Marriage, Law and Gender in Revolutionary China, 1940–1960

Explores the social and cultural significance of Chinese communist legal practice in constructing marriage and gender relations in the turbulent period from 1940 to 1960.

Xiaoping Cong (Author)

9781316602614, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 1 November 2018

345 pages, 15 b/w illus. 2 maps 2 tables
23 x 15.3 x 2 cm, 0.53 kg

'This book is a very interesting work that gives an original contribution to the historical knowledge of a period and a theme, that of Chinese marriages, previously known only through stereotypes and dated works.' Marco Lazzarotti, INTAMS

Xiaoping Cong examines the social and cultural significance of Chinese revolutionary legal practice in the construction of marriage and gender relations. Her book is an empirically rich investigation of the ways in which a 1943 legal dispute over an arranged marriage in a Chinese village became a legal, political and cultural exemplar on the national stage. This conceptually groundbreaking study revisits the Chinese Revolution and its impact on women and society by presenting a Chinese experience that cannot and should not be theorized in the framework of Western discourse. Taking a cultural-historical perspective, Cong shows how the Chinese Revolution and its legal practices produced new discourses, neologisms and cultural symbols that contained China's experience in twentieth-century social movements, and how revolutionary practice was sublimated into the concept of 'self-determination', an idea that bridged local experiences with the tendency of the twentieth-century world, and that is a revolutionary legacy for China today.

Introduction
Part I. Locality, Marriage Practice and Women: 1. The case of Feng v. Zhang: marriage reform in a revolutionary region
2. The appeal: women, love, marriage, and the revolutionary state
Part II. Legal Practice and New Principle: 3. The new adjudication: the judicial construction in marriage reform
4. A new principle in the making: from 'freedom' to 'self-determination' of marriage through legal practice
Part III. Politics and Gender in Construction: 5. Newspaper reports: casting a new democracy in village communities
6. The Qin opera and the ballad: from rebellious daughters to social mothers
7. The Ping opera and movie: nationalizing the new marriage practice and politicizing the state-family, 1949–1960
Epilogue: 'Liu Qiao'er', law, and zi-zhu: beyond 1960
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Legal history [LAZ], Gender & the law [LAQG], Asian history [HBJF]