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The thirteen essays in this volume, all by experts in the field of Chinese studies, reflect the diversity of approaches scholars follow in the study of China's past. Together they reveal the depth and vitality of Chinese civilization and demonstrate how an understanding of traditional China can enrich and broaden our own contemporary worldview.
This book provides a comparative account of the abolition of concubinage in East Asia, offering a new perspective and revised analysis of the factors leading to – and the debates surrounding – the introduction of a new Marriage Reform Ordinance in Hong Kong in 1971. It uses this law as a platform to examine how the existence of concubinage – long preserved in the name of protecting Chinese traditions and customs — crucially influenced family law reforms, which were in response to a perceived need to create a ‘modern’ marriage system within Hong Kong’s Chinese community after the Second World War. This was, by and large, the result of continued pressure from within Hong Kong and from Britain to bring Hong Kong’s marriage system in line with international marriage treaties. It represented one of the last significant intrusions of colonial law into the private sphere of Hong Kong social life, eliminating Chinese customs which had been previously recognised by the colonial legal system’s family law. This book contextualizes the Hong Kong situation by examining judicial cases interpreting Chinese customs and the Great Qing Code, offering a comprehensive understanding of the Hong Kong situation in relation to the status of concubines in Republican China and other East Asian jurisdictions. It will be of particular interest to teachers and students of law, as well as researchers in gender studies, post-colonialism, sociology and cultural studies.
Until the 1940s, social life in Taiwan was generally organized through the family—marriages were arranged by parents, for example, and senior males held authority. In the following years, as Taiwan evolved rapidly from an agrarian to an industrialized society, individual decisions became less dependent on the family and more influenced by outside forces. Social Change and the Family in Taiwan provides an in-depth analysis of the complex changes in family relations in a society undergoing revolutionary social and economic transformation. This interdisciplinary study explores the patterns and causes of change in education, work, income, leisure time, marriage, living arrangements, and interactions among extended kin. Theoretical chapters enunciate a theory of family and social change centered on the life course and modes of social organization. Other chapters look at the shift from arranged marriages toward love matches, as well as changes in dating practices, premarital sex, fertility, and divorce. Contributions to the book are made by Jui-Shan Chang, Ming-Cheng Chang, Deborah S. Freedman, Ronald Freedman, Thomas E. Fricke, Albert Hermalin, Mei-Lin Lee, Paul K. C. Liu, Hui-Sheng Lin, Te-Hsiung Sun, Arland Thornton, Maxine Weinstein, and Li-Shou Yang.
Until now our understanding of marriage in China has been based primarily on observations made during the twentieth century. The research of ten eminent scholars presented here provides a new vision of marriage in Chinese history, exploring the complex interplay between marriage and the social, political, economic, and gender inequalities that have so characterized Chinese society.
Family businesses have been an important part of the economy in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and in the Chinese diaspora, and, since the reforms, in mainland China itself. Some people have argued that the success of Chinese family businesses occurs because of the special characteristics and approach of such businesses. This book examines the nature of Chinese family business and the key issues involved by exploring in detail the case of a leading Hong Kong jewellery company which was established in the early 1960s and which has grown to become one of the biggest jewellery manufacturers, exporters, and retailers in post-war Hong Kong. The book considers the motivations of Chinese people to set up their own businesses, outlining the strategies adopted, including the strategies for raising capital, and the qualities of successful Chinese entrepreneurs. It discusses the management of the company, including relations between family members, profit sharing and succession planning, and assesses how conflict and crises are coped with and overcome. It charts the evolution of the company, looking at how it has been transformed into a listed corporation. The book concludes by arguing for the importance of studying Chinese family businesses culturally.
After a long spell of chaos, the Qin and Han dynasties (221 BCE–220 CE) saw the unification of the Chinese Empire under a single ruler, government, and code of law. During this era, changing social and political institutions affected the ways people conceived of womanhood. New ideals were promulgated, and women's lives gradually altered to conform to them. And under the new political system, the rulers' consorts and their families obtained powerful roles that allowed women unprecedented influence in the highest level of government. Recognized as the leading work in the field, this introductory survey offers the first sustained history of women in the early imperial era. Now in a revised edition that incorporates the latest scholarship and theoretical approaches, the book draws on extensive primary and secondary sources in Chinese and Japanese to paint a remarkably detailed picture of the distant past. Bret Hinsch's introductory chapters orient the nonspecialist to early imperial Chinese society; subsequent chapters discuss women's roles from the multiple perspectives of kinship, wealth and work, law, government, learning, ritual, and cosmology. An enhanced array of line drawings, a Chinese-character glossary, and extensive notes and bibliography enhance the author's discussion. Historians and students of gender and early China alike will find this book an invaluable overview.
In the Qing period (1644–1912), China's population tripled, and the flurry of new development generated unprecedented demand for timber. Standard environmental histories have often depicted this as an era of reckless deforestation, akin to the resource misuse that devastated European forests at the same time. This comprehensive new study shows that the reality was more complex: as old-growth forests were cut down, new economic arrangements emerged to develop renewable timber resources. Historian Meng Zhang traces the trade routes that connected population centers of the Lower Yangzi Delta to timber supplies on China's southwestern frontier. She documents innovative property rights systems and economic incentives that convinced landowners to invest years in growing trees. Delving into rare archives to reconstruct business histories, she considers both the formal legal mechanisms and the informal interactions that helped balance economic profit with environmental management. Of driving concern were questions of sustainability: How to maintain a reliable source of timber across decades and centuries? And how to sustain a business network across a thousand miles? This carefully constructed study makes a major contribution to Chinese economic and environmental history and to world-historical discourses on resource management, early modern commercialization, and sustainable development.
Explores historical and philosophical shifts in the depiction of women and virtue in the early years of the Chinese state. Includes an examination of the history of yin-yang theories.
"Rapid economic and social transformation in rural China has aroused enormous scholarly interest at home and abroad. However, a systematic study of this new mode of resource distribution is to date still underdeveloped; and the complexity of resource allocation in the present-day peasant society of China has not been surveyed as an independent theme. This book presents an effort to look into issues relating to the allocation of income, opportunities and assets in a village society; and thus, tries to shed light on the agent and mechanism of resource distribution in the post-reform era."--From publisher's website.