheng 2005.

^97. Merry 2006 (Transnational), 39.

^98. Zhao 2000.

^99. Meyer 2004.

^100. Personal observation from 2008–2009 fieldwork; see also Chen 2008; Lee 2007.

^101. Fu and Cullen 2008; Pils 2007.

^102. Scheingold 2004, 6.

^103. In my view, the contrast between “rules consciousness” and “rights consciousness” debated recently in China studies actually reflects an ambiguity which is apparent in the role rights have played far beyond China. See Li 2010; Perry 2009; Perry 2008.

^104. Meyer 2004, 140.

^105. Ai 2005 (Wo linjin).

^106. Callon 1986, 223.

^107. Fraser 1997.

^108. See for example Baiocchi 2005 and Johnston 2000.

^109. Merry 2006 (Human), 215; Stern 2005.

^110. Bose 2004.

^111. Barker, Johnson and Lavalette 2001, 19–21.

^112. Snow and Benford 1992.

^113. Friedman 2009; Chen 2008; Lee 2007.

^114. See for example, Chen 2008.

^115. For example, Benford and Snow 2000; Meyer 2004; Tilly and Tarrow 2007.

^116. Callon 1986; Latour 2005.

^117. Benford and Snow 2000, 631–33.