Private life under socialism : love, intimacy, and family change in a Chinese village, 1949-1999 / Yunxiang Yan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Yan, Yunxiang, 1954-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Families--China--Xiajia (Heilongjiang Sheng).

Families.

Communism and families.

Intergenerational relations.

Marriage.

China--Xiajia (Heilongjiang Sheng).

Marriage--China--Xiajia (Heilongjiang Sheng).

Intergenerational relations--China--Xiajia (Heilongjiang Sheng).

Courtship--China--Xiajia (Heilongjiang Sheng).

Courtship.

Communism and families--China--Xiajia (Heilongjiang Sheng).

Xiajia (Heilongjiang Sheng, China)--Social conditions--20th century.

Xiajia (Heilongjiang Sheng, China).

Xiajia (Heilongjiang Sheng, China)--Social life and customs--20th century.

Physical Description:

xvi, 289 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, 2003.

Summary:

For seven years in the 1970s, the author lived in a village in northeast China as an ordinary farmer. In 1989, he returned to the village as an anthropologist to begin the unparalleled span of eleven years' fieldwork that has resulted in this book--a comprehensive, vivid, and nuanced account of family change and the transformation of private life in rural China from 1949 to 1999. The author's focus on the personal and the emotional sets this book apart from most studies of the Chinese family. Yan explores private lives to examine areas of family life that have been largely overlooked, such as emotion, desire, intimacy, privacy, conjugality, and individuality. He concludes that the past five decades have witnessed a dual transformation of private life: the rise of the private family, within which the private lives of individual women and men are thriving.

Contents:

Introduction: The Chinese Family and the Study of Private Life 1

1. The Changing Local World: Political Economy, Public Life, and Social Networks 17

2. Youth Autonomy and Romance in Courtship 42

3. Sex, Intimacy, and the Language of Love 64

4. Gender Dynamics and the Triumph of Conjugal Power 86

5. Domestic Space and the Quest for Privacy 112

6. The Politics of Family Property 140

7. Elderly Support and the Crisis of Filial Piety 162

8. Birth Control and the Making of a New Fertility Culture 190

Conclusion: The Socialist State, the Private Family, and the Uncivil Individual 217.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-281) and index.

ISBN:

0804733090

0804744564

OCLC:

50479200