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Abstract
The thesis identified the presence of “depoliticizing political habitus” among Chinese millennial bureaucrats. Through interviews with millennial and senior bureaucrats in Northeastern China, onsite ethnography in a bureaucratic community, and layered content analysis, the thesis argues that the depoliticizing political habitus is a bureaucratic identity-based exclusionary political habitus that encompasses both conscious thinking and subconscious reactions to politics. The habitus demonstrated co-constitutions of depoliticizing-ness and politicalness. Depoliticizing-ness is intended to depoliticize the general masses. Politicalness means that millennial bureaucrats are constantly alarmed by politics in their minds and will prevent the political participation of the general masses at all possible costs. The depoliticizing political habitus lacked constructive linkage to coherent political ideologies or theories, regardless of liberal democratic or political meritocratic theories. The core value of the habitus is: Politics is only and will always only be the matter of political elites; Politics will never ever be the matter of the general masses. The thesis then examined the formation processes of the depoliticizing political habitus, indicating that symbolic and material differences are key factors. Through onsite ethnographic fieldwork in one gated bureaucratic community in China, the thesis concluded that the community serves as a reversed total institution for the socialization processes. The spatial segregation between millennial bureaucrats and the general masses strengthened socialization processes by exacerbating the symbolic distinctions between the two social groups. Finally, the actual experiences of serving as class cadres finalized the socialization of the habitus and contributed further to the depoliticizing-ness and politicalness of the habitus.