Although research concerning “face” as a specific theme of investigation may not have broad application in mainstream sociology, with the exception of Goffman and those who operate within his framework, a broader concept of face, referring to the social anchoring of self in the gaze of others, is more generally seen to have a wider appreciation in general sociology and is represented in an historically enduring and significant discussion. The eighteenth-century Scottish thinker Adam Smith captures the details of the relationships underlying face when he describes what he calls the “looking-glass” self:
We suppose ourselves the spectators of our own behavior, and endeavor to imagine what effect it would, in this light, produce upon us. This is the only looking-glass by which we can, in some measure, with the eyes of other people, scrutinize the propriety of our own conduct. If in this view it pleases us, we are tolerably satisfied… if we are doubtful about it, we are often, upon that very account, more anxious to gain their approbation, and … we are altogether distracted at the thoughts of their censure, which then strikes us with double severity (Smith 1982, p. 109).
By imagining how they are seen by others, individuals can then evaluate their own behavior; thus, a self-image generated in relations with others reflexively leads individuals to behave in a socially approved manner, according to Smith.
Even in individualistic cultures, cultures in which persons believe themselves to be self-sufficient and autonomous, where awareness of their dependence on the opinion of others may be relatively absent, persons are nevertheless subject to the imperatives of face in the sense indicated above. Certainly, this is the view of Charles Horton Cooley, who followed Smith’s terminology and is widely credited with introducing the notion of the looking-glass self into modern sociology. He wrote:
Many people … will deny, perhaps with indignation, that … care [of what others think of them] is an important factor in what they are and do. But this is illusion. If failure or disgrace arrives, if one suddenly finds that the faces of men show coldness or contempt instead of the kindness and deference that he is used to, he will perceive from the shock, the fear, the sense of being outcast and helpless, that he was living in the minds of others without knowing it, just as we daily walk the solid ground without thinking how it bears us up (Cooley 1964, p. 208).
This “outgoing of the imagination towards another person’s point of view”, Cooley (1964, p. 206) observes, “means that we are undergoing his influence”. According to this argument, then, the individual is connected with others through face, in which the subjectivity of self is never autonomous but derived from a prior trans-subjectivity of inter-relations between persons.
The trans-cultural significance of face is acknowledged by Goffman (1972, p. 44) when he refers to the fact that “underneath their differences in culture, people everywhere are the same … [in the sense that one] is taught to be perceptive, to have feelings attached to self and a self expressed through face, to have pride, honour, and dignity, to have considerateness, to have tact and a certain amount of poise”. Through their social relationships, individuals seek the approval or respect of others and typically desire to achieve a position of approbation in the social group to which they belong. Not only is face thus experienced in all human societies, but within any one of them it operates very broadly indeed. David Ho (1976, p. 883) argues similarly when he claims that face should be regarded as a concept of central importance in sociology “because of the pervasiveness with which it asserts its influence in social intercourse, it is virtually impossible to think of a facet of social life to which the question of face is irrelevant”. The consensus of a number of writers, from a broad social science background, is that face includes a socially formed self-image that is essential to the dynamics of an individual’s relations with others irrespective of their cultural background or national context. The qualification, that while face itself may be trans-culturally pervasive, features important to it in any particular culture may not be general across them all (Ho 1976, pp. 881–82), is an additional prime element of face that will be drawn upon in this paper for purposes of conceptual refinement.
I first began exploring Chinese conceptualizations of face and their usefulness in expanding Goffman’s approach to face in an earlier paper (Qi 2011). In that paper, I observed in a footnote that while face (mianzi) is important to Chinese social relations, there are surprisingly few scholarly discussions of face in Chinese sources. Only recently has the concept of face gained attention from scholars writing in Chinese in fields including sociology, psychology and management. The classic reference to Chinese face is not Confucius or the more recent Chinese sociologist Fei Xiaotong but an American missionary, Arthur Smith (1845–1932), who spent 54 years in China and wrote books introducing China to interested non-Chinese readers. In Chinese Characteristics, first published in 1894, Smith wrote on a number of topics, including the physical vitality of the Chinese, on filial piety, mutual suspicion, and other themes he regarded as quintessentially Chinese. The first chapter of Chinese Characteristics, though, is devoted to face. Smith (1894, p. 17) says that face is “in itself a key to the combination lock of many of the most important characteristics of the Chinese”. While Smith’s writings aroused the interest of foreigners regarding the importance of face in China—Smith was “responsible for the introduction of the notion of ‘losing face’ into English” (Kipnis 1995, p. 120)—his discussion even more surprisingly awoke at the time a Chinese awareness of the omnipresence and significance of face in Chinese culture.
One of China’s most influential writers and cultural critics of the early twentieth century, Lu Xun, read Chinese translations of Arthur Smith and was impressed by his insightful observations concerning Chinese character. Inspired by and in reference to Smith, Lu Xun wrote a short essay on face which was published in the magazine Manhua Shenghuo (Caricature of Life) in 1934. Lu Xun writes:
The term “face” keeps cropping up in our conversation, and it seems to be such a simple expression that I doubt whether many people give it much thought. Recently, however, we have heard this word on the lips of foreigners too, who seem to be studying it. They find it extremely hard to understand, but believe that “face” is the key to the Chinese spirit and that grasping it will be like grabbing a queue twenty-four years ago [when wearing a queue or pig-tail was compulsory] – everything else will follow (Lu 1960, p. 129).
