52311273
Economic correlates of footbinding: Implications for the importance of Chinese daughters’ labor
Background It is a wide-spread assumption about footbinding that footbound girls and women were more of an economic burden on their families than those never bound. It is often presumed that government policies and missionary campaigns ended footbinding. Methods/ Objectives We use regression and log-likelihood tests, with bootstrapping for confirmation, to analyze which of a series of ethnographically and historically hypothesized variables significantly correlate with footbinding. We also consider an indirect measure of government prohibitions. We analyze two large datasets based on oral surveys with elderly women of the last footbound generations from 12 inland Chinese provinces. Conclusions Handicraft production, particularly commercial handicraft production, correlates with whether Chinese girls were subjected to footbinding before 1950. Girlhood knowledge of government prohibitions against footbinding, an indirect measure of awareness by the adults who decided whether to bind a girl’s feet, did not correlate with whether women were ever footbound. Spinning cotton thread for commercial purposes (sale, wage, direct exchange) correlated with greater daily production, with great county-level variation in quantity produced. Moreover, Chinese commercial spinners labored more years before marriage than domestic spinners. Implications Chinese daughters—whether footbound or not—made important economic contributions to rural households, thus suggesting a need to revise our understanding of China’s gender and economic history. Further implications of our results are that research is warranted on the assumed efficacy of government prohibitions—in both rural and urban areas—and on the presumption that footbinding among elite Chinese women was unrelated to economic concerns, including handicraft production. The demonstrated economic correlates of footbinding in inland, rural China also suggest a need to reevaluate whether contemporary customs controlling and cloistering girls and women, such as female genital cutting in Africa and the threat of honor killings of girls and women in South Asia, might have economic correlates.
10169259
Cultural Evolution : Accomplishments and Future Prospects
Edward Wilson (1998) recently popularized William Whewell’s nineteenth-century idea of “consilience.” The idea was a favorite of Darwin’s. It holds that seemingly disparate phenomena in the world are in fact connected. Nuclear physics is “remote” scientifically from the social sciences, yet nuclear reactions in the sun are the most important source of energy on earth, nuclear decay in the earth’s interior drives seafloor spreading which in turn shapes terrestrial ecology, and nuclear weapons profoundly altered the shape of international politics in the twentieth century. Nothing is in principle irrelevant to the study of the human species--not nuclear reactions, not anything. Evolutionary theories apply to highly consilient phenomena.
159419400
The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen
Long neglected as an engine of reform, honor strikingly emerges at the center of our modern world in Kwame Anthony Appiah's The Honor Code. Over the last few centuries, new democratic movements have led to the emancipation of women, slaves, and the oppressed. But what drove these modern changes, Appiah argues, was not imposing legislation from above, but harnessing the ancient power of honor from within. In gripping detail, he explores the end of the duel in aristocratic England, the tumultuous struggles over footbinding in nineteenth-century China, and the uprising of ordinary people against Atlantic slavery. Finally, he confronts the horrors of "honor killing" in contemporary Pakistan, where rape victims are murdered by their relatives. He argues that honor, used to justify the practice, can also be the most effective weapon against it. Intertwining philosophy and historical narrative, Appiah has created a remarkably dramatic work, which demonstrates that honor is the driving force in the struggle against man's inhumanity to man.
161744699
Cinderella's Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding
List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Notes on Conventions List of Abbreviations Introduction PART I: THE BODY EXPOSED 1. Gigantic Histories of the Nation in the Globe: The Rhetoric of Tianzu, 1880s--1910s 2. The Body Inside Out: The Practice of Fangzu, 1900s--1930s 3. The Bound Foot as Antique: Connoisseurship in an Age of Disavowal, 1930s--1941 PART II: THE BODY CONCEALED 4. From Ancient Texts to Current Customs: In Search of Footbinding's Origins 5. The Erotics of Place: Male Desires and the Imaginary Geography of the Northwest 6. Cinderella's Dreams: The Burden and Uses of the Female Body Epilogue Notes Glossary Works Cited Index
192256110
Chinese Footbinding The History Of A Curious Erotic Custom
Thank you for reading chinese footbinding the history of a curious erotic custom. Maybe you have knowledge that, people have search hundreds times for their chosen books like this chinese footbinding the history of a curious erotic custom, but end up in malicious downloads. Rather than enjoying a good book with a cup of tea in the afternoon, instead they juggled with some infectious bugs inside their desktop computer.
73713671
Ending Footbinding and Infibulation: A Convention Account
This paper explores the close similarities between Chinese footbinding and female genital mutilation and categorizes each custom as universal where practiced persistent practiced by those opposed to it a way to control sexual access to females considered necessary for proper marriage and family honor sanctioned by tradition an ethnic marker spread by contagious diffusion exaggerated over time related to status supported and transmitted by women performed on young girls generally not initiation rites believed to promote health and fertility considered aesthetically pleasing considered an enhancement to male pleasure during intercourse and related to female slavery. After noting these characteristics the paper defends these assertions by tracing the history of female footbinding in China and defining and tracing the history of female genital mutilation in Africa. The authors conclusion that each practice is a self-enforcing convention (as defined by Shelling in 1960 and Lewis in 1969) is presented through a discussion of the convention hypothesis and game theory illustrated through coordination problems. This theory illustrates how people can be stuck in an inferior equilibrium which is maintained by what people believe about each other (daughters will be forced to undergo genital mutilation if people believe this is necessary to attract a husband). Such a convention is self-enforcing and in these cases the enforcement is derived by a desire for paternity confidence by a history of imperial female slavery and by belief traps. The mechanism necessary to allow escape from an inferior convention is then covered and it is recommended that efforts to end female genital mutilation adopt the successful tactics which eradicated footbinding in China in one generation. Quick convention change can be achieved by an education campaign by use of adverse international public opinion and by forming associations of parents who pledge not to submit their daughters to genital mutilation and not to let their sons marry mutilated women.
7220495
The Economics and Politics of Women's Rights
Women’s rights and economic development are highly correlated. Today, the discrepancy between the legal rights of women and men is much larger in developing compared to developed countries. Historically, even in countries that are now rich women had few rights before economic development took off. Is development the cause of expanding women’s rights, or conversely, do women’s rights facilitate development? We argue that there is truth to both hypotheses. The literature on the economic consequences of women’s rights documents that more rights for women lead to more spending on health and children, which should benefit development. The politicaleconomy literature on the evolution of women’s rights finds that technological change increased the costs of patriarchy for men, and thus contributed to expanding women’s rights. Combining these perspectives, we discuss the theory of Doepke and Tertilt (2009), where an increase in the return to human capital induces men to vote for women’s rights, which in turn promotes growth in human capital and income per capita.
44554053
Sociocultural epistasis and cultural exaptation in footbinding, marriage form, and religious practices in early 20th-century Taiwan
Social theorists have long recognized that changes in social order have cultural consequences but have not been able to provide an individual-level mechanism of such effects. Explanations of human behavior have only just begun to explore the different evolutionary dynamics of social and cultural inheritance. Here we provide ethnographic evidence of how cultural evolution, at the level of individuals, can be influenced by social evolution. Sociocultural epistasis—association of cultural ideas with the hierarchical structure of social roles—influences cultural change in unexpected ways. We document the existence of cultural exaptation, where a custom's origin was not due to acceptance of the later associated ideas. A cultural exaptation can develop in the absence of a cultural idea favoring it, or even in the presence of a cultural idea against it. Such associations indicate a potentially larger role for social evolutionary dynamics in explaining individual human behavior than previously anticipated.
