Honour, esteem, and social recognition in late Ming China: the case of Tu Long

Social recognition in the late Ming Dynasty was generated by literati in two forms: honour and esteem. Changes in society, including economic development, shifts in social ethos, and the comparatively loosened control of the regime, especially regarding people’s ideas and conduct, provided a suitable social environment for literati to explore a form of recognition other than honour based on the hierarchical mechanism. In the transitional society of the late Ming Dynasty, the literati’s values and lifestyles were heavily influenced by the development of the commodity economy, while their autonomy as moral agents was enhanced through the rise of self-awareness stimulated by the School of Mind. Hence, the way literati recognised each other evolved from solely depending on the value of an honoured status to also focusing on their own values and achievements for self-worth, self-respect, and self-esteem within the reflexive relations of the literati community. The literati not only fashioned themselves to fit into different communities but also redefined the values and norms that underpinned the communities where their recognition was achieved. During the process of social recognition in these two forms, there would also be a crisis of recognition, and even misrecognition occurred when the literati faced different situations, especially in a transitional society where the social value system was also in the process of changing. In this context, the literati’s struggle for recognition manifested in different patterns oriented by their values and norms, illustrating the process of transformation of social recognition in the transitional society of late Ming China.
Tu Long as a literatus, whose well-documented experience of his career and social life exemplified both representative and particular features of the literati in the late Ming Dynasty, provided a dynamic image of the literati’s struggle for different forms of social recognition in detail.