In and Out: Structured Uncertainty in Ming Bureaucratic Disciplinary Practice (1368-1644)

Ying Zhang, The Ohio State University

Existing scholarship on the bureaucratic discipline of the Ming dynasty (1638-1644) highlights institutional weaknesses caused by imperial autocracy and factionalism. This approach applies “the political” without analytical or contextual specificity and exaggerates “political crisis” in this history. It obscures the complicated routines, expectations, and dynamics in bureaucratic management and behavior. By examining closely a wide of range of reasons for which Ming officials were imprisoned, my research explores how administrative rules, in particular the use of detention as part of the routine investigative procedure, was turned into a factor of uncertainty by the individuals, and how imperial interventions—often interpreted by scholars as a factor of disruptive irregularity—sometimes helped mitigate this uncertainty. I argue that a more precise analysis of the timing and circumstances of the officials’ journeys in and out of the jail challenges rigid understandings of “the regular” and compels us to consider the structure and effect of “uncertainty” in a more dynamic way.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 246. Uncertainty, Crises, and Critical Junctures in the Political History of China and beyond