UC Irvine

In 1978, the Chinese government implemented the policy of “reform and opening-up” to partially liberalize the country. Capitalizing on the emerging spaces, religions, which were severely repressed in the previous decade, began to revive and expand. However, the ruling Communist Party vowed to maintain its monopoly on power, and thus continued to keep religious groups and activities contained. In such an authoritarian situation, Catholics in post-reform China often face challenges when it comes to practicing their faith. For example, Church leaders are under constant pressure to comply with government orders. On the other hand, as Catholics, these practitioners have an obligation to uphold the teachings of the Church. In other words, there are at least two institutions, the state and the Church, which impose upon those Catholics different sets of ethical demands. When the demands are conflicting, the practitioners are “propelled into making a choice” (Das 2015:84). The question is: How do they navigate through this complex situation? This dissertation aims at addressing the following research question: How do people make ethical evaluations (i.e. judgments, justifications, and decisions) when plunged into a situation characterized by conflicting ethical demands? Examining the question, I draw upon theoretical resources from sociology of culture and anthropology of ethics. To navigate in our daily lives and to cope with moments that demand making an ethical evaluation, we rely on ethical affordance, defined as “any aspects of people’s experience and perceptions that they might draw on in the process of making ethical evaluations and decisions” (Keane 2016:27). Combined with Ann Swidler’s (1986; 2001) conceptualization of culture as a tool kit, I argue that as reflexive agents, we are able to selectively utilize cultural resources to orient ourselves. Our choices are however constrained by institutions, which create different sets of public culture (Lizardo 2017). This study is based mainly on 47 semi-structured in-depth interviews, supported by archival research on Church documents and governmental publication. The interviewees include Catholics who were born and received education in mainland China, as well as Hong Kong Catholics and foreign missionaries who had the repeated experiences in engaging with the Church in the mainland. Based on the data, I conclude that in the face of conflicting sets of public culture, the teachings of the strongly institutionalized Church laid the foundation for the interviewees to make ethical evaluations. On top of that, they also deployed and hybridized a wide range of cultural resources, such as the Chinese culture, the history of the country, popular cultural products, exemplars, one’s own conscience, personal experiences, and the transcendental God. In addition, several patterns can be observed. First, when recalling conflicts, the interviewees overwhelmingly defended the stance of the Church. This shows the powerfulness of the public culture promoted by the institutional Church over the state. Second, interviewees who had access to more diverse cultural resources were more likely to adopt a stance that was less dichotomized. Third, the findings illustrate the overlap between declarative and nondeclarative culture, as personal experiences could be transformed into narratives to become important resources for making ethical evaluations. Finally, in response to complicated cases and challenges, some interviewees chose to suspend their judgment, resorting to the inability of human reason in understanding God’s mysterious plan. This study challenges simplistic accounts that dichotomize Catholics in China as either uncompromising warriors or governmental puppets. It also complicates the prevailing perception of the Chinese government’s effectiveness in socializing its subjects. The existence of an alternative set of public culture, promoted by a strong institution like the Church, potentially disrupts the state’s ideological propagation.