Technology, gender and history in imperial China : great transformations reconsidered / Francesca Bray.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bray, Francesca.

Series:

Asia's transformations

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Technological innovations--China--History.

Technological innovations.

Technology--Social aspects--China.

Technology.

Technology--Social aspects.

History.

China.

Sex role--China--History.

Sex role.

China--Social conditions--960-1644.

Social conditions.

Physical Description:

xviii, 278 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Routledge, 2013.

Summary:

What can the history of technology contribute to our understanding of late imperial China? Most stories about technology in pre-modern China follow a well-worn plot: in about 1400 after an early ferment of creativity that made it the most technologically sophisticated civilization in the world, China entered an era of technical lethargy and decline. But how are we to reconcile this tale, which portrays China in the Ming and Qing dynasties as a dying giant that had outgrown its own strength, with the wealth of counterevidence affirming that the country remained rich, vigorous and powerful at least until the end of the eighteenth century? Does this seeming contradiction mean that the stagnation story is simply wrong, or perhaps that technology was irrelevant to how imperial society worked? Or does it imply that historians of technology should ask better questions about what technology was, what it did and what it meant in pre-modern societies such as late imperial China? In this book, Francesca Bray explores subjects such as technology and ethics, technology and gendered subjectivities (both female and male), and technology and statecraft to illuminate how material settings and practices shaped topographies of everyday experience and ideologies of government, techniques of the self and technologies of the subject. Examining technologies ranging from ploughing and weaving to drawing pictures, building a house, prescribing medicine or composing a text, this book offers a rich insