Download or read book Technology and Gender written by Francesca Bray and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-07-28 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this feminist history of eight centuries of private life in China, Francesca Bray inserts women into the history of technology and adds technology to the history of women. Bray takes issue with the Orientalist image that traditional Chinese women were imprisoned in the inner quarters, deprived of freedom and dignity, and so physically and morally deformed by footbinding and the tyrannies of patriarchy that they were incapable of productive work. She proposes a concept of gynotechnics, a set of everyday technologies that define women's roles, as a creative new way to explore how societies translate moral and social principles into a web of material forms and bodily practices. Bray examines three different aspects of domestic life in China, tracing their developments from 1000 to 1800 A.D. She begins with the shell of domesticity, the house, focusing on how domestic space embodied hierarchies of gender. She follows the shift in the textile industry from domestic production to commercial production. Despite increasing emphasis on women's reproductive roles, she argues, this cannot be reduced to childbearing. Female hierarchies within the family reinforced the power of wives, whose responsibilities included ritual activities and financial management as well as the education of children.

Download or read book Technology Gender and History in Imperial China written by Francesca Bray and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-19 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can the history of technology contribute to our understanding of late imperial China? Most stories about technology in pre-modern China follow a well-worn plot: in about 1400 after an early ferment of creativity that made it the most technologically sophisticated civilisation in the world, China entered an era of technical lethargy and decline. But how are we to reconcile this tale, which portrays China in the Ming and Qing dynasties as a dying giant that had outgrown its own strength, with the wealth of counterevidence affirming that the country remained rich, vigorous and powerful at least until the end of the eighteenth century? Does this seeming contradiction mean that the stagnation story is simply wrong, or perhaps that technology was irrelevant to how imperial society worked? Or does it imply that historians of technology should ask better questions about what technology was, what it did and what it meant in pre-modern societies like late imperial China? In this book, Francesca Bray explores subjects such as technology and ethics, technology and gendered subjectivities (both female and male), and technology and statecraft to illuminate how material settings and practices shaped topographies of everyday experience and ideologies of government, techniques of the self and technologies of the subject. Examining technologies ranging from ploughing and weaving to drawing pictures, building a house, prescribing medicine or composing a text, this book offers a rich insight into the interplay between the micro- and macro-politics of everyday life and the workings of governmentality in late imperial China, showing that gender principles were woven into the very fabric of empire, from cosmology and ideologies of rule to the material foundations of the state and the everyday practices of the domestic sphere. This authoritative text will be welcomed by students and scholars of Chinese history, as well as those working on global history and the histories of gender, technology and agriculture. Furthermore, it will be of great use to those interested in social and cultural anthropology and material culture.

Download or read book Women in Imperial China written by Bret Hinsch and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-09-22 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This accessible text offers a comprehensive survey of women’s history in China from the Neolithic period through the end of the Qing dynasty in the early twentieth century. Rather than providing an exhaustive chronicle of this vast subject, Bret Hinsch pinpoints the themes that characterized distinct periods in Chinese women’s history and delves into the perception of female identity in each era. Moving beyond the traditional focus on the late imperial era, Hinsch explores how gender relations have developed and changed since ancient times. His chronological look at the most important female roles in every major dynasty showcases not only the constraints women faced but also their vast accomplishments throughout the millennia. Hinsch’s extensive use of Chinese-language scholarship lends his book a fresh perspective rare among Western scholars. Professors and students will find this an invaluable textbook for Chinese women’s studies and an excellent supplement for courses in gender studies and Chinese history.

