Object Grammar: Interpretive Divergences and Redirection around a National Object in Contemporary China’s Hanfu Movement

Forthcoming in Theory and Social Inquiry

This article asks what happens after national advocates invest a material object with national meaning but broader audiences interpret it differently. Drawing on content analysis, interviews, and participant observation, I examine China’s burgeoning Hanfu Movement dedicated to reviving Hanfu as the Han ethnicity’s traditional clothing. I find that revivalists articulate alternative national narratives through Hanfu that emerge from fissures within the mainstream national discourse, while the public interprets Hanfu within the mainstream framework. Hanfu’s materiality and historicity render it legible under both frameworks, producing divergent interpretations between revivalists and the public. 

The focus of the articles lies in how revivalists respond to the interpretive divergences. I develop the concept of object grammar—the clustering rule of objects, which guides interpretation of objects as both a concept and its instantiations. I argue that meaning emerges from inter-object relations and that by rewriting object grammars, that is, reconfigurating the relations among objects, revivalists seek to redirect audience interpretations toward their expectations. With this intervention, they can stabilize Hanfu’s meaning without requiring audiences to abandon their existing national understandings. However, the effectiveness of rewritten object grammars depends on their dissemination to broader audiences, which is not guaranteed in practice. 

This article contributes to cultural sociology by identifying inter-object relations as a source of meaning and highlighting the modifiability of classification rules. It also contributes to nationalism studies by showing how material objects mediate contestation over understandings of the nation and illuminating the potential for the strategic reconfiguration of national meanings.