Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing Dynasty China PDF Download

Author: Matthew H. Sommer
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520287037
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description
Polyandry. "Getting a husband to support a husband." Attitudes of families, communities, and women toward polyandry. The intermediate range of practice -- Wife-selling. Anatomy of a wife sale. Analysis of prices in wife sales. Negotiations between men in wife sales. Wives, natal families, and children. Four variations on a theme -- Polyandry and wife-selling in Qing law. Formal law and central court interpretation from Ming through high Qing. Absolutism versus pragmatism in central court treatment of wife sales. Flexible adjudication of routine cases in the local courts.

Author: Matthew H. Sommer
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520962192
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 493

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Book Description
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.

Author: Matthew Harvey Sommer
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804745595
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 868

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Book Description
This study of the regulation of sexuality in the Qing dynasty explores the social context for sexual behavior criminalized by the state, showing how regulation shifted away from status to a new regime of gender that mandated a uniform standard of sexual morality and criminal liability for all people, regardless of their social status.

Author: Johanna S. Ransmeier
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 067497719X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
A robust trade in human lives thrived throughout North China during the late Qing and Republican periods. Whether to acquire servants, slaves, concubines, or children—or dispose of unwanted household members—families at all levels of society addressed various domestic needs by participating in this market. Sold People brings into focus the complicit dynamic of human trafficking, including the social and legal networks that sustained it. Johanna Ransmeier reveals the extent to which the structure of the Chinese family not only influenced but encouraged the buying and selling of men, women, and children. For centuries, human trafficking had an ambiguous status in Chinese society. Prohibited in principle during the Qing period, it was nevertheless widely accepted as part of family life, despite the frequent involvement of criminals. In 1910, Qing reformers, hoping to usher China into the community of modern nations, officially abolished the trade. But police and other judicial officials found the new law extremely difficult to enforce. Industrialization, urbanization, and the development of modern transportation systems created a breeding ground for continued commerce in people. The Republican government that came to power after the 1911 revolution similarly struggled to root out the entrenched practice. Ransmeier draws from untapped archival sources to recreate the lived experience of human trafficking in turn-of-the-century North China. Not always a measure of last resort reserved for times of extreme hardship, the sale of people was a commonplace transaction that built and restructured families as often as it broke them apart.

Author: Mark McNicholas
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295806230
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
Across eighteenth-century China a wide range of common people forged government documents or pretended to be officials or other agents of the state. This examination of case records and law codes traces the legal meanings and social and political contexts of small-time swindles that were punished as grave political transgressions.

Author: Michael Szonyi
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118624602
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 475

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Book Description
A Companion to Chinese History presents a collection of essays offering a comprehensive overview of the latest intellectual developments in the study of China’s history from the ancient past up until the present day. Covers the major trends in the study of Chinese history from antiquity to the present day Considers the latest scholarship of historians working in China and around the world Explores a variety of long-range questions and themes which serves to bridge the conventional divide between China’s traditional and modern eras Addresses China’s connections with other nations and regions and enables non-specialists to make comparisons with their own fields Features discussion of traditional topics and chronological approaches as well as newer themes such as Chinese history in relation to sexuality, national identity, and the environment

Author: Chuck Wooldridge
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295805986
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Throughout Nanjing’s history, writers have claimed that its spectacular landscape of mountains and rivers imbued the city with “royal qi,” making it a place of great political significance. City of Virtues examines the ways a series of visionaries, drawing on past glories of the city, projected their ideologies onto Nanjing as they constructed buildings, performed rituals, and reworked the literary heritage of the city. More than an urban history of Nanjing from the late 18th century until 1911 — encompassing the Opium War, the Taiping occupation of the city, the rebuilding of the city by Zeng Guofan, and attempts to establish it as the capital of the Republic of China — this study shows how utopian visions of the cosmos shaped Nanjing’s path through the turbulent 19th century.

Author: Lisa Sousa
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 1503601110
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 423

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Book Description
This book is an ambitious and wide-ranging social and cultural history of gender relations among indigenous peoples of New Spain, from the Spanish conquest through the first half of the eighteenth century. In this expansive account, Lisa Sousa focuses on four native groups in highland Mexico—the Nahua, Mixtec, Zapotec, and Mixe—and traces cross-cultural similarities and differences in the roles and status attributed to women in prehispanic and colonial Mesoamerica. Sousa intricately renders the full complexity of women's life experiences in the household and community, from the significance of their names, age, and social standing, to their identities, ethnicities, family, dress, work, roles, sexuality, acts of resistance, and relationships with men and other women. Drawing on a rich collection of archival, textual, and pictorial sources, she traces the shifts in women's economic, political, and social standing to evaluate the influence of Spanish ideologies on native attitudes and practices around sex and gender in the first several generations after contact. Though catastrophic depopulation, economic pressures, and the imposition of Christianity slowly eroded indigenous women's status following the Spanish conquest, Sousa argues that gender relations nevertheless remained more complementary than patriarchal, with women maintaining a unique position across the first two centuries of colonial rule.

Author: Nancy A. Naples
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1119315050
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 535

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Book Description
An inclusive and accessible resource on the interdisciplinary study of gender and sexuality Companion to Sexuality Studies explores the significant theories, concepts, themes, events, and debates of the interdisciplinary study of sexuality in a broad range of cultural, social, and political contexts. Bringing together essays by an international team of experts from diverse academic backgrounds, this comprehensive volume provides original insights and fresh perspectives on the history and institutional regulatory processes that socially construct sex and sexuality and examines the movements for social justice that advance sexual citizenship and reproductive rights. Detailed yet accessible chapters explore the intersection of sexuality studies and fields such as science, health, psychology, economics, environmental studies, and social movements over different periods of time and in different social and national contexts. Divided into five parts, the Companion first discusses the theoretical and methodological diversity of sexuality studies.Subsequent chapters address the fields of health, science and psychology, religion, education and the economy. They also include attention to sexuality as constructed in popular culture, as well as global activism, sexual citizenship, policy, and law. An essential overview and an important addition to scholarship in the field, this book: Draws on international, postcolonial, intersectional, and interdisciplinary insights from scholars working on sexuality studies around the world Provides a comprehensive overview of the field of sexuality studies Offers a diverse range of topics, themes, and perspectives from leading authorities Focuses on the study of sexuality from the late nineteenth century to the present Includes an overview of the history and academic institutionalization of sexuality studies The Companion to Sexuality Studies is an indispensable resource for scholars, researchers, instructors, and students in gender, sexuality, and feminist studies, interdisciplinary programs in cultural studies, international studies, and human rights, as well as disciplines such as anthropology, psychology, history, education, human geography, political science, and sociology.

Author: Teresa A. Meade
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470692820
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 691

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Book Description
A Companion to Gender History surveys the history of womenaround the world, studies their interaction with men in genderedsocieties, and looks at the role of gender in shaping humanbehavior over thousands of years. An extensive survey of the history of women around the world,their interaction with men, and the role of gender in shaping humanbehavior over thousands of years. Discusses family history, the history of the body andsexuality, and cultural history alongside women’s history andgender history. Considers the importance of class, region, ethnicity, race andreligion to the formation of gendered societies. Contains both thematic essays and chronological-geographicessays. Gives due weight to pre-history and the pre-modern era as wellas to the modern era. Written by scholars from across the English-speaking world andscholars for whom English is not their first language.