Browse

It is now almost a cliché to claim that China and the Chinese people have changed. Yet inside the new clothing that is worn by the Chinese man today, Kam Louie contends, we still see much of the historical Chinese man. With contributions from a team of outstanding scholars, Changing Chinese Masculinities studies a range of Chinese men in diverse and, most importantly, Chinese contexts. It explores the fundamental meaning of manhood in the Chinese setting and the very notion of an indigenous Chinese masculinity. In twelve chapters spanning the late imperial period to the present day, Changing Chinese Masculinities brings a much needed historical dimension to the discussion. Key aspects defining the male identity such as family relationships and attitudes toward sex, class, and career are explored in depth. Familiar notions of Chinese manhood come in all shapes and sizes. Concubinage reemerges as the taking of “second wives” in recent decades. Male homoerotic love and male prostitution are shown to have long historical roots. The self-images of the literati and officials form an interesting contrast with those of the contemporary white-collar men. Masculinity and nationalism complement each other in troubling ways. China has indeed changed and is still changing, but most of these social transformations do not indicate a complete break with past beliefs or practices in gender relations. Changing Chinese Masculinities inaugurates the Hong Kong University Press book series “Transnational Asian Masculinities.”

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?'

First Queer Voices from Thailand: Uncle Go’s Advice Columns for Gays, Lesbians and Kathoeys is a fully revised and substantially expanded edition of Peter Jackson’s pioneering study of an Asian gay culture, Male Homosexuality in Thailand (1989). The hero of Jackson’s narrative is “Uncle Go”, pen-name of the sexually libertarian but avowedly heterosexual editor of a popular magazine, whose “agony uncle” columns in the 1970s provided unique spaces in the national press for Thailand’s gays, lesbians and transgenders (kathoeys) to speak for themselves in the public domain. By allowing the voices of alternative sexualities to be heard, Uncle Go emerged as Thailand’s first champion of gender equality and sexual rights. Peter Jackson translates and analyzes selected correspondence from Uncle Go’s advice columns, preserving and presenting important primary sources. In this new edition, Jackson expands his coverage to include not only letters from Thai gay men, but also those from lesbians and transgenders, thus capturing the full diversity of Thailand’s modern queer cultures at a key moment in their historical development when new understandings of sexual identity were first communicated to the wider community.

This book is an ethnography of feminism and women's movements in post-1997 Hong Kong. It shifts our analyses away from the confines of women's participation in state and inter-state structures and institutions, to incorporate women's mobilization of disadvantaged and disaffected women, the majority of whom are culturally and ethnically distinct groups of women from Mainland China as well as South and Southeast Asia. It is when women activists are reflecting upon more extensive and inclusive representations of feminism to overcome hierarchies of class, gender, ethnicity, and nationality that we observe multiple and contradictory dynamics of power. Building on the developments in scholarship on transnational feminism, this book reveals, not only the historical and experiential specificities of and differences in women's lives, but the historical and experiential connections among women from different class backgrounds as well as ethnic and national communities in Hong Kong. This challenges us to articulate feminism as constituted in, and by, women's relations to one another, not only on the basis of difference, but in terms of concomitance, interaction, and mutuality.