Neither Gods nor Emperors: Students and the Struggle for Democracy in China (review)

114 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1996 The final substantive chapter offers a more theoretical examination ofsocial dichotomies. This section discusses contradictions between the state and the family , formal and informal hierarchies (the contrast of traditional state employment versus the more consumer-oriented private sector), and the ideal versus social practice. Many ofthe ideas here, rather unrelated to the Chengdu case studies, could have been incorporated into the main body ofthe text. A discussion of guanxi, for example, parallels the analysis in chapter 4. The text has several other shortcomings. A particularly distressing problem is the lack of an index. Some footnotes, though rich in description, are incorrectly numbered. A few ofthe anecdotes are repeated with little additional analysis. As noted, some sections of the text seem unrelated to their surroundings, and tend to slow the reader. In sum, however, Bruun's book does a fine job of examining a relatively unexplored area ofinland China and of using a key sector of the economy to illustrate the region's development. Though some of Bruun's interviewees apparently encouraged him to study joint ventures rather than private enterprise, his determination in pursuing his goal has resulted in a valuable work. Eric Harwit University of Hawai'i Craig Calhoun. Neither Gods nor Emperors: Students and the Strugglefor Democracy in China. Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1994. xiv, 333 pp. Hardcover $37.50, isbn 0-520-08826-3. The Democracy Movement of1989 and its bloody suppression have generated so much print that the field of contemporary China studies appears to have grown tired of the topic. Interest has ebbed as other incidents and agendas distract the scholarly community from this watershed event. This is unfortunate, given that much ofwhat we think we know about Tiananmen is still provisional and in need of deeper reflection. The scholarly process of coming to terms with Tiananmen is not finished by any means, and those who suggest that it is time to put this event© 1996 by University behind us, or claim that we know all that we need to know, commit at the very ofHawai'i Pressleast an intellectual lapse. Craig Calhoun's Neither Gods nor Emperors is the latest, and in some ways the most well-rounded and thoughtful, treatment of the Democracy Movement Reviews 115 in Beijing. Calhoun resists the recent trend to dismiss the importance ofthe movement and diminish its significance for those who took part. He refuses to read the event from the perspective ofits demise—and thus accept that it had to fail. He argues that this "remarkable" protest "was creative, vital, and full ofpossibilities " (p. x). Its organizational life was complex, its leadership fluid, and its strategic agenda varied and improvised as events unfolded. Calhoun seeks to recapture the open-endedness that characterized the movement. He restores the life that other, more cynical analysts have drained from the movement, recognizing that it was a transformative experience for those who took part. The book consists of two parts. The first is a narrative, in three chapters, of events from April to June 1989 from the students' point ofview. This narrative provides the foundation on which rests the second part, a series ofsociological analyses in four chapters and a conclusion. These analyses are noteworthy for their sensitivity to the cultural context in which popular desires were enunciated, individual identities formed, and political and economic resources mobilized to make the movement happen. Part 2 makes the greater contribution to knowledge. It begins by examining the students' claim that the movement was spontaneous. Calhoun reads this claim as politically necessary in the face of the Chinese government's habit oflooking for "black hands," but sees it as a misrecognition laid over the ready availability of preexisting scripts and social ties for building an effective organization almost at a moment's notice. Chapter 5 invokes the rubrics ofcivil society and the public sphere (without dwelling compulsively on them) to argue that China has its peculiar form of civil society or "political community" and that the challenge the students faced was not to create that political community but to use it to develop a public sphere ofrational-critical debate...