2570837
The influence of social niche on cultural niche construction: modelling changes in belief about marriage form in Taiwan
With introduction of social niche effects into a model of cultural change, the frequency of a practice cannot predict the frequency of its underlying belief. The combination of a general model with empirical data from a specific case illustrates the importance of collaboration between modellers and field researchers, and identifies the type of quantitative data necessary for analysing case studies. Demographic data from colonial-period household registers in Taiwan document a shift in marriage form within 40 years, from a mixture of uxorilocal marriages and virilocal marriages to the latter's dominance. Ethnographic data indicate marriage-related beliefs, costs, ethnic effects and colonial policies as well as the importance of horizontal cultural transmission. We present a formal model for the effects of moral beliefs about marriage and a population economic index on the decline of uxorilocal marriage. We integrate empirical marriage rates and an estimated economic index to produce five projections of the historical frequencies of one belief. These projections demonstrate how economic development may affect a cultural niche. They also indicate the need for future research on the relationship between wealth and cultural variability, the motivational force of cultural versus social factors, and the process of cultural niche construction.
123723097
A note on a general definition of the coefficient of determination
SUMMARY A generalization of the coefficient of determination R2 to general regression models is discussed. A modification of an earlier definition to allow for discrete models is proposed.
154058175
Earthbound China : a study of rural economy in Yunnan
Written prior to the arrival of Asian Studies as an academic discipline, the volumes in this set were greeted as ground-breaking, eye-opening and exciting by the critics of the day. Containing in-depth analysis of education, politics, wealth, family, housing and leisure in rural and urban areas of Japan, China and Hong Kong, these books are key reading for students and researchers in Asian, Development and Urban Studies.
153689646
Cultural Transmission of Uxorilocal Marriage in Lueyang, China
In this article, the authors report on a study of the cultural transmission of uxorilocal marriage in Lueyang, China. They find that uxorilocal marriage has been commonly accepted and practiced in Lueyang since the beginning of this century, and uxorilocal marriage has been both a contingent and an institutional option for farmers with both preservative and practical purposes. Causes underlying contingent uxorilocal marriage are mostly demographic, and causes underlying institutional uxorilocal marriage are mostly economic, but a weak patriarchal family system, lack of dominant family clans in villages, and relaxed village regulation of uxorilocal marriage in Lueyang also play decisive roles. The occurrence of uxorilocal marriage is transmitted both from parents to children and from nonparental members of communities to couples. Rural economic reform since 1978 has had important influences on the transmission effects of uxorilocal marriage.
142742869
The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China’s Collective Past
What can we learn about the Chinese revolution by placing a doubly marginalized group--rural women--at the center of the inquiry? In this book, Gail Hershatter explores changes in the lives of seventy-two elderly women in rural Shaanxi province during the revolutionary decades of the 1950s and 1960s. Interweaving these women's life histories with insightful analysis, Hershatter shows how Party-state policy became local and personal, and how it affected women's agricultural work, domestic routines, activism, marriage, childbirth, and parenting--even their notions of virtue and respectability. The women narrate their pasts from the vantage point of the present and highlight their enduring virtues, important achievements, and most deeply harbored grievances. In showing what memories can tell us about gender as an axis of power, difference, and collectivity in 1950s rural China and the present, Hershatter powerfully examines the nature of socialism and how gender figured in its creation.
131104925
Economic Development in Provincial China: The Central Shaanxi Since 1930
Lists of tables, maps, graphs and plates Introduction, some problems of regional economic development 1. The famine of 1928-1931 2. Communication and transport 3. The growth of Xi'an and industrial development 4. Physical aspects of a changing country 5. Water conservancy and irrigation 6. Cultivation practices, rising yields and agrotechnical change 7. Cooperatives, Land Reform and collectivization 8. Cotton and cotton textile production 9. An exploration into regional inequality 10. Concluding observations Appendix A. Demographic data Appendix B. Survey data of 7 counties Notes Bibliography Index.
