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This paper reinterprets the rise and demise of foot binding in ancient China from the perspective of transaction cost and contract theory, highlighting that foot binding emerged as a form of non-market contract. Since individual property rights among female family members in extended families cannot be clearly defined before separation, they compete with each other through non-price criteria, specifically foot binding, to lower information and supervision costs when defining property rights in the future. In this process, foot binding has become a contractual arrangement that constrained competition between wives and concubines, helping family members maintain a relatively stable distribution of internal rights. However, as the ancient Chinese family system disintegrated and the costs of information and supervision declined, the practice of foot binding gradually set on a path of decline and eventual disappearance. Furthermore, this paper not only exposes the shortcomings of game theory and new institutional economics through the development of a non-market contract theory but also critiques existing research that merely views footbinding as a sociocultural or labor phenomenon by reviewing relevant literature and historical data.

The history of footbinding is full of contradictions and unexpected turns. The practice originated in the dance culture of China's medieval court and spread to gentry families, brothels, maid's quarters, and peasant households. Conventional views of footbinding as patriarchal oppression often neglect its complex history and the incentives of the women involved. This revisionist history, elegantly written and meticulously researched, presents a fascinating new picture of the practice from its beginnings in the tenth century to its demise in the twentieth century. Neither condemning nor defending foot-binding, Dorothy Ko debunks many myths and misconceptions about its origins, development, and eventual end, exploring in the process the entanglements of male power and female desires during the practice's thousand-year history.Cinderella's Sistersargues that rather than stemming from sexual perversion, men's desire for bound feet was connected to larger concerns such as cultural nostalgia, regional rivalries, and claims of male privilege. Nor were women hapless victims, the author contends. Ko describes how women-those who could afford it-bound their own and their daughters' feet to signal their high status and self-respect. Femininity, like the binding of feet, was associated with bodily labor and domestic work, and properly bound feet and beautifully made shoes both required exquisite skills and technical knowledge passed from generation to generation. Throughout her narrative, Ko deftly wields methods of social history, literary criticism, material culture studies, and the history of the body and fashion to illustrate how a practice that began as embodied lyricism-as a way to live as the poets imagined-ended up being an exercise in excess and folly.

Background Non-invasive diagnosis of distal tibiofibular syndesmosis instability (DTSI) was a great challenge to clinicians. We designed a new method, the Standing on single foot-Binding test, and investigated the accuracy of the test in the diagnosis of distal tibiofibular syndesmosis instability in adults with a history of ankle injury. Methods 85 participants with ankle injury were subjected to the Standing on single foot-Binding test, MRI and palpation to detect the distal tibiofibular syndesmosis instability (DTSI) and the findings were compared with ankle arthroscopic results. Both participants and arthroscopist were blind to the predicted results of the clinical tests. Sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV, LR+, LR − and their 95% CIs were calculated for each of the clinical tests as well as for the positive clinical diagnosis. Results The Standing on single foot-Binding test (SOSF-B test) outperformed MRI and palpation, in terms of sensitivity (87.5%/84.38%), specificity (86.79%/86.79%), PPV (80%/79.41%), NPV (92%/91.2%), LR+ (6.625/6.39), LR- (0.14/0.18) and diagnostic accuracy (87.06/85.88), among others, in the diagnosis of distal tibiofibular syndesmosis instability (DTSI). The diagnostic performance of 20° SOSF-B test was virtually identical to that of 0° SOSF-B test. According to the prevalence (28.7%) of DTSI and LR of four tests, the post-test probability could be used in clinical practice for the prediction of DTSI. Conclusion This prospective and double-blind diagnostic test showed that the SOSF-B test is clinically feasible for the diagnosis of distal tibiofibular syndesmosis instability (DTSI), and new diagnostic tools for rapid screening of distal tibiofibular syndesmosis instability (DTSI). Level of evidence II.

Afong Moy is believed to be the first Chinese woman to step foot on U.S. soil and her presence sparked an American fascination with Chinese culture, but her experience in the United States was far from welcoming.

