Honor and Shame in Early China

In this major new study, Mark Edward Lewis traces how the changing language of honor and shame helped to articulate and justify transformations in Chinese society between the Warring States and the end of the Han dynasty. Through careful examination of a wide variety of texts, he demonstrates how honor-shame discourse justified the actions of diverse and potentially rival groups. Over centuries, the formally recognized political order came to be intertwined with groups articulating alternative models of honor. These groups both participated in the existing order and, through their own visions of what was truly honourable, paved the way for subsequent political structures. Filling a major lacuna in the study of early China, Lewis presents ways in which the early Chinese empires can be fruitfully considered in comparative context and develops a more systematic understanding of the fundamental role of honor/shame in shaping states and societies.

'Lewis has produced yet another masterpiece. In this breathtakingly clear and powerful study, he dismantles the common trope of China as a shame culture, historicizing what it meant in ancient times to “lose face,” and showing how the honor-shame complex shaped social groups, the state, and even a non-state public domain that was immensely influential in the political and cultural realms.' Erica Fox Brindley, Pennsylvania State University, 'From an unexplored perspective, Honor and Shame brilliantly unfolds how different forms of power were conceived, constructed, and contested in early China. Its masterful study of essential characteristics of Chinese culture will bridge dialogues between past and present and between East and West.' Liang Cai, University of Notre Dame, 'This is a brilliant book. It highlights the importance of the concepts of honor and shame as major factors that shaped early China's political, social, and intellectual history. Professor Lewis's tour de force will benefit both the students of China's past and all those engaged in cross-cultural comparisons.' Yuri Pines, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Mark Edward Lewis is Kwoh-ting Li Professor of Chinese Culture at Stanford University.