Another influential Chinese writer and social and cultural critic, Lin Yutang, also wrote about face but his writing was directed toward an American not a Chinese audience. Lin lived most of his adult life in the USA. His book My Country and My People (1977) is written in English and aims to introduce China and Chinese culture and social mores to American readers. In the book, Lin (1977, pp.186–93) discusses face. Face, he says together with fate and favor are “three sisters [who] have always ruled China, and are ruling China still” (Lin 1977, p. 186). Lin places face before fate and favor to emphasize that “[i]t is more powerful than fate and favour, and more respected than the constitution” (Lin 1977, p. 191).
There can be no doubt that face is central to Chinese culture and it is sometimes supposed that face is so significant in the behavior of Chinese people that paradoxically it is taken for granted by them. But this in itself cannot adequately explain the absence among Chinese scholars of studies concerning face. Part of the explanation must take note of the manner of the introduction, establishment and development of sociology in China. This constitutes an instance of knowledge flow in which existing native Chinese concepts were largely ignored and a set of foreign theories was simply applied to an alien or exotic context. Sociology as an intellectual and cultural artifact originating in America and Europe was first introduced into China in the early twentieth century by American missionary sociologists (King and Wang 1978, p. 42; Wong 1979, pp. 11–19). Indeed, during this early formative period, between 1910 and 1930, the discipline of sociology in China consisted of “such distinct foreign and religious features”, as Siu-lun Wong (1979, p. 11) put it, “that it might be named American missionary sociology”. Even when Chinese non-missionary universities offered courses in and established departments of sociology, they were “closely connected with American interests and heavily influenced by American sociology” (Cheng and So 1983, p. 473). Prior to 1916, most sociology lecturers in Chinese universities were foreigners and the majority of them were Americans (Li et al. 1987, p. 617). Theories, concepts and methods developed in the USA and Europe and reported in textbooks principally published for American college courses were used, and American teaching and research interests were pursued in sociological study in China, but not of China. In this context, in which the teaching of and research in sociology was through imported American textbooks and by largely American missionary teachers, the means for apprehending characteristically Chinese cultural properties, such as face, were simply absent.
As sociology underwent sinicization, during the period from 1930 to 1949, the concept of face was again neglected as a subject warranting serious sociological research or commentary. During this period, sociology was concerned with practical problems of agrarian inequality and poverty and therefore directed to “solve social problems through reformism and social adjustments” (Cheng and So 1983, p. 475). The fate of Chinese sociology changed dramatically after the foundation of the People’s Republic in 1949 with the victory of the Chinese Communist Party. From this time, sociology was compelled to adopt Marxist-Leninist principles and the role of sociology was, according to an official statement, to “learn to use Marxism-Leninism and the thought of Mao Tse-tung to analyze concretely practical social situations” (quoted in Skinner 1951, p. 369). The areas of research for sociologists at this time were more or less confined to class structure and land ownership, studied through the lens of Marxist materialist terminology (Cheng and So 1983, p. 478). Under such political and social conditions, possibilities of research on concepts such as face were again absent. In 1952, all university departments in China of sociology, political science and also law were abolished (King and Wang 1978, p. 49). It was not until 1979, when China “opened its door” to the rest of the world, that sociology was re-established as a discipline to be taught in universities and to be the intellectual basis of empirical and theoretical research. In each phase of its development in China, up until the present time, sociology simply ignored the concept and practice of face, for quite different reasons but with the same effect.
In recent times, attempts to explain Chinese social practices to foreign social scientists have for the first time made face a theme for research and systematic study by Chinese social scientists. The discussion of face by Chinese sociologists, beginning with Hsien Chin Hu (1944), whose work is drawn upon and acknowledged by Goffman, and later including David Ho (1976), Chuansi Stephen Hsu (1996), Kwang-kuo Hwang (1987a) and Wenshan Jia (2001), is motivated at least in part to explain Chinese social practices to non-Chinese audiences and is written in English. More recently, however, there has risen not only in mainland China but also in Taiwan an interest among Chinese-language social scientists to compare Chinese and non-Chinese societies. In this context, face has become a topic about which there is now Chinese-language discussion among Chinese sociologists and social psychologists (Hwang 1987b; Lu 1996; Zhai 1994, 1995, 2006). The growing scholarly and research interest in face in China has meant that Ho was encouraged to later publish a Chinese version of his (1976) paper in a book (Ho et al. 2006), and similarly, Kwang-kuo Hwang’s (1987a) paper was simultaneously published in Chinese (Hwang 1987b).
When we think of Chinese sociology today, the hallmark event was the re-introduction of sociology into Chinese universities from 1979. Associated with this process is the significant number of sociology students who studied abroad and took PhDs from predominantly American and European universities and returned to China to teach and conduct sociological research. In consideration of the treatment of face, though, it is important to remember those Chinese sociologists who from the 1940s worked in American universities (Hu 1944; Ho 1976; Hsu 1996) but nevertheless wrote on Chinese themes. This aspect of “Chinese sociology” is one in which its practitioners are concerned not simply to apply alien sociological concepts to questions concerning the analysis of Chinese culture but to introduce Chinese concepts, in this case the concept of face, to English-language sociology sources.