Kate Bagnall and Julia T. Martínez (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- January 2022
- ISBN:
- 9789888528615
- eISBN:
- 9789888268658
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888528615.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
This ground-breaking edited collection draws together Australian historical scholarship on Chinese women, their gendered migrations, and their mobile lives between China and Australia. It considers ...
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This ground-breaking edited collection draws together Australian historical scholarship on Chinese women, their gendered migrations, and their mobile lives between China and Australia. It considers different aspects of women’s lives, both as individuals and as the wives and daughters of immigrant men. While the number of Chinese women in Australia before 1950 was relatively small, their presence was significant and often subject to public scrutiny.
Moving beyond traditional representations of women as hidden and silent, this book demonstrates that Chinese Australian women in the twentieth century expressed themselves in the public eye, whether through writings, in photographs, or in political and cultural life. Their remarkable stories are often inspiring and sometimes tragic and serve to demonstrate the complexities of navigating female lives in the face of racial politics and imposed categories of gender, culture, and class.
Historians of transnational Chinese migration have come to recognize Australia as a crucial site within the ‘Cantonese Pacific’, and this collection provides a new layer of gendered comparison, connecting women’s experiences in Australia with those in Canada, the United States, and New Zealand.Less
This ground-breaking edited collection draws together Australian historical scholarship on Chinese women, their gendered migrations, and their mobile lives between China and Australia. It considers different aspects of women’s lives, both as individuals and as the wives and daughters of immigrant men. While the number of Chinese women in Australia before 1950 was relatively small, their presence was significant and often subject to public scrutiny.
Moving beyond traditional representations of women as hidden and silent, this book demonstrates that Chinese Australian women in the twentieth century expressed themselves in the public eye, whether through writings, in photographs, or in political and cultural life. Their remarkable stories are often inspiring and sometimes tragic and serve to demonstrate the complexities of navigating female lives in the face of racial politics and imposed categories of gender, culture, and class.
Historians of transnational Chinese migration have come to recognize Australia as a crucial site within the ‘Cantonese Pacific’, and this collection provides a new layer of gendered comparison, connecting women’s experiences in Australia with those in Canada, the United States, and New Zealand.
Kirk A. Denton
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9789888528578
- eISBN:
- 9789888528905
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888528578.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
The Landscape of Historical Memory explores the place of museums and memorial culture in the contestation over historical memory in post–martial law Taiwan. The book is particularly oriented toward ...
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The Landscape of Historical Memory explores the place of museums and memorial culture in the contestation over historical memory in post–martial law Taiwan. The book is particularly oriented toward the role of politics—especially political parties—in the establishment, administration, architectural design, and historical narratives of museums. It is framed around the wrangling between the “blue camp” (the Nationalist Party, or KMT, and its supporters) and the “green camp” (Democratic Progressive Party, DPP), and its supporters) over what facets of the past should be remembered and how they should be displayed in museums. Organized into chapters focused on particular types of museums and memorial spaces (archaeology museums, history museums, martyrs’ shrines, war museums, memorial halls, literature museums, ethnology museums, ecomuseums, etc.), the book presents a broad overview of the state of museums in Taiwan in the past three decades. The case of Taiwan museums tells us much about Cold War politics and its legacy in East Asia; the role of culture, history, and memory in shaping identities in the multiply “postcolonial” landscape of Taiwan; the politics of historical memory in an emergent democracy, especially in counterpoint to the politics of museums in the People’s Republic of China, which continues to be an authoritarian single party state; and the place of museums in a neoliberal economic climate.Less
The Landscape of Historical Memory explores the place of museums and memorial culture in the contestation over historical memory in post–martial law Taiwan. The book is particularly oriented toward the role of politics—especially political parties—in the establishment, administration, architectural design, and historical narratives of museums. It is framed around the wrangling between the “blue camp” (the Nationalist Party, or KMT, and its supporters) and the “green camp” (Democratic Progressive Party, DPP), and its supporters) over what facets of the past should be remembered and how they should be displayed in museums. Organized into chapters focused on particular types of museums and memorial spaces (archaeology museums, history museums, martyrs’ shrines, war museums, memorial halls, literature museums, ethnology museums, ecomuseums, etc.), the book presents a broad overview of the state of museums in Taiwan in the past three decades. The case of Taiwan museums tells us much about Cold War politics and its legacy in East Asia; the role of culture, history, and memory in shaping identities in the multiply “postcolonial” landscape of Taiwan; the politics of historical memory in an emergent democracy, especially in counterpoint to the politics of museums in the People’s Republic of China, which continues to be an authoritarian single party state; and the place of museums in a neoliberal economic climate.
