Justice, Emotion, and Belonging: Legal Consciousness in a Taiwanese Family Conflict, Hsiao-Tan Wang
The following excerpt from an article by Hsiao-Tan Wang illustrates the new insights provided by a relational perspective on legal consciousness. The article centers on a dispute within a Taiwanese family concerning wealth, inheritance, and the roles and responsibilities of parents and children.
The dispute does not transition from generalized feelings of wrongdoing to the sharp and explicitly rationalized assertion of a claim. Instead, the disputants jockey for position in the family unit and pursue the goal of zijiren - belonging and acceptance as a proper parent or child. Facts are falsified and reality is distorted in the struggle to establish one's position in the family. To compliÂcate this painful story even further, the second son - who is most unhappy with the situation - comes to embrace a more individualistic, even a legalistic, view of his rights than do the other family members. Even though his view may differ from theirs, however, his goals are largely relational, and it never occurs to him to engage in “claiming” to vindicate his rights rather than seeking acceptance within the family.Mother Lee and Mr. Lee had three adult children - two sons who married and lived on their own, and a daughter who lived with her parents. The eldest son was favored by his parents and, after Mr. Lee retired, received their financial assistance to enable him and his wife to pursue graduate education abroad. The parents took out a mortgage on their house to pay the educational expenses, but at the same time they asked the second son and the daughter for financial support. For two years, the second son gave Mother Lee two-thirds of his salary, while the first son enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle abroad. Even after the first son returned to Taiwan, Mother Lee continued to support him financially, while expecting the second son to provide some support.
The family gathered for dinner each month, but never discussed finances.Because of his profligate spending, the eldest son continued to incur debts and even persuaded his parents to take out a second mortgage after the first was paid off. The second son objected to no avail and eventually confronted Mother Lee about her unfair treatment. She responded, “When we are older, your elder brother will take responsibility for us. You do not need to worry about us. All you have to do is have dinner with us sometimes.” Shocked by her words, and unable to discuss the matter directly with his brother, the second son curtailed his involvement with the family and, when his father died, made no attempt to claim his share of the inheritance. Taiwanese law requires that each child should inherit equally unless the deceased parent has stipulated otherwise.
Interpreting the Lee Family Conflict
When Mother Lee told her second son that he only had to have dinner with them sometimes and falsely claimed that the eldest son did not take any money, she was implying that she was unhappy about not being identified as a good mother. At this point, she was clinging to her impression of the bonds she shared with the first son, and thus, took the second son's complaint about his brother as an attack on her. If the second son had accepted her version of reality, he would have sent her the message that he respected her as a good mother, bringing them both emotional balance while creating more affinity between them. However, his reaction in refusing to accept her version of reality meant that he was not identifiable as a good son; this only estranged him further from his mother, and in turn, the family. For Mother Lee, the alienation of her second son in this manner was a sacrifice that she was making for her first son, which ultimately put more pressure on him to comply with his filial duties in the future. The second son, however, was forced to capitulate and retreat, leaving his relationships with his mother and brother “shrunk or terminated” and his sense of self greatly transformed.[115]
Rather than Mother Lee's fear of aging inspiring her to explicitly communiÂcate her feelings to her children about her future needs, she constructed a version of the facts that favored her first son as the most zijiren.
In making use of the family resources to pursue a psychologically friendly and responsive relationship with her eldest son, she simultaneously secured elder care and most importantly living arrangements for her and her husband in their older years. She may have been acting in the interests of reducing the risk of embarrassment or the “loss of face” that would be caused by eventually taking this issue to the public courts to claim her legal right to elderly maintenance (Article 1117 of the Civil Code), but she was aware that the laws in place did not necessarily serve her and her specific goal of not living alone. Indeed, it may seem as if this was a rational or calculated process but, for Mother Lee, it was more an attempt to bring balance to her emotional sense of self as a form of justice which depended on her intuitive sense that others identified her as morally good with regard to her social roles.After Mother and Father Lee finally moved into their eldest son's apartment, the second son's interpretation of the event changed as he applied individualÂistic contractual logic to frame what he finally understood as an economic exchange between his mother and brother. He also recognized that his mother had used him as leverage to bring about a form of justice that served her so that the eldest son would be indebted to her in exchange for her sacrifices. In the end, his final interpretation of the event, his legal consciousness, even provided a position of agency for his mother in her struggle to find her best approach to aging. Not claiming his inheritance rights and avoiding the law after Father Lee passed away afforded him a greater opportunity to keep up minimum contact with his mother in the years that followed. Mother Lee's legal consciousness had also transformed; her identity had shifted to be more individualistic and independent which better served her. Her words explicitly implied that she came to believe it to be her personal right to do as she pleased within the family and insist on the deference she was owed as a mother and as zijiren. [...]
