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School killings in China: Society or wilderness (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate )
Author(s) -
Steinmüller Hans,
Fei Wu
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
anthropology today
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.419
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1467-8322
pISSN - 0268-540X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8322.2011.00782.x
Subject(s) - china , mainland china , wilderness , relation (database) , promotion (chess) , sociology , political science , media studies , criminology , law , politics , ecology , database , computer science , biology
Between March and May 2010 a series of school killings took place in mainland China. This article explores media discourses on the school killings and examines three cases in detail. It connects the search for underlying reasons and responsible authorities in relation to the murders with the wider search for ‘society’ in contemporary China, and concludes by emphasizing the gap between the official promotion of the idea of ‘society’ as a cohesive moral community and a parallel popular understanding of the contemporary Chinese social world as a savage wilderness.