Each successive wave of revolution to hit modern China—political, cultural, and economic—has radically reshaped Chinese society. Whereas patriarchy defined the familial social structure for thousands of years, changing realities in the last hundred years have altered and even reversed long-held expectations. Transforming Patriarchy explores the private and public dimensions of these changes in present-day China. Patriarchy is not dead, but it is no longer the default arrangement for Chinese families: Daughters-in-law openly berate their fathers-in-law. Companies sell filial-piety insurance. Many couples live together before marriage, and in some parts of rural China, almost all brides are pregnant.
Drawing on a multitude of sources and perspectives, this volume turns to the intimate territory of the family to challenge prevailing scholarly assumptions about gender and generational hierarchies in Chinese society. Case studies examine factors such as social class, geography, and globalization as they relate to patriarchal practice and resistance to it. The contributors bring the concept of patriarchy back to the heart of China studies while rethinking its significance in dominant Western-centric theories of modernity.
Table of Content
Acknowledgments
Note on Transcription
Introduction / Stevan Harrell and Gonçalo Santos
Part One | Rural Reconfigurations
1. Dutiful Help: Masking Rural Women’s Economic Contributions / Melissa J. Brown 000
2. From Care Providers to Financial Burdens: The Changing Role of Sons and Reproductive Choice in Rural Northeast China / Lihong Shi
3. Higher Education, Gender, and Elder Support in Rural Northwest China / Helena Obendiek
4. Multiple Mothering and Labor Migration in Rural South China / Gonçalo Santos
Part Two | Class, Gender, and Patriarchy in Urban Society
5. Urbanization and the Transformation of Kinship Practice in Shandong / Andrew B. Kipnis
6. Being the Right Woman for “Mr. Right”: Marriage and Household Politics in Present-Day Nanjing / Roberta Zavoretti
7. Emergent Conjugal Love, Mutual Affection, and Female Marital Power / William Jankowiak and Xuan Li
8. Under Pressure: Lesbian-Gay Contract Marriages and Their Patriarchal Bargains / Elisabeth L. Engebretsen
9. Patriarchal Investments: Expectations of Male Authority and Support in a Poor Beijing Neighborhood / Harriet Evans
Part Three | New Technologies, New Institutions
10. Taking Patriarchy Out of Postpartum Recovery? / Suzanne Gottschang
11. Assisted Reproductive Technologies, Sperm Donation, and Biological Kinship: A Recent Chinese Media Debate / Kerstin Klein
12. Recalibrating Filial Piety: Realigning the State, Family, and Market Interests in China / Hong Zhang
Glossary
References
List of Contributors
Index
About the author
Stevan Harrell is professor emeritus of anthropology and environmental and forest sciences at the University of Washington. He is the author of Ways of Being Ethnic in Southwest China (University of Washington Press, 2001) and An Ecological History of Modern China (University of Washington Press, 2023); and editor of the University of Washington Press book series Studies on Ethnic Groups in China.More ebooks from the same author(s) / Editor
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