As I explained in my previous post, we should be very careful when we discuss the topic of harmony in Chinese and other East Asian cultures. Harmony is often mistaken for altruism or a moral respect for others. In reality, as I hope to have shown in the last article, this assumption is highly questionable. What the defenders of Asian values call harmony is, in fact, something else: it is hierarchy and stability.
Traditionally, throughout Chinese history the family was the nucleus of the society, a self-regulating social unit that guaranteed the stability and order the Chinese so greatly valued. It is thus not surprising that advocates of Asian values see in the family one of the major strengths of their culture and society; however, they selectively choose those aspects of the institution of marriage that appear to them ideologically acceptable in order to both maintain certain power structures and find a compromise between their own cultural tradition and Western-shaped modernity.
No comments:
Post a Comment