Ethan Michelson
I received my Ph.D. from the University of
Chicago in 2003. My current research agenda consists of three separate but
interrelated streams, all of which use the case of legal institutions in
China to engage theoretical debates in the sociology of institutions,
economic sociology, law and society, and the sociology of professions. In
addition to my first book, Dear Lawyer Bao: Ten Years of Legal Advice for
Everyday Trouble in China, 1989-1998 (forthcoming, University of
California Press), each of the three research streams I describe below
represents a separate book project. Before I complete the book projects,
however, I am first publishing several series of journal articles.
The first stream is about the process and consequences of the privatization
of the Chinese bar. I examine the many difficulties Chinese lawyers
negotiate while trying to balance competing and contradictory pressures from
global and local sources and from the state and the market. Their plight and
their innovative coping strategies offer many lessons for sociological
theories of institutions. The first article from this project has been
published in the American Journal of Sociology.
The second stream concerns the reasons why and the methods by which Chinese
lawyers screen cases. By analyzing how lawyers reframe, reinterpret, and
deny the legal legitimacy of claims asserted by the weak and the powerless,
this project explicitly links micro-level discursive strategies with
macro-level political and legal institutions. The first article from this
project has been published in Law & Society Review.
The third stream reveals sources of popular grievances and what ordinary
people do about them. Occupying a central place in this project is the
peasant petitioner, the aggrieved villager appealing to higher levels of
government administration for the redress of local grievances, including
excessive taxation, “land grabs,” and the enforcement of family planning
policies. Most recently I have been exploring the relationship between
contemporary popular contention and memories of past trauma. Articles from
this project have been published in the American Sociological Review
and The China Quarterly.
More details are available at:
http://www.indiana.edu/~emsoc.