Adoption of Law Driven by Emotion and Cultural Concepts
[Qian] Liu's unique work has indeed opened the discussion about the effect that qfng has on the formation of legal consciousness; however, the effect of identity or one's relational perception of others is not emphasized, and the true degree of power that qfng has over people's thoughts and actions is not described.
The Lee family conflict puts a spotlight on this by identifying qfng as much more than a norm and suggesting that it is actually a catalyst for one's perception of reality, and subsequently for one's reactions to situations. The ubiquitous practice of qfng is constituted through the plural, dynamic, and complex process of interpersonal interactions between people who are striving for an identity as “belonging” emotionally to a family or other social group rather than standing apart from others. In everyday Taiwanese life, the bonds of zijiren are provided by the establishment of mutual identification or rentong (sSH), a term connoted with personhood (i.e., identity, identification, or identify). Although this promotes affection and self-worth, these bonds are constantly tested, shaped, and reformed as a result of power and negotiation. Chua and Engel argue that “individual personhood is subsumed within other social relationships, [and that] there is a possibility that these relationships are unequal and maintain existing social hierarchies.”[116]It follows then that the role of identity - one's own self-perception (personal identity) and the perceptions of others (social identity) - involves the acknowÂledgement and setting of conceptual boundaries that shift and change throughout a lifetime as an individual's self has experiences with others in society. Within the context of local Taiwanese practices and traditions, the sense of self or self-other relationship is characterized by a constant interplay between rentong and zijiren, a combination of personhood and relational self-positioning and positioning by others. This implies that the sense of self in Taiwan is not based on what sets individuals apart but rather on the similarities that place them within a group and the exchanges that happen therein. As Chua and Engel's “relational model” suggests, the understanding of and decision to adopt the law or not may emerge within “the porosity of boundaries between individÂual cognition and relationships with others.” This article shows that legal consciousness is more than likely to be highly dependent on one's connections with varying social groups, how one feels they are identified by the members of these groups, and the interactions that take place within them.
Embodied subjectivity, relational affinity, and culturally embedded life course patterns and practices intensify or shift broader forms of hierarchy and inequality, which has the power to reshape identity and reorient the boundaries between inclusion and exclusion. Justice in this broader sense is usually presented through the perception of reality and thereafter reactions toward each other. Emotion (qmgj in Taiwanese contexts does not merely refer to personal emotion such as anxiety, anger, and alienation, but also encompasses the sense of belonging that one pursues as a life goal or a way of life. To feel included (zijiren) or identified with (rentong) can bring one a sense of balance that determines the relevance of law in everyday thoughts and actions. When wronged by loved ones, the feeling of closeness and remoteness can bring to light the many variations in how one perceives and interacts with others. Legal consciousness in this context may be transformed along with the fluid boundary of inclusion and exclusion while one strives to gain acceptance and be respected by a perceived group.
Conclusion
[...] The case study of the Lee family conflict presented in this article demonstrates that legal consciousness is dependent on emotions that are deeply connected to one's perception of the self-other relationship, the level of affinity shared with others, and the life objectives of all those involved. As the conflict heightened, the Lee family had different and contrasting interÂpretations of the situation; while emotionally contesting the boundaries of belonging in their daily social practices, they tended to avoid, fabricate, or selectively utilize underlying facts, at times with references to law as an interpretive framework to assess their relationships with one another. As the disputants emotionally negotiated for mutually satisfying arrangements regarding the issues of filial piety, the distribution of resources, future elder care, and ultimately inheritance, they also constructed their identities as based on whether they felt included or excluded, or accepted and respected, by the group.
Their adoption of law was at times absent, at others influential, but always shaped by Chinese concepts like zijiren, which constitute the emotional complex of belonging in Taiwan and serve as the major determinants of how reality, justice, and belonging are perceived. When in conflict, this cultural patterning is the driving force behind a disputants' pursuit of an identity that places them on moral high ground as a form of justice. In this approach to the study of legal consciousness, an understanding of the culture or social group to which one relates can potentially foster accurate predictions of how disputants are going to react to certain situations. However, such predictions have a limited half-life because as an individual's position within a group changes, so do their feelings toward the situation, those involved, and thereby the law. Comparative studies in other cultural and social contexts are needed, in and outside of Taiwan, in order to contribute further to our understanding of how emotion and the need for relational affinity shape legal consciousness.