Download or read book Herself an Author written by Grace S. Fong and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2008-05-08 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Grace Fong has written a wonderful history of female writers’ participation in the elite conventions of Chinese poetics. Fong’s recovery of many of these poets, her able exegesis and elegant, analytical grasp of what the poets were doing is a great read, and her bilingual presentation of their poetry gives the book additional power. This is a persuasive and elegant study." —Tani Barlow, author of The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism "In this quietly authoritative book, Grace Fong has brought a group of women poets back to life. Previously ignored by scholars because of their marginal status or the inaccessibility of their works, these remarkable writers now speak to us about the sensualities, pains, satisfactions, and sadness of being a woman in a patriarchal society. Professor Fong—a superb translator of Chinese poetry, prose, and criticism—has rendered the works of these women in a way that is true both to our theoretical concerns and theirs." —Dorothy Ko, author of Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding "Professor Fong approaches the poetry of Ming-Qing upper-class women as a social-cultural activity that allowed these women to manifest their agency and assert their own subjectivity against the background of virtual and actual networks of fellow female poets. As the distillation of more than ten years of research by one of the leading scholars in this field, this work is a timely contribution that eminently deserves our attention. Given the inclusion of translations of some of the texts discussed, the book provides a comprehensive introduction to the reading of women’s poetry of the Ming-Qing period." —Wilt Idema, Harvard University Herself an Author addresses the critical question of how to approach the study of women’s writing. It explores various methods of engaging in a meaningful way with a rich corpus of poetry and prose written by women of the late Ming and Qing periods, much of it rediscovered by the author in rare book collections in China and the United States. The volume treats different genres of writing and includes translations of texts that are made available for the first time in English. Among the works considered are the life-long poetic record of Gan Lirou, the lyrical travel journal kept by Wang Fengxian, and the erotic poetry of the concubine Shen Cai. Taking the view that gentry women’s varied textual production was a form of cultural practice, Grace Fong examines women’s autobiographical poetry collections, travel writings, and critical discourse on the subject of women’s poetry, offering fresh insights on women’s intervention into the dominant male literary tradition. The wealth of texts translated and discussed here include fascinating documents written by concubines—women who occupied a subordinate position in the family and social system. Fong adopts the notion of agency as a theoretical focus to investigate forms of subjectivity and enactments of subject positions in the intersection between textual practice and social inscription. Her reading of the life and work of women writers reveals surprising instances and modes of self-empowerment within the gender constraints of Confucian orthodoxy. Fong argues that literate women in late imperial China used writing and reading to create literary and social communities, transcend temporal-spatial and social limitations, and represent themselves as the authors of their own life histories.

Download or read book Technology and Society in Ming China 1368 1644 written by Francesca Bray and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historians of Chinese technology have tended to pay little attention to the Ming dynasty, characterizing it as a stagnantperiod unmarked by significant inventions of the kind that in Europe gave rise to the industrial revolution and the modern world. Yet the Ming was a period of extraordinary social, cultural, and economic vitality and change, and it would be curious if technology had played no part in these changes. This pamphlet approaches the material world of the Ming from a more anthropological perspective than has been conventional among historians of China, emphasizing the role of technologies in social order and identity.

Download or read book Women in Tang China written by Bret Hinsch and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-11-11 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important book provides the first comprehensive survey of women in China during the Sui and Tang dynasties from the sixth through tenth centuries CE. Bret Hinsch provides rich insight into female life in the medieval era, ranging from political power, wealth, and work to family, religious roles, and virtues. He explores women’s lived experiences but also delves into the subjective side of their emotional life and the ideals they pursued. Deeply researched, the book draws on a wide range of sources, including standard histories, poetry, prose literature, and epigraphic sources such as epitaphs, commemorative religious inscriptions, and Dunhuang documents. Building on the best Western and Japanese scholarship, Hinsch also draws heavily on Chinese scholarship, most of which is unknown outside China. As the first study in English about women in the medieval era, this groundbreaking work will open a new window into Chinese history for Western readers.

Download or read book Reproducing Women written by Yi-Li Wu and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2010-08-11 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative book uses the lens of cultural history to examine the development of medicine in Qing dynasty China. Focusing on the specialty of "medicine for women"(fuke), Yi-Li Wu explores the material and ideological issues associated with childbearing in the late imperial period. She draws on a rich array of medical writings that circulated in seventeenth- to nineteenth-century China to analyze the points of convergence and contention that shaped people's views of women's reproductive diseases. These points of contention touched on fundamental issues: How different were women's bodies from men's? What drugs were best for promoting conception and preventing miscarriage? Was childbirth inherently dangerous? And who was best qualified to judge? Wu shows that late imperial medicine approached these questions with a new, positive perspective.