166479212
From Cotton Mill to Business Empire: The Emergence of Regional Enterprises in Modern China
The demise of state-owned enterprises, the transformation of collectives into shareholding co-operatives, and the creation of investment opportunities through stock markets indicate China's movement from a socialist, state-controlled economy toward a socialist market economy. Yet, contrary to high expectations that China's new enterprises will become like corporations in capitalist countries, management often remains under the control of the onetime bureaucrats who ran the socialist enterprises. The concepts, definitions, and interpretations of property rights, corporate structures, and business practices in contemporary China have historical, institutional, and cultural roots. In tracing the development under founder Zhang Jian (1853-1926) and his successors of the Dasheng Cotton Mill in Nantong into a business group encompassing, among other concerns, cotton, flour, and oil mills, land development companies, and shipping firms, the author documents the growth of regional enterprises as local business empires from the 1890s until the foundation of the People's Republic in 1949. She focuses on the legal and managerial evolution of limited-liability firms in China, particularly issues of control and accountability; the introduction and management of industrial work in the countryside; and the integration and interdependency of local, national, and international markets in Republican China.
44529240
Feet and Fabrication: Footbinding and Early Twentieth-Century Rural Women’s Labor in Shaanxi
The early twentieth-century transformations of rural Chinese women’s work have received relatively little direct attention. By contrast, the former custom of footbinding continues to fascinate and is often used to illustrate or contest theories about Chinese women’s status. Arguing that for rural women at least, footbinding needs to be understood in relation to rural economic conditions, the authors focus on changes in textile production and in footbinding in two counties in Shaanxi province. Drawing on historical sources and their own interview data from rural women who grew up in this period, the authors find evidence that transformations in textile production undercut the custom of footbinding and contributed to its rapid demise.
161397567
Presidential Address : The Structure of Chinese History
The developmental trajectories of North China and the Southeast Coast during the middle and late imperial periods are surveyed to illustrate the recurrence of regional macrocycles of development and decline and to show that such cycles may be unsynchronized as between regions. These cases provide a basis for arguing that economic macrocycles are a systemic property—not of provinces or of the empire as a whole but of regional economies viewed as internally differentiated and interdependent systems of human interaction. An exploration of the relation between regional developmental cycles and the Chinese dynastic cycle concludes that the latter was mediated by the former. It is suggested that regional developmental cycles are cycles not only of economic prosperity and depression but also of population growth and decline, of social development and devolution, and of peace and disorder. China's historical structure, then, is seen as an internested hierarchy of local and regional histories whose scope in each case is grounded in the spatial patterning of human interaction, and whose critical temporal structures are successive cyclical episodes. The uses of such an historiographic model are briefly explored.
163048752
Testing the Testers: A Reply to Barbara Sands and Ramon Myers's Critique of G. William Skinner's Regional Systems Approach to China
A RECENT ARTICLE in this journal-"The Spatial Approach to Chinese History: A Test," by Barbara Sands and Ramon Myers (JAS 45, no. 4 [1986}:721-43)-has seriously challenged G. William Skinner's regional systems approach to Chinese society. Skinner's concepts of marketing hierarchies, macroregions, and core-periphery distinctions have been enormously influential, informing the research of such diverse authors as William Rowe, Keith Schoppa, Susan Naquin, and Winston Hsieh. Sands and Myers argue that Skinner's macroregions analysis is refuted by available economic data. We hold, however, that their arguments are empirically unsupported and logically unsound and fail to undermine the validity of Skinner's construction.
145752985
The Spatial Approach to Chinese History: A Test
More recently, a new approach has been developed by G. W. Skinner to explain the deployment of resources and social action in terms of special spatial patterns. Skinner has greatly influenced China scholars to reconsider spatial organization and its implications for the evolution of society. He believed that spatial aggregation (or "space") is a key aspect in explaining historical behavior. Therefore, he advanced three spatial concepts for the study of China; macroregions, cores, and peripheries. This essay argues that although Skinner's concepts are intuitively appealing, some are too vague to be tested, while others are not supported by the economic and demographic facts they claim to represent. More specifically, of Skinner's three concepts the macroregion proved the most difficult to test. Where we could test it, the concept did not accurately identify China's economic resource patterns. Further, while the core and periphery concepts proved extremely amenable to testing, their results did not correctly represent the location of China's resources. We should note that,