An account of the many aspects of village life in China.

The House of Lim: A Study of a Chinese Family

Politics & Social Sciences

Wolf, Margery

Social Sciences

Pearson

Studies of Chinese society commonly emphasizze men's roles and functions, a not unreasonable approach to a society with patrilineal kinship structure. But this emphasis has left many important gaps in our knowledge of Chinese life. This study seeks to fill some of these gaps by examining the ways rural Taiwanese women manipulate men and each other in the pursuit of their personal goals. The source of a woman's power, her home in a social structure dominated by men, is what the author calls the uterine family, a de facto social unity consisting of a mother and her children. The first four chapters are devoted to general background material: a brief historical sketch of Taiwan and a description fo the settings in which the author's observations were made; the history of a particular family; the relation of Chinese women to the Chinese kinship system; and the interrelationships among women in the community. The remaining ten chapters take up in detail the successive stages of the Taiwanese woman's life cycle: infancy, childhood, engagement, marriage, motherhood, and old age. Throught the book the author presents detailed information on such topics as marriage negotiations, childbirth, child training practices, and the organization of women's groups.

Women and the Family in Rural Taiwan

History

Asia

Stanford University Press

Studies of Chinese society commonly emphasizze men's roles and functions, a not unreasonable approach to a society with patrilineal kinship structure. But this emphasis has left many important gaps in our knowledge of Chinese life. This study seeks to fill some of these gaps by examining the ways rural Taiwanese women manipulate men and each other in the pursuit of their personal goals. The source of a woman's power, her home in a social structure dominated by men, is what the author calls the uterine family, a de facto social unity consisting of a mother and her children. The first four chapters are devoted to general background material: a brief historical sketch of Taiwan and a description fo the settings in which the author's observations were made; the history of a particular family; the relation of Chinese women to the Chinese kinship system; and the interrelationships among women in the community. The remaining ten chapters take up in detail the successive stages of the Taiwanese woman's life cycle: infancy, childhood, engagement, marriage, motherhood, and old age. Throught the book the author presents detailed information on such topics as marriage negotiations, childbirth, child training practices, and the organization of women's groups.

The Communist revolution promised Chinese women an end to thousands of years of subjugation, an equality with men in all matters legal, political, social, and economic. This book examines the extent to which this promise has been kept. Based on nearly a year of field research and interviews with over 300 women in six widely separated rural and urban areas, it gives us a vivid picture of Chinese women today - their day-to-day lives, their views of the present, and their hopes for the future. To date nothing approximating equality has been achieved: in working conditions, in pay, in educational opportunity. In the cities, and to a lesser extent in the countryside, women are better off than in pre-revolutionary China. But nowhere except in the rhetoric of the regime are they equal to men. Nor does the immediate future look much brighter, given the continuing social constraints, the government's controversial family limitation program, and the nature of the new economic policies introduced in 1980. So far as possible, the women interviewed are allowed to speak for themselves. Some take refuge behind government slogans, some are shy or wary, but a surprising number are quick to give their own opinions despite an ever-present government cadre. These opinions, combined with the author's astute observations on their local and national context, add up to a wholly new perspective on an all too familiar problem.

Revolution Postponed: Women in Contemporary China

A Thrice-Told Tale: Feminism, Postmodernism, and Ethnographic Responsibility

A Thrice-Told Tale is one ethnographer's imaginative and powerful response to the methodological issues raised by feminist and postmodernist critics of traditional ethnography. The author, a feminist anthropologist, uses three texts developed out of her research in Taiwan―a piece of fiction, anthropological fieldnotes, and a social science article―to explore some of these criticisms. Each text takes a different perspective, is written in a different style, and has different "outcomes," yet all three involve the same fascinating set of events. A young mother began to behave in a decidedly abherrant, perhaps suicidal manner, and opinion in her village was sharply divided over the reason. Was she becoming a shaman, posessed by a god? Was she deranged, in need of physical restraint, drugs, and hospitalization? Or was she being cynically manipulated by her ne'er-do-well husband to elicit sympathy and money from her neighbors? In the end, the woman was taken away from the area to her mother's house. For some villagers, this settled the matter; for others the debate over her behavior was probably never truly resolved. The first text is a short story written shortly after the incident, which occurred almost thrity years ago; the second text is a copy of the fieldnotes collected about the events covered in the short story; the third text is an article published in 1990 in American Ethnologist that analyzes the incident from the author's current perspective. Following each text is a Commentary in which the author discusses such topics as experimental ethnography, polyvocality, authorial presence and control, reflexivity, and some of the differences between fiction and ethnography. The three texts are framed by two chapters in which the author discusses the genereal problems posed by feminist and postmodernist critics of ethnography and presents her personal exploration of these issues in an argument that is strongly self-reflexive and theoretically rigorous. She considers some feminist concerns over colonial research methods and takes issues with the insistence of some feminists tha the topics of ethnographic research be set by those who are studied. The book concludes with a plea for ethnographic responsibility based on a less academic and more practical perspective.

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

The Thompsons and the Tanakas worked neighboring apple orchards for three generations before WWII disrupted their community. This story follows the history of the families during and after these troubling times.

The Orchards

Trafford Publishing

Women in Chinese Society

Witke, Roxane

Sociology

ACLS Humanities E-Book

ACLS History E-Book Project

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Books by Wolf, Margery

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wolf, Margery. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The House of Lim: A Study of a Chinese Family

Women and the Family in Rural Taiwan

Women and the Family in Rural Taiwan

Revolution Postponed: Women in Contemporary China

Revolution Postponed: Women in Contemporary China

A Thrice-Told Tale: Feminism, Postmodernism, and Ethnographic Responsibility

A Thrice-Told Tale: Feminism, Postmodernism, and Ethnographic Responsibility

The Orchards

Women in Chinese Society

Women in Chinese Society