Hiu Yu Cheung
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9789888528585
- eISBN:
- 9789888268535
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888528585.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
By focusing on the Imperial Temple, this book explores the making of ancestral ritual norms by looking into the ritual debates in the imperial courts of Song China (960–1279). It argues that court ...
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By focusing on the Imperial Temple, this book explores the making of ancestral ritual norms by looking into the ritual debates in the imperial courts of Song China (960–1279). It argues that court ritual debates empowered the Song scholar-officials (shidafu士大夫) with the cultural authority to confront the state and reshape society. In particular, the two discourses of filial piety and political merits played crucial role in Song court ritual debates over the Imperial Temple. Both discourses had a tremendous influence on the ancestral practices of later societies. In addition, this book offers a new perspective to examine the intellectual dimension of Song factionalism, in which the ritual interests of Song scholar-officials were more associated with their scholarly backgrounds than their political stances or affiliations. In the Song ritual discourses of the Imperial Temple, scholar-officials rendered a separate intellectual identity that transcended the boundaries of not only factional politics but also the strictly defined “schools” (xuepai學派) of Song scholarship. In terms of intellectual identity, Song scholar-officials are more eclectic than historians have previously thought, if ritual interest is taken into consideration. From this perspective, the book examines Song scholars’ ritual discussions on the Imperial Temple, especially those scholars who have been conventionally categorized with the New Learning (xinxue新學) school and the Learning of the Way (Daoxue 道學) fellowship.Less
By focusing on the Imperial Temple, this book explores the making of ancestral ritual norms by looking into the ritual debates in the imperial courts of Song China (960–1279). It argues that court ritual debates empowered the Song scholar-officials (shidafu士大夫) with the cultural authority to confront the state and reshape society. In particular, the two discourses of filial piety and political merits played crucial role in Song court ritual debates over the Imperial Temple. Both discourses had a tremendous influence on the ancestral practices of later societies. In addition, this book offers a new perspective to examine the intellectual dimension of Song factionalism, in which the ritual interests of Song scholar-officials were more associated with their scholarly backgrounds than their political stances or affiliations. In the Song ritual discourses of the Imperial Temple, scholar-officials rendered a separate intellectual identity that transcended the boundaries of not only factional politics but also the strictly defined “schools” (xuepai學派) of Song scholarship. In terms of intellectual identity, Song scholar-officials are more eclectic than historians have previously thought, if ritual interest is taken into consideration. From this perspective, the book examines Song scholars’ ritual discussions on the Imperial Temple, especially those scholars who have been conventionally categorized with the New Learning (xinxue新學) school and the Learning of the Way (Daoxue 道學) fellowship.
Francisca Yuenki Lai
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9789888528332
- eISBN:
- 9789888268115
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888528332.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gay and Lesbian Studies
The first book about Asian female migrant workers who develop same-sex relationships in a host city. Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews with Indonesian domestic workers in Hong ...
