Motivations for ritual performance in bribery: Ethnographic case studies of the use of guanxi to gain school places in China

According to Goffman, interaction rituals are underpinned by moral norms, and work in a moral fashion. The research discussed here, based on ethnographic case studies of the use of guanxi (Chinese personal connections) to gain school places in two Chinese cities, reveals that ritual performance in bribery guanxi can construct moral performance, implying justice and morality and thereby giving rise to a bribery subculture. Such moral performance, in turn, increases the social capital of the parties involved. The motivations for moral performance in this context differ. In some cases, the parties regard their practice as illegal and/or immoral, and ritual performance is employed to conceal the illegality of the transaction. In others, the practice of bribery is considered to fall within the renqing ethic, and ritual performance is used to mask the instrumental character of the transaction. Motivations for ritual performance also differ according to the closeness of guanxi ties between the briber and the bribed. This article identifies two forms of ritual performance – ‘ ketao ritual’, a form of renqing that attempts to mask instrumentality, and ‘tacit ritual’, which attempts to conceal illegality – and reveals how the individuals’ performance is related to different levels of closeness in guanxi. Although bribery takes place in many societies, the uses of ritual to morally validate bribery in China, especially the combination of ketao and tacit ritual, seems to be a particular cultural phenomenon.