Download or read book A Social History of the Chinese Book written by Joseph P. McDermott and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2006-04-01 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this learned, yet readable, book, Joseph McDermott introduces the history of the book in China in the late imperial period from 1000 to 1800. He assumes little knowledge of Chinese history or culture and compares the Chinese experience with books with that of other civilizations, particularly the European. Yet he deals with a wide range of issues in the history of the book in China and presents novel analyses of the changes in Chinese woodblock bookmaking over these centuries. He presents a new view of when the printed book replaced the manuscript and what drove that substitution. He explores the distribution and marketing structure of books, and writes fascinatingly on the history of book collecting and about access to private and government book collections. In drawing on a great deal of Chinese, Japanese, and Western research this book provides a broad account of the way Chinese books were printed, distributed, and consumed by literati and scholars, mainly in the lower Yangzi delta, the cultural center of China during these centuries. It introduces interesting personalities, ranging from wily book collectors to an indigent shoe-repairman collector. And, it discusses the obstacles to the formation of a truly national printed culture for both the well-educated and the struggling reader in recent times. This broad and comprehensive account of the development of printed Chinese culture from 1000 to 1800 is written for anyone interested in the history of the book. It also offers important new insights into book culture and its place in society for the student of Chinese history and culture. 'A brilliant piece of synthetic research as well as a delightful read, it offers a history of the Chinese book to the eighteenth century that is without equal.' - Timothy Brook, University of British Columbia 'Writers, scribes, engravers, printers, binders, publishers, distributors, dealers, literati, scholars, librarians, collectors, voracious readers — the full gamut of a vibrant book culture in China over one thousand years — are examined with eloquence and perception by Joseph McDermott in The Social History of the Book. His lively exploration will be of consuming interest to bibliophiles of every persuasion.' - Nicholas A. Basbanes, author of A Gentle Madness, Patience and Fortitude, A Splendor of Letters, and Every Book Its Reader Joseph McDermott is presently Fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge, and University Lecturer in Chinese at Cambridge University. He has published widely on Chinese social and economic history, most recently on the economy of the Song (or, Sung) dynasty for the Cambridge History of China. He has edited State and Court Ritual in China and Art and Power in East Asia.

Download or read book Women in China from Earliest Times to the Present written by Robin Yates and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2009-07-31 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This essential reference work provides an alphabetic listing, with an extensive index, of studies on women in China from earliest times to the present day written in Western languages, primarily English, French, German, and Italian. Containing more than 2500 citations of books, chapters in books, and articles, especially those published in the last thirty years, and more than 100 titles of doctoral dissertations and Masters theses, it covers works written in the disciplines of anthropology and sociology; art and archaeology; demography; economics; education; fashion; film and media studies; history; interdisciplinary studies; law; literature; music; medicine, science, and technology; political science; and religion and philosophy. It also contains many citations of studies of women in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Download or read book Nan N written by and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Cultures of Knowledge written by Dagmar Schäfer and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-10-28 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Identifying four spheres of knowledge culture in the history of technology in China, this book offers an introduction to the transmission of knowledge and detailed contextual descriptions of individual technologies in China such as porcelain, silk, and agriculture.

Download or read book Under Confucian Eyes written by Susan Mann and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2001-10-20 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This important volume adds a significant number of new and unique materials for teachers at all levels of higher education to use in classroom and seminar discussion about the issues of gender, society, and religion in imperial China."—Benjamin Elman, author of A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China "The eighteen primary documents in this anthology, all of them translated for the first time, provide a rich array of sources on the lives of women in China's past. The anthology is important not only for the selection of documents but for the ways it suggests we can think about, and find sources about, women in China. It is must reading for scholars and students alike."—Ann Waltner, author of The World of a Late Ming Visionary: T'an-Yang-Tzu and Her Followers

Download or read book Gender and Sexuality in Modern Chinese History written by Susan L. Mann and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-19 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gender and sexuality have been neglected topics in the history of Chinese civilization, despite the fact that there is a massive amount of historical evidence on the subject. China's late imperial government was arguably more concerned about gender and sexuality among its subjects than any other pre-modern state. How did these and other late imperial legacies shape twentieth-century notions of gender and sexuality in modern China? Susan Mann answers this by focusing on state policy, ideas about the physical body and notions of sexuality and difference in China's recent history, from medicine to the theater to the gay bars; from law to art and sports. More broadly, the book shows how changes in attitudes toward sex and gender in China during the twentieth century have cast a new light on the process of becoming modern, while simultaneously challenging the universalizing assumptions of Western modernity.