Inspired by the discovery of dimeric motor proteins capable of undergoing transportation in living cells, significant efforts have been expended recently to the fabrication of track-walking nanomotors possessing two foot-like components that each can bind or detach from an array of anchorage groups on the track in response to local events of reagent consumption. The central problem in fabricating bipedal nanomotors is how the motor as a whole can gain the synergic capacity of directional track-walking, given the fact that each pedal component alone often is incapable of any directional drift. Implemented bipedal motors to date solve this thermodynamically intricate problem by an intuitive strategy that requires a hetero-pedal motor, multiple anchorage species for the track, and multiple reagent species for motor operation. Here we performed realistic molecular mechanics calculations on molecule-scale models to identify a detailed molecular mechanism by which motor-level directionality arises from a homo-pedal motor along a minimally heterogeneous track. Optimally, the operation may be reduced to a random supply of a single species of reagents to allow the motor's autonomous functioning. The mechanism suggests a distinct class of fabrication targets of drastically reduced system requirements. Intriguingly, a defective form of the mechanism falls into the realm of the well known Brownian motor mechanism, yet distinct features emerge from the normal working of the mechanism.

Social theorists have long recognized that changes in social order have cultural consequences but have not been able to provide an individual-level mechanism of such effects. Explanations of human behavior have only just begun to explore the different evolutionary dynamics of social and cultural inheritance. Here we provide ethnographic evidence of how cultural evolution, at the level of individuals, can be influenced by social evolution. Sociocultural epistasis—association of cultural ideas with the hierarchical structure of social roles—influences cultural change in unexpected ways. We document the existence of cultural exaptation, where a custom's origin was not due to acceptance of the later associated ideas. A cultural exaptation can develop in the absence of a cultural idea favoring it, or even in the presence of a cultural idea against it. Such associations indicate a potentially larger role for social evolutionary dynamics in explaining individual human behavior than previously anticipated.

Footbinding was an infamous custom of the Han Chinese people used to modify the size and shape of feet in women. Binding started at a very young age and gradually deformed the natural growth of the feet, which was not only a painful process but also a lifetime source of inconvenience and morbidity. In this study, we report a large number of skeletons with signs of footbinding bones excavated from the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912 CE) Xifengbu cemetery, Shanxi Province, Northern China. Ninety-three female individuals at Xifengbu were found, of which 74 had footbinding while 19 were free of the tradition. Their age at death ranged from 13 years old to around 60 years old. Interestingly, all of the individuals also came from two feudal families over hundreds of years. All footbinding was identified by type as Talipes Calcaneus. Compared to the non-footbinding group at Xifengbu, the overall size and robustness of the leg bones of the footbinding group were smaller, indicating a weaker leg musculoskeletal system that affected locomotion and physical activities, as well as an increased risk of falls and injuries. Mortuary analysis indicated that footbinding females had a higher economic status than non-footbinding females. However, all non-footbinding females were found from joint burials, indicating their wife or concubine status and thus the acceptance of the non-footbinding during the time of prevalent footbinding in Qing Dynasty rural area. The findings will not only enrich our knowledge of the footbinding practice in ancient China but also shed light on how this gender-biased custom might have compromised health and quality of life for women. Additionally, the findings will show how footbinding may have determined opportunities to different lifestyles in the socioeconomic stratigraphy of the pre-modern male-dominant society in China.

The feet of Taiwanese people, both men and women, went through a variety of experiences during Japanese colonial rule. The bodily practices of the colonised were repeatedly problematised and scrutinised under the Japanese colonial gaze, at the same time as their perception of their own bodies gradually changed with the transformation of society. This study will examine the body experience of the colonised Taiwanese through their feet—bound feet and bare feet—looking at different subjects at different periods of colonisation. It will analyse the process through which the feet of the colonised people were emancipated, domesticated and aestheticised as a result of the cooperation between the colonial authorities and the local elites as well as literary, cultural and iconographic representation.