Social Science Research Council

"Political Culture, Protest Repertoires and Mass Nationalism in the 1911 Revolution in Sichuan, China"

My dissertation is a historical research on the practice of the new political culture during the 1911 Revolution. I will study the case of Sichuan (1905-1911), which entails unprecedented grassroots participation, the emergence of a popular nationalism and a potential of republicanism. I will investigate the political-cultural inventions (rituals, languages and symbols) through which revolutionary experience was filtered to create a new sense of political community. What were the new political identities and how did they negotiate with each other? What kind of communications and rituals helped in cutting through boundaries of village, clan and social class? Finally, in the heat of this political conflict, how did mass participation and popular mobilization change the structure of the polity and transform the ways politics was conducted? To gauge the extent and effects of the 1911 Revolution, I employ archival research and interview records to bring to light the experiences of this movement. Constantly interacting with the theories on nationalism, political culture and collective action and actively drawing upon comparisons to the rest of the world, this dissertation serves to not only to cast new light on the most powerful forces for China's historical changes in the twentieth century, but also deepen our understanding of the nation formation movement in the beginning of the twentieth century as a world phenomenon.