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Merchants' Daughters: Women, Commerce, and Regional Culture in South China

Online ISBN:
9789882207189
Print ISBN:
9789622099692
Publisher:
Hong Kong University Press
Book

Merchants' Daughters: Women, Commerce, and Regional Culture in South China

Published:
1 June 2010
Online ISBN:
9789882207189
Print ISBN:
9789622099692
Publisher:
Hong Kong University Press

Abstract

Historians and anthropologists have long been interested in South China where powerful lineages and gendered hierarchies are juxtaposed with unorthodox trading cultures, multi-ethnic colonial encounters, and market-driven consumption. The divergent paths taken by women in Hong Kong and Guangdong during thirty years of Maoist closure, and the post-reform cross-border fluidities have also gained analytical attention. This book provides further theoretical application of a “regional construct” that appreciates process, transcends definitive powers of administrative borders, and brings out nuanced gender notions. The book uses fine-grained historical and ethnographic materials to map out three crucial historical junctures in the evolution of South China, from late imperial to contemporary periods that have significantly shaped the construction of gendered space. Stressing process and human agency, this book uses women's experiences to challenge dichotomous analytical perspectives on lineage patriarchy, colonial institutions, power, and social activism. The book refocuses attention on cultural dynamics in the South China region of which Hong Kong is an integral part, and illuminates the analytical importance of long historical periods in which layers of social, political, and economic activities intersected to constitute the complicated positioning of women.

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