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Andrew G. Walder
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Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement

by Andrew G. Walder (Author)
4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 12 ratings
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Fractured Rebellion is the first full-length account of the evolution of China’s Red Guard Movement in Beijing, the nation’s capital, from its beginnings in 1966 to its forcible suppression in 1968. Andrew Walder combines historical narrative with sociological analysis as he explores the radical student movement’s crippling factionalism, devastating social impact, and ultimate failure.

Most accounts of the movement have portrayed a struggle among Red Guards as a social conflict that pitted privileged “conservative” students against socially marginalized “radicals” who sought to change an oppressive social and political system. Walder employs newly available documentary evidence and the recent memoirs of former Red Guard leaders and members to demonstrate that on both sides of the bitter conflict were students from comparable socioeconomic backgrounds, who shared similar―largely defensive―motivations. The intensity of the conflict and the depth of the divisions were an expression of authoritarian political structures that continued to exert an irresistible pull on student motives and actions, even in the midst of their rebellion.

Walder’s nuanced account challenges the main themes of an entire generation of scholarship about the social conflicts of China’s Cultural Revolution, shedding light on the most tragic and poorly understood period of recent Chinese history.

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  1. ISBN-10
    0674035038
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0674035034
  3. Publisher
    Harvard University Press
  4. Publication date
    October 15, 2009
  5. Language
    English
  6. Dimensions
    6.2 x 1.3 x 9.4 inches
  7. Print length
    416 pages
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

An impressive and important work of scholarship which will join a small set of major books on the Cultural Revolution. (Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, University of California, Irvine)

An analysis that will alter the view of one of the seminal events in the history of the People's Republic of China. (Frederick C. Teiwes, the University of Sydney)

A truly extraordinary scholarly achievement. Never has the immensely important puzzle of the Red Guard Movement ever been rendered in such rich, clarifying empirical detail as Walder gives us here. (Doug McAdam, Stanford University)

Better than anything else I have read, Andrew Walder's Fractured Rebellion explains how and why the Beijing students in the first two years of the Cultural Revolution became so sharply, bitterly, and fatally divided. An absorbing work of research and synthesis. (Jonathan Spence, author of The Search for a Modern China)

The book masterfully combines historical case studies with sociological methodology and fundamentally changes our understanding of Red Guard factionalism...The book is without doubt one of the greatest breakthroughs in research on the Cultural Revolution published during the past three decades and should be read by anyone interested in the history of mass movements and modern Chinese history in general. (Daniel Leese China Quarterly 2010-06-01)

Too little research has been conducted about the fascinating, confusing upheavals that shook China during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of 1966–68. Now, four decades after the mass fighting was suppressed, Andrew Walder helps to fill important gaps in our knowledge...Fractured Rebellion: The Beijing Red Guard Movement makes an important contribution to our knowledge of an extraordinary, tumultuous period in recent Chinese history. (Jonathan Unger China Journal 2010-07-01)

While not minimizing either the violence or Mao's responsibility, Walder presents a less stereotyped and more diverse picture of Red Guard attitudes to violence--as far as I know for the first time at this length in Western scholarship. (John Gittings The China Beat 2010-03-31)

Revealing...Walder's book, the first on the Beijing Red Guards, concentrates entirely on the movement in the capital's universities and schools and the conflicts among them, mighty subjects in themselves. (Jonathan Mirsky New York Review of Books 2010-11-11)

Walder's volume is a remarkable piece of scholarship of intellectual honesty and rigor...It is precisely because Walder consistently refuses to simplify that his powerful account of Beijing's Red Guard movement captures its unpredictability, its volatility, and, above all, its internal complexity...Walder's fine contribution pushes us to reevaluate what we thought we knew about this pivotal period in modern Chinese history and, perhaps, to reflect again on the scope and breadth of its lingering irresolution. (Patricia Thornton Journal of Asian Studies 2010-11-01)

About the Author

Andrew G. Walder is Denise O'Leary and Kent Thiry Professor of Sociology, and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, Stanford University.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harvard University Press (October 15, 2009)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 416 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0674035038
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0674035034
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.62 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.2 x 1.3 x 9.4 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.3 4.3 out of 5 stars 12 ratings

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Andrew G. Walder

Andrew G. Walder

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Customer reviews

4.3 out of 5 stars
4.3 out of 5
12 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

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yuyanhasit2
5.0 out of 5 stars When Americans study faraway places
Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2010
This is a book by an American about a faraway sea of people. There can be three American ways of studying the sea.

One group go to the sea, see a shoe on the shore, and report back: "The fish there also try to make shoes, but the shoes are of such ridiculously poor quality!"

A second group do the homework before going and decide cleverly to take a bucket with them. They come back with a bucket of the sea water to show neighbours and friends. "Look, the sea is indeed what we think it is, all water." The neighbours and friends agree, and some kindly praise the cute shape of the bucket.

A third group come back with a mermaid. No doubt the mermaid lives in the sea, deep sea, nowhere else. Her discovery is pure serendipity. She shows the group's neighbors and friends that the sea is not only about stupid fish or clear water. Their desire for imagination thus gets a huge boost on matters of the sea. The author of Fractured Rebellion must have gone with this group ...
3 people found this helpful
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Mme Claudine Ruget
4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent.
Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2013
Verified Purchase
Excellent. Le service et la livraison ont été tout à fait corrects. Je suis très satisfaite.
Le contenu correspond à mon attente.
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ROROTOKO
5.0 out of 5 stars Why the Cultural Revolution's student red guards fought one another
Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2010
"Fractured Rebellion" is on the ROROTOKO list of cutting-edge intellectual nonfiction. Professor Walder's book interview ran here as the cover feature on April 16, 2010.
One person found this helpful
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Scalam
2.0 out of 5 stars complexity
Reviewed in the United States on March 27, 2015
Verified Purchase
To understand the complexity of the Cultural Revolution that took many different forms in different places and timing. Recommended for specialist already aware of the main events interested in microhistory of differents factions of Red Guards
3 people found this helpful
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Tyler Sheets
4.0 out of 5 stars A Sharp Intellectual Journey into the Mind of Red Guard Rebels
Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2011
First and foremost, this book is not for readers without a strong foundation in the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong's personal history, the major players of the CCP and the CCRG, and Chinese history in general.

Secondly, people considering reading this book should beware that this book is pregnant with knowledge on each page. Pure, unadulterated, and detailed knowledge waiting to either punch your brain or blow right over it. This book is not to be read while near any distractions or noise, due to its density of both thought and detailed fact.

On a less ominous note, this book is very creative in pursuing the problems of seemingly sound theories. It's very honest and perceptive and highly recommended by people much smarter than I am on the back cover as well.
3 people found this helpful
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Serge Goffard
5.0 out of 5 stars Manipulations tragiques
Reviewed in France on September 29, 2012
Verified Purchase
Hors de Chine, la "Révolution Culturelle" en Chine a pu apparaître comme une innovation pleine d'espoirs. D'autant que bien des Chinois ont suivi les directives du "Grand Timonier" Mao-Ze-Dong. Ce livre suit avec beaucoup de précisions les manipulations du groupe dirigeant menées sur les enfants des privilégiés du régime totalitaire. Le lecteur est mis devant un enchaînement terrifiant, dont les protagonistes sont aveuglés par des flatteries et des encouragements criminels. Les auteurs, après bien d'autres, mais avec talent, brisent l'image d'Épinal de la "révolution culturelle" pour faire apparaître, au-delà des apparences idéologiques séduisantes, la machine à broyer du totalitarisme maoïste.
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