Engineering the filial self. Negotiating the moral construction of filial piety at different government levels in China

Abstract

This article draws on discourse analysis of central and local government texts alongside ethnographic fieldwork conducted in China to depict the negotiation and implementation of filial piety (xiao), as advocated in the moral construction framework, across different levels of government in China. We show how heterogeneous actors within the Chinese state fill the vague framework of the discourse on filial piety with their concerns and visions of a ‘better’ individual, family, or society, and how they try to connect through the concept of ‘promoting xiao’. We examine three levels of government: The central government's grand narrative of moral construction in propaganda texts on xiao; how local governments pick up, use, and negotiate this discourse in their self-presentations and reports on local promotion of xiao on the online propaganda platform Xuexi Qiangguo; and grassroots government organisations’ approaches to promote xiao within their neighbourhoods.