|
Course Home Class schedule E-mail the class READINGS Time & Space Persons Family & Gender Rural Urban Migration Nation & People ESSAYS Family & Gender Rural Urban Migration Nation & People RESOURCES Maps of China ANTH Writing Center JSIS Writing Center |
The purpose of this section is to show how the Chinese family system, patrilineal, patrilocal, and patriarchal, is undergoing revolutionary changes. So we will start with the old style, traditional patriarchal system and show how it seems to be disappearing, and is being replaced by something that seems somewhat more familiar to us, but still a bit different. Wednesday, January 23: Introduction to the patriarchal system The first thing on the agenda for today is the preparation for the time and space quiz, which you will have a half-hour to complete. Then we will start this unit in earnest. A comprehensive overview of how we understand the Chinese family historically is provided by Rubie S. Watson, Families in China: Ties that Bind?". You should begin with this article. I have also written a general piece about the family from a slightly different, psychological angle, and you might want to read it. But I will be presenting the essence of this article as a class lecture, so you don't have to read it unless you want to go over it twice. Friday, January 25: Changes in the Patriarchal System: Gender and Generation First we take the quiz Then we need to consider the Chinese patriarchal system as a two-dimensional matrix of gender dynamics and generational dynamics. Here we consider rural and urban cases of changes along both dimensions. For the rural case, read the Introduction, "The Chinese Family and the Study of Private Life," and chapter 4, "Gender Dynamics and the Triumph of Conjugal Power," from Yan Yunxiang's Private Life Under Socialism. For the urban case, finish reading Vanessa Fong's Only Hope. Wednesday, January 30: Population, fertility, and single children; family pressure and family responsibility The so-called "one-child policy," or more properly, the Planned Birth Program, has had a lot of influence on both gender and generational dynamics, producing the "singleton generation" that Fong describes in Only Hope and later in Paradise Redefined. To understand the origins of this policy and get beyond the American journalistic rhetoric about "draconian" communist repression, read Susan Greenhalgh's Science, Modernity, and the Making of China's One-Child Policy, from Population and Development Review, 2003. For some of the implications of this policy for gender and generational dynamics, read Hong Zhang, From Resisting to "Embracing?" the One-Child Rule: Understanding New Fertility Trends in a Central China Village, China Quarterly Volume 192, December 2007, pp. 876-897. To understand the changes in the balance of power and responsibility between generations, read another article by Hong Zhang, Living Alone and the Rural Elderly, in Charlotte Ikels's edited volume on Filial Piety, 2004. Friday, February 1: Courtship and marriage; sexuality First we look at changes in the practices of choosing marriage partners, in . We will also watch a film about Dahua's Wedding in a Southwest Chinese village. Then we look at sexuality, particularly outside the realm of marriage. Read one or more of the following:
|