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Polyandry and wife-selling in Qing Dynasty China
This book is a study of polyandry, wife-selling, and a variety of related practices in China during the Qing dynasty (1644-1912). By analyzing over 1200 legal cases from local and central court archives, Matthew Sommer explores the functions played by marriage, sex, and reproduction in the survival strategies of the rural poor under conditions of overpopulation, worsening sex ratios, and shrinking farm sizes. Polyandry and wife-selling represented opposite ends of a spectrum of strategies. At one end, polyandry was a means to keep the family together by expanding it. A woman would bring in a second husband in exchange for his help supporting her family. In contrast, wife sale was a means to survive by breaking up a family: a husband would secure an emergency infusion of cash while his wife would escape poverty and secure a fresh start with another man. Even though Qing law prohibited both practices under the rubric \"illicit sexual relations,\" Sommer shows how magistrates charged with propagating and enforcing a fundamentalist Confucian vision of female chastity tried to cope with their social reality in the face of daunting poverty. This contradiction illuminates both the pragmatism of routine adjudication and the increasingly dysfunctional nature of the dynastic state in the face of mounting social crisis. By casting a spotlight on the rural poor and the experiences of both men and women, Sommer provides an alternative to the standard paradigms of women’s history that have long dominated scholarship on gender and sexuality in late imperial China.
eBook
Writing in the devil's tongue : a history of English composition in China
Winner, CCCC Outstanding Book Award Until recently, American composition scholars have studied writing instruction mainly within the borders of their own nation, rarely considering English composition in the global context in which writing in English is increasingly taught.
eBook
Canton Trade, The
This study utilizes a wide range of new source materials to reconstruct the day-to-day operations of the port of Canton during the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries. Using a bottom-up approach, it provides a fresh look at the successes
eBook
Elderly care, intergenerational relationships and social change in rural China
This book investigates how rapid socio-political-economic change in China since 1949 has affected intergenerational relationships and practices in rural areas, specifically the care provided to elderly parents by their adult children. It focuses on the lived experiences of rural villagers and their perceptions of the impact of these socio-political changes on intergenerational relationships, care of the elderly, family cohesion, and the traditional value of filial piety. It notably considers the importance of filial piety as a dominant family value, the conflict between strong family bonds and growing desires for individuality and autonomy, the prevalence of migrant work among adult children and the diversification of intergenerational practices, alongside the need for national policy and services development for residential and community-based aged care in rural China.-- Provided by publisher.
Book
The China wave
This is a best-seller in China and a geopolitical book for our times. As a leading thinker from China, Zhang Weiwei provides an original, comprehensive and engrossing study on the rise of China and its effective yet controversial model of development, and the book has become a centerpiece of an unfolding debate within China on the nature and future of the world's most populous nation and its possible global impact. China's rise, according to Zhang, is not the rise of an ordinary country, but the rise of a different type of country, a country sui generis, a civilizational state, a new model of development and a new political discourse which indeed questions many of the Western assumptions about democracy, good governance and human rights. The book is as analytical as it is provocative, and should be required reading for everyone concerned with the rise of China and its global implications.
eBook
Murder in Manchuria
In Murder in Manchuria , Scott D. Seligman explores an
unsolved murder set amid the chaos that reigned in China in the
run-up to World War II. The story unfolds against the backdrop of a
three-country struggle for control of Manchuria-an area some called
China's \"Wild East\"-and an explosive mixture of nationalities,
religions, and ideologies. Semyon Kaspé, a young Jewish musician,
is kidnapped, tortured, and ultimately murdered by disaffected,
antisemitic White Russians, secretly acting on the orders of
Japanese military overlords who covet his father's wealth. When
local authorities deliberately slow-walk the search for the
kidnappers, a young French diplomat takes over and launches his own
investigation. Part cold-case thriller and part social history, the
true, tragic saga of Kaspé is told in the context of the larger,
improbable story of the lives of the twenty thousand Jews who
called Harbin home at the beginning of the twentieth century. Scott
D. Seligman recounts the events that led to their arrival and their
hasty exodus-and solves a crime that has puzzled historians for
decades.
eBook