Download or read book Gender and Education in China written by Paul J. Bailey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2007-02-12 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gender and Education in China analyzes the significance, impact and nature of women's public education in China from its beginnings at the turn of the twentieth century. Educational change was an integral aspect of the early twentieth century state-building and modernizing reforms implemented by the Qing dynasty as a means of strengthening the foundations of dynastic rule and reinvigorating China's economy and society to ward off the threat of foreign imperialism. A significant feature of educational change during this period was the emergence of official and non-official schools for girls. Using primary evidence such as official documents, newspapers and journals, Paul Bailey analyzes the different rationales for women's education provided by officials, educators and reformers, and charts the course and practice of women's education describing how young women responded to the educational opportunities made available to them. Demonstrating how the representation of women and assumptions concerning their role in the household, society and polity underpinned subsequent gender discourses throughout the rest of the century, Gender and Education in China will appeal to students and scholars of Chinese history, gender studies, women's studies as well as an interest in the history of education.

Download or read book Women Gender and Sexuality in China written by Ping Yao and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-30 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women, Gender and Sexuality in China: A Brief History serves as a focal textbook for undergraduate courses on women, gender, and sexuality in Chinese history. Thematically structured, it surveys important aspects of gender systems and gender practices throughout Chinese history, from the earliest period to the modern era. Topics include the concept of yin-yang, life course and gender roles, kinship systems and family structure, marriage practices, sexuality, women’s work and daily life, as well as gender in Chinese mythology, religions, medicine, art, and literature. In narrating how various traditions and practices were formed and evolved throughout Chinese history, this textbook draws heavily on personal stories and historical records. Features in this textbook include: Primary source sections for each chapter, introducing students to types of documents that have been used by scholars in conducting research Thirty-three translated texts of various genres, including epitaph, bronze inscription, medical text, imperial edict, legal case, family letter, ghost story, divorce paper, poetry, autobiography, etc. Dedicated biography sections for five distinguished women Offering richly layered accounts of women, gender, and sexuality, this textbook is essential reading for students of Chinese history, gender in world history, or the comparative history of gender.

Download or read book Gender in Motion written by Bryna Goodman and published by Asia/Pacific/Perspectives. This book was released on 2005 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Governing notions of the social order (and interrelated constructions of gender) changed radically in the modern era - initially with the questioning of the imperial, dynastic order and the creation of a Chinese republic in the early twentieth century, later with the creation of a Communist government and, most recently, with China's political and cultural transformations in the post-Mao era. As ideas and practices of gender have changed, the persistence of older rhetorical signs in the interstices of new political visions has complicated the social projects and understandings of modernity, especially in terms of the creation of new public spaces, new concepts of work and virtue, and new configurations of gender."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China written by Benjamin A. Elman and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2000-03-22 with total page 900 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this multidimensional analysis, Benjamin A. Elman uses over a thousand newly available examination records from the Yuan, Ming, and Ch'ing dynasties, 1315-1904, to explore the social, political, and cultural dimensions of the civil examination system, one of the most important institutions in Chinese history. For over five hundred years, the most important positions within the dynastic government were usually filled through these difficult examinations, and every other year some one to two million people from all levels of society attempted them. Covering the late imperial system from its inception to its demise, Elman revises our previous understanding of how the system actually worked, including its political and cultural machinery, the unforeseen consequences when it was unceremoniously scrapped by modernist reformers, and its long-term historical legacy. He argues that the Ming-Ch'ing civil examinations from 1370 to 1904 represented a substantial break with T'ang-Sung dynasty literary examinations from 650 to 1250. Late imperial examinations also made "Tao Learning," Neo-Confucian learning, the dynastic orthodoxy in official life and in literati culture. The intersections between elite social life, popular culture, and religion that are also considered reveal the full scope of the examination process throughout the late empire.