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The first book about Asian female migrant workers who develop same-sex relationships in a host city. Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews with Indonesian domestic workers in Hong Kong, the book explores the meanings of same-sex relationships to these migrant women. Instead of searching for reasons to explain why they engage in a same-sex relationship, the book provides an ethnographic perspective by addressing their Sunday activities and considering how migration policies and the practices of Hong Kong people unintentionally produce alternative sexuality and desires for them. The author contrasts the migrant experiences of same-sex relationships with the Western discourse that individuals carry a strong sense of sexual identification prior to migration; same-sex desires among Indonesian domestic workers are often not realized until they leave home. Addressing the changes from maid to queer, this book documents the intersections of domestic work, labor migration, race, and religion on the sexual subject formation, specifically how Indonesian women negotiate heteronormativity and remake a space for their love, sex, and intimacy. The book aims to create a dialogue between Asian labor migration and LGBT studies. For those interested in lesbian studies, Asian labor migration, sexual citizenship, and queer migration, this ethnography fills an important gap in explaining how the feminization of international migration and the constraints imposed on live-in domestic workers unintentionally become productive possibilities of queerness and normativity.Less
The first book about Asian female migrant workers who develop same-sex relationships in a host city. Based on participant observation and in-depth interviews with Indonesian domestic workers in Hong Kong, the book explores the meanings of same-sex relationships to these migrant women. Instead of searching for reasons to explain why they engage in a same-sex relationship, the book provides an ethnographic perspective by addressing their Sunday activities and considering how migration policies and the practices of Hong Kong people unintentionally produce alternative sexuality and desires for them. The author contrasts the migrant experiences of same-sex relationships with the Western discourse that individuals carry a strong sense of sexual identification prior to migration; same-sex desires among Indonesian domestic workers are often not realized until they leave home. Addressing the changes from maid to queer, this book documents the intersections of domestic work, labor migration, race, and religion on the sexual subject formation, specifically how Indonesian women negotiate heteronormativity and remake a space for their love, sex, and intimacy. The book aims to create a dialogue between Asian labor migration and LGBT studies. For those interested in lesbian studies, Asian labor migration, sexual citizenship, and queer migration, this ethnography fills an important gap in explaining how the feminization of international migration and the constraints imposed on live-in domestic workers unintentionally become productive possibilities of queerness and normativity.
Susan E. Schopp
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9789888528509
- eISBN:
- 9789888180110
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888528509.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
Sino-French Trade at Canton, 1698–1842 fills a gap in Canton Trade scholarship with this new account of France’s near century-and-a-half experience in that trade. From the distinctive features of the ...
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Sino-French Trade at Canton, 1698–1842 fills a gap in Canton Trade scholarship with this new account of France’s near century-and-a-half experience in that trade. From the distinctive features of the Sino-French trade model to vessels and sea routes, from the physical environment of the Pearl River Delta and the structure of the French hongs in Canton to the daily life of traders, the author draws on both French and other archival sources to bring the history to life, and challenges a number of common assumptions about both the French experience and the Canton Trade in the process. The French were early to engage in direct trade at Canton, and their movements were closely watched by their rivals; in addition, their contributions to the trade were both significant and diverse, ranging from the cultural to the nautical. The French East India Company, which was the product of an absolute monarchy, was distinctive for the dominant role played in its operations by the state. Yet this did not prevent legitimate private trade from playing a sometimes surprising role. Written in a reader-friendly style, Sino-French Trade at Canton, 1698–1842 will appeal to audiences interested in the Canton Trade, early modern Chinese history, shipping history, and cross-cultural encounters. Appendices provide a list of all known French voyages between 1698 and 1842, as well as a listing of French return cargoes from China in 1766.Less
Sino-French Trade at Canton, 1698–1842 fills a gap in Canton Trade scholarship with this new account of France’s near century-and-a-half experience in that trade. From the distinctive features of the Sino-French trade model to vessels and sea routes, from the physical environment of the Pearl River Delta and the structure of the French hongs in Canton to the daily life of traders, the author draws on both French and other archival sources to bring the history to life, and challenges a number of common assumptions about both the French experience and the Canton Trade in the process. The French were early to engage in direct trade at Canton, and their movements were closely watched by their rivals; in addition, their contributions to the trade were both significant and diverse, ranging from the cultural to the nautical. The French East India Company, which was the product of an absolute monarchy, was distinctive for the dominant role played in its operations by the state. Yet this did not prevent legitimate private trade from playing a sometimes surprising role. Written in a reader-friendly style, Sino-French Trade at Canton, 1698–1842 will appeal to audiences interested in the Canton Trade, early modern Chinese history, shipping history, and cross-cultural encounters. Appendices provide a list of all known French voyages between 1698 and 1842, as well as a listing of French return cargoes from China in 1766.
Dennis Lo
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9789888528516
- eISBN:
- 9789888180028
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888528516.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The Authorship of Place is the first monograph dedicated to the study of the politics, history, aesthetics, and practices of location shooting for Taiwanese, Mainland Chinese, and coproduced art ...
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The Authorship of Place is the first monograph dedicated to the study of the politics, history, aesthetics, and practices of location shooting for Taiwanese, Mainland Chinese, and coproduced art cinemas shot in rural communities since the late 1970s. Lo argues that rural location shooting, beyond serving aesthetic and technical needs, constitutes practices of cultural survival in a region beset with disruptive social changes, including rapid urbanization, geopolitical shifts, and ecological crises. In response to these social changes, auteurs like Hou Xiaoxian, Jia Zhangke, Chen Kaige, and Li Xing transformed sites of film production into symbolically meaningful places of collective memories and aspirations. These production practices ultimately enabled auteurs to experiment with imagining communities in novel and contentious ways.
Guiding readers on a cross-strait tour of prominent shooting locations for the New Chinese Cinemas, this book shows how auteurs sought out their disappearing cultural heritage by reenacting lived experiences of nation building, homecoming, and cultural salvage while shooting on-location. This was an especially daunting task when auteurs encountered the shooting locations as spaces of unresolved historical, social, and geopolitical contestations, tensions which were only intensified by the impact of filmmaking on rural communities. This book demonstrates how complex circumstances surrounding location shooting were pivotal in shaping representations of the rural on-screen, as well as the production communities, institutions, and industries off-screen. Bringing together cutting-edge perspectives in cultural geography and media anthropology, this work revises Chinese film history and theorizes ground-breaking approaches for investigating the cultural politics of film authorship and production.Less
The Authorship of Place is the first monograph dedicated to the study of the politics, history, aesthetics, and practices of location shooting for Taiwanese, Mainland Chinese, and coproduced art cinemas shot in rural communities since the late 1970s. Lo argues that rural location shooting, beyond serving aesthetic and technical needs, constitutes practices of cultural survival in a region beset with disruptive social changes, including rapid urbanization, geopolitical shifts, and ecological crises. In response to these social changes, auteurs like Hou Xiaoxian, Jia Zhangke, Chen Kaige, and Li Xing transformed sites of film production into symbolically meaningful places of collective memories and aspirations. These production practices ultimately enabled auteurs to experiment with imagining communities in novel and contentious ways.
Guiding readers on a cross-strait tour of prominent shooting locations for the New Chinese Cinemas, this book shows how auteurs sought out their disappearing cultural heritage by reenacting lived experiences of nation building, homecoming, and cultural salvage while shooting on-location. This was an especially daunting task when auteurs encountered the shooting locations as spaces of unresolved historical, social, and geopolitical contestations, tensions which were only intensified by the impact of filmmaking on rural communities. This book demonstrates how complex circumstances surrounding location shooting were pivotal in shaping representations of the rural on-screen, as well as the production communities, institutions, and industries off-screen. Bringing together cutting-edge perspectives in cultural geography and media anthropology, this work revises Chinese film history and theorizes ground-breaking approaches for investigating the cultural politics of film authorship and production.
Eika Tai
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9789888528455
- eISBN:
- 9789882209930
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888528455.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
Based on extensive ethnographic work, Comfort Women Activism examines how women activists in Japan, Japanese and Koreans, have come to understand the comfort women issue. The movement in Japan has ...
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Based on extensive ethnographic work, Comfort Women Activism examines how women activists in Japan, Japanese and Koreans, have come to understand the comfort women issue. The movement in Japan has evolved as part of transnational activism, in which the activists in Japan play a crucial role in lobbying legislators and generating public opinion conducive to the state’s compensation. By presenting the activists’ narratives, the book illuminates the nuanced understandings of the issue they have developed through face-to-face communication with survivors. Their diverse voices shed light on the multifaceted aspects of the movement. The book also provides an account of the movement’s thirty-year history and an overview of scholarly arguments presented in Japanese. Many of the activists’ thoughts are relevant to scholarly debates on the comfort women issue, exemplifying, substantiating, and commenting on what researchers have said. By measuring the activist narratives against scholarly debates, the book argues that comfort women activism in Japan is a new form of feminism characterized by critical historical consciousness; the intersectionality of gender, ethnicity, and class; mutual transformation; and transnational solidarity. Most importantly, it argues that women activists in Japan, a former colonial empire, have avoided falling into imperialist feminism through the act of listening to survivors wholeheartedly.Less
Based on extensive ethnographic work, Comfort Women Activism examines how women activists in Japan, Japanese and Koreans, have come to understand the comfort women issue. The movement in Japan has evolved as part of transnational activism, in which the activists in Japan play a crucial role in lobbying legislators and generating public opinion conducive to the state’s compensation. By presenting the activists’ narratives, the book illuminates the nuanced understandings of the issue they have developed through face-to-face communication with survivors. Their diverse voices shed light on the multifaceted aspects of the movement. The book also provides an account of the movement’s thirty-year history and an overview of scholarly arguments presented in Japanese. Many of the activists’ thoughts are relevant to scholarly debates on the comfort women issue, exemplifying, substantiating, and commenting on what researchers have said. By measuring the activist narratives against scholarly debates, the book argues that comfort women activism in Japan is a new form of feminism characterized by critical historical consciousness; the intersectionality of gender, ethnicity, and class; mutual transformation; and transnational solidarity. Most importantly, it argues that women activists in Japan, a former colonial empire, have avoided falling into imperialist feminism through the act of listening to survivors wholeheartedly.
Jing Meng
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9789888528462
- eISBN:
- 9789888053490
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888528462.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book explores the way personal memories and micro-narratives of the Cultural Revolution are represented in post-2001 films and television dramas in mainland China, unravelling the complex ...
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This book explores the way personal memories and micro-narratives of the Cultural Revolution are represented in post-2001 films and television dramas in mainland China, unravelling the complex political, social and cultural forces imbricated within the personalized narrative modes of remembering the past in postsocialist China. While representations of personal stories mushroomed after the Culture Revolution, the deepened marketization and privatization after 2001 have triggered a new wave of representations of personal memories on screen, which divert from those earlier allegorical narratives and are more sentimental, fragmented and nostalgic. The personalized reminiscences of the past suggest an alternative narrative to official history and grand narratives, and at the same time, by promoting the sentiment of nostalgia, they also become a marketing strategy. Rather than perceiving the rising micro-narratives as either homogeneous or autonomous, this book argues that they often embody disparate qualities and potentials. Moreover, the various micro-narratives and personal memories at play facilitate fresh understandings of China’s socialist past and postsocialist present: the legacies of socialism continue to influence China, constituting the postsocialist reality that accommodates different ideologies and temporalities.Less
This book explores the way personal memories and micro-narratives of the Cultural Revolution are represented in post-2001 films and television dramas in mainland China, unravelling the complex political, social and cultural forces imbricated within the personalized narrative modes of remembering the past in postsocialist China. While representations of personal stories mushroomed after the Culture Revolution, the deepened marketization and privatization after 2001 have triggered a new wave of representations of personal memories on screen, which divert from those earlier allegorical narratives and are more sentimental, fragmented and nostalgic. The personalized reminiscences of the past suggest an alternative narrative to official history and grand narratives, and at the same time, by promoting the sentiment of nostalgia, they also become a marketing strategy. Rather than perceiving the rising micro-narratives as either homogeneous or autonomous, this book argues that they often embody disparate qualities and potentials. Moreover, the various micro-narratives and personal memories at play facilitate fresh understandings of China’s socialist past and postsocialist present: the legacies of socialism continue to influence China, constituting the postsocialist reality that accommodates different ideologies and temporalities.
Xiaofei Tian (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9789888528448
- eISBN:
- 9789882209916
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888528448.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This is the first collection of English essays on Du Fu, commonly regarded the greatest Chinese poet. Contributed by well-known experts of Chinese literature as well as scholars of a younger ...
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This is the first collection of English essays on Du Fu, commonly regarded the greatest Chinese poet. Contributed by well-known experts of Chinese literature as well as scholars of a younger generation, these essays are engaged in historically nuanced close reading of Du Fu’s poems, both canonical and less known, from new angles and in various contexts. They discuss a series of critical issues, including the local and the imperial; the body politic and the individual body; poetry and geography; perspectives on the complicated relation of religion and literature; materiality and contemporary reception of Du Fu; poetry and visual art; tradition and modernity. Many of the poems analyzed in the volume were written in the backwater Kuizhou, far from Du Fu’s earlier residence in the capital city Chang’an, at a time when the Tang dynasty was going through devastating social and political disturbances. The authors contend that Du Fu’s isolation from the elite literary establishments allowed him to become a pioneer who introduced a new order to the Chinese poetic discourse. However, his attention to details in everyday reality, his preoccupation with domestic life and the larger issues embroiled in it, his humor, and his ability to surprise tend to be obscured by the clichéd image of the “poet sage” and “poet historian”—an image this collection of essays successfully complicates.Less
This is the first collection of English essays on Du Fu, commonly regarded the greatest Chinese poet. Contributed by well-known experts of Chinese literature as well as scholars of a younger generation, these essays are engaged in historically nuanced close reading of Du Fu’s poems, both canonical and less known, from new angles and in various contexts. They discuss a series of critical issues, including the local and the imperial; the body politic and the individual body; poetry and geography; perspectives on the complicated relation of religion and literature; materiality and contemporary reception of Du Fu; poetry and visual art; tradition and modernity. Many of the poems analyzed in the volume were written in the backwater Kuizhou, far from Du Fu’s earlier residence in the capital city Chang’an, at a time when the Tang dynasty was going through devastating social and political disturbances. The authors contend that Du Fu’s isolation from the elite literary establishments allowed him to become a pioneer who introduced a new order to the Chinese poetic discourse. However, his attention to details in everyday reality, his preoccupation with domestic life and the larger issues embroiled in it, his humor, and his ability to surprise tend to be obscured by the clichéd image of the “poet sage” and “poet historian”—an image this collection of essays successfully complicates.
Magdalena Wong
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9789888528424
- eISBN:
- 9789882203570
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789888528424.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
Everyday Masculinities in 21st-Century China: The Making of Able-Responsible Men argues that a moral dimension in Chinese masculinity is of growing significance in fast-changing China. The author ...
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Everyday Masculinities in 21st-Century China: The Making of Able-Responsible Men argues that a moral dimension in Chinese masculinity is of growing significance in fast-changing China. The author introduces the twin concepts of ability and responsibility as integral expressions of the dominant and hegemonic form of masculinity in present-day Nanchong. Able-responsible men—those who can create wealth and shoulder responsibilities—have replaced the 'moneyed elite' of the earlier reform-and-opening-up era as the dominant male ideal. The many case studies in the book vividly illustrate the coercive social forces that affect not just men and boys, but also women, and reveal that there is resistance as well as complicity. The book lays bare the socio-political context that nurtures the cultural expressions of hegemonic masculinity under the rule of President Xi Jinping, who has emerged in public consciousness as the embodiment of the ideal able-responsible man. There are new perspectives on many topical issues that China faces, including urbanization, labour migration, the one-child policy, love and marriage, gender and intergenerational dynamics, hierarchical male relationships, and the rise of mass displays of nationalism. The book is a rare effort to answer the question, 'Is there an indigenous Chinese masculinity?'Less
Everyday Masculinities in 21st-Century China: The Making of Able-Responsible Men argues that a moral dimension in Chinese masculinity is of growing significance in fast-changing China. The author introduces the twin concepts of ability and responsibility as integral expressions of the dominant and hegemonic form of masculinity in present-day Nanchong. Able-responsible men—those who can create wealth and shoulder responsibilities—have replaced the 'moneyed elite' of the earlier reform-and-opening-up era as the dominant male ideal. The many case studies in the book vividly illustrate the coercive social forces that affect not just men and boys, but also women, and reveal that there is resistance as well as complicity. The book lays bare the socio-political context that nurtures the cultural expressions of hegemonic masculinity under the rule of President Xi Jinping, who has emerged in public consciousness as the embodiment of the ideal able-responsible man. There are new perspectives on many topical issues that China faces, including urbanization, labour migration, the one-child policy, love and marriage, gender and intergenerational dynamics, hierarchical male relationships, and the rise of mass displays of nationalism. The book is a rare effort to answer the question, 'Is there an indigenous Chinese masculinity?'