Lineage Society on the Southeastern Coast of China
| Author | : Ivy Maria Lim |
| Publisher | : |
| Total Pages | : 390 |
| Release | : 2010 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 9781604977271 |
Sixteenth-century China experienced an economic transformation which saw the spread of commercialization and a consumerist material culture that pervaded all aspects of life. As society began to respond to the economic transformation, the ideology and culture of patriarchal descent-line ethics, hitherto an urban, literati trend, began to find resonance among up-and-coming literati families within rural communities. By the end of the sixteenth century, Chinese society, especially in the Jiangnan region and along the southeastern coast, had began to make the transition from the lijia system of household registration into corporate groups overtly organized by kinship relations and unified by the common symbols of the ancestral hall, lineage trust estates, compilation of lineage genealogies and in the symbolic performance of ancestral sacrificial rituals. This is the first study that takes the innovative and unique approach of linking the rise of lineage organization in Haining, Zhejiang province, to wokou activity. By using Haining as the geographical focus of research, this study provides a good comparative study to published works on Chinese lineage organization which had focused largely on Guangdong, Fujian and Anhui provinces. Through the use of previously un-utilized genealogical records of the lineages resident in Haining, the story of how the local groups in Haining responded to the wokou raids through adopting imperially sanctioned ritual practices and cultural symbols to negotiate the transformation of their local communities into the Neo-Confucian model of corporate family organization emerges. The impact of this transitional process within the local community is extrapolated in the case studies of inter-lineage and intra-lineage conflicts. At the same time, the true extent and impact of the wokou crisis, long held by scholars to be of devastating effect on the Ming polity, is also re-examined. Lineage Society on the Southeastern Coast of China is an important book for Asian studies and history collections.
Dislocating China
| Author | : Dru C. Gladney |
| Publisher | : University of Chicago Press |
| Total Pages | : 440 |
| Release | : 2004-04 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 9780226297767 |
Until quite recently, Western scholars have tended to accept the Chinese representation of non-Han groups as marginalized minorities. Dru C. Gladney challenges this simplistic view, arguing instead that the very oppositions of majority and minority, primitive and modern, are historically constructed and are belied by examination of such disenfranchised groups as Muslims, minorities, or gendered others. Gladney locates China and Chinese culture not in some unchanging, essential "Chinese-ness," but in the context of historical and contemporary multicultural complexity. He investigates how this complexity plays out among a variety of places and groups, examining representations of minorities and majorities in art, movies, and theme parks; the invention of folklore and creation myths; the role of pilgrimages in constructing local identities; and the impact of globalization and economic reforms on non-Han groups such as the Muslim Hui. In the end, Gladney argues that just as peoples in the West have defined themselves against ethnic others, so too have the Chinese defined themselves against marginalized groups in their own society.
The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean: Volume 1, The Pacific Ocean to 1800
| Author | : Ryan Tucker Jones |
| Publisher | : Cambridge University Press |
| Total Pages | : 948 |
| Release | : 2022-12-31 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1108334067 |
Volume I of The Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean provides a wide-ranging survey of Pacific history to 1800. It focuses on varied concepts of the Pacific environment and its impact on human history, as well as tracing the early exploration and colonization of the Pacific, the evolution of Indigenous maritime cultures after colonization, and the disruptive arrival of Europeans. Bringing together a diversity of subjects and viewpoints, this volume introduces a broad variety of topics, engaging fully with emerging environmental and political conflicts over Pacific Ocean spaces. These essays emphasize the impact of the deep history of interactions on and across the Pacific to the present day.
The Opium Business
| Author | : Peter Thilly |
| Publisher | : Stanford University Press |
| Total Pages | : 266 |
| Release | : 2022-10-18 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 1503634116 |
From its rise in the 1830s to its pinnacle in the 1930s, the opium trade was a guiding force in the Chinese political economy. Opium money was inextricably bound up in local, national, and imperial finances, and the people who piloted the trade were integral to the fabric of Chinese society. In this book, Peter Thilly narrates the dangerous lives and shrewd business operations of opium traffickers in southeast China, situating them within a global history of capitalism. By tracing the evolution of the opium trade from clandestine offshore agreements in the 1830s, to multi-million dollar prohibition bureau contracts in the 1930s, Thilly demonstrates how the modernizing Chinese state was infiltrated, manipulated, and profoundly transformed by opium profiteers. Opium merchants carried the drug by sea, over mountains, and up rivers, with leading traders establishing monopolies over trade routes and territories and assembling "opium armies" to protect their businesses. Over time, and as their ranks grew, these organizations became more bureaucratized and militarized, mimicking—and then eventually influencing, infiltrating, or supplanting—the state. Through the chaos of revolution, warlordism, and foreign invasion, opium traders diligently expanded their power through corruption, bribery, and direct collaboration with the state. Drug traders mattered—not only in the seedy ways in which they have been caricatured but also crucially as shadowy architects of statecraft and China's evolution on the world stage.
Chinese Society in the Eighteenth Century
| Author | : Susan Naquin |
| Publisher | : Yale University Press |
| Total Pages | : 292 |
| Release | : 1987-01-01 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 9780300046021 |
During the eighteenth century, China's new Manchu rulers consolidated their control of the largest empire China had ever known. In this book Susan Naquin and Evelyn S. Rawski draw on the most recent research to provide a unique overview and reevaluation of the social history of China during this period--one of the most dynamic periods in China's early modern era. "A lucid, original, and scholarly summary of the social, economic, and demographic history of China's last great period of glory. This will be an important book for students of Chinese history."--Jonathan Spence, Yale University "Engaging, complex, and elegantly written. . . . Absorbing and valuable: a thorough, unique, and richly detailed account of the social forms and cultural and religious life of the people."--Choice " An] interesting and well-informed survey of China between about 1680 and 1820."--W.J.F. Jenner, Asian Affairs "I would be a very odd scholar or general reader who could not derive profit from reading this elegant and painstaking survey of the social, cultural, and economic life of the Qing empire in its apparent prime. . . . A superb survey which readers may absorb and cherish."--Alexander Woodside, Pacific Affairs "A highly readable synthesis of recent secondary literature on the subject."--William S. Atwell, Journal of Asian Studies "Their coverage is comprehensive and their writing is clear and lucid. reading this book obtains one a very broad, yet penetrative, view of Chinese society at the time."--Alan P.L. Liu, Asian Thought & Society "The ground covered by this book is vast. . . . Its very breadth conveys with great clarity the extent of current knowledge of premodern China: it also serves as an excellent introduction to the social history of the Qing dynasty."--Hugh D.R. Baker, China Quarterly "This is a most challenging work and ambitious work. . . . Chinese Society in the Eighteenth Century give both the general reader and also the historian who does not study China a tool for grounding himself or herself in the basic patterns and trends that could be found in eighteenth century China as well as in the problems the specialists are now exploring. The book is also of great value to students of traditional and modern China, for it serves to synthesize much of the new literature on China in the High Qing. Thus it serves the 'China hand' as a state of the field essay that shows just where we are even as it suggests directions for future research."--Murray A. Rubinstein, American Asian Review "This excellent book provides an intelligent summary our rapidly changing understanding of Chinese society in a crucial century of political stability and economic and demographic expansion. Susan Naquin and Evelyn S. Rawski are distinguished contributors to the field, energetically engaged in its multinational communication networks."--John E. Wills, Jr., American Historical Review
Islam and Chinese Society
| Author | : Jianxiong Ma |
| Publisher | : Routledge |
| Total Pages | : 162 |
| Release | : 2020-04-21 |
| Genre | : Social Science |
| ISBN | : 1000047458 |
This book explores the long history in China of Chinese Muslims, known as the Hui people, and regarded as a minority, though in fact they are distinguished by religion rather than ethnicity. It shows how over time Chinese Muslims adopted Chinese practices as these evolved in wider Chinese society, practices such as constructing and recording patrilinear lineages, spreading genealogies, and propagating education and Confucian teaching, in the case of the Hui through the use of Chinese texts in the teaching of Islam at mosques. The book also examines much else, including the system of certification of mosques, the development of Sufi orders, the cultural adaptation of Islam at the local level, and relations between Islam and Confucianism, between the state and local communities, and between the educated Muslim elite and the Confucian literati. Overall, the book shows how extensively Chinese Muslims have been deeply integrated within a multi-cultural Chinese society.
ThePracticeof SocialGovernance atthelocallevel：Cultureand Institutions
| Author | : Rongrong Chen， Wei Lin， Huijie Li， Yanxia Xia |
| Publisher | : World Chinese Publishing |
| Total Pages | : 369 |
| Release | : 2024-10-18 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : |
Local-level social governance is fundamentally linked to societal harmony and stability and to the aspiration for a better life among the populace. It has been garnering increasing attention from all sectors of society. The 20th National Conference of the Chinese Communist Party proposed to "improve the local-level social governance system, promote the modernization of local-level governance, and ensure that society is both vibrant and well-ordered," highlighting that the new era's urban and rural governance system is an organic integration of self-governance, the rule of law, and moral governance. Simultaneously, as a nation with a long and rich history composed of multiple ethnic groups, China exhibits structural differences in geographical location, levels of economic development, and cultural practices. These disparities lead to the diversity and complexity of local-level social governance, providing fertile ground for extensive research in this field. Since the mid-20th century, social governance has gradually evolved into a focal topic within academic research, encompassing multiple disciplines such as sociology, political science, anthropology, law, and management. The interplay between institutions and culture in governance practice—and its impact on the effectiveness of local-level social governance—permeates related research across all these fields. The rise of new institutionalism since the 1980s has repositioned institutional factors at the forefront of social science research, considering cultural elements like values, norms, and beliefs as critical variables in institutions' formation, maintenance, and transformation. In anthropological studies, culture has consistently been considered an essential factor in understanding social behavior and organization. Cultural symbols and systems of meaning manifest differently across various societies, thereby shaping diverse social structures and governance models. This book explores the complexity of local-level social governance by examining cultural and institutional factors, using the endogenous motivation and real needs of local communities as a central theme.
Muslim Chinese
| Author | : Dru C. Gladney |
| Publisher | : Harvard Univ Asia Center |
| Total Pages | : 528 |
| Release | : 1996 |
| Genre | : History |
| ISBN | : 9780674594975 |
This second edition of Dru Gladney's critically acclaimed study of the Muslim population in China includes a new preface by the author, as well as a valuable addendum to the bibliography, already hailed as one of the most extensive listing of modern sources on the Sino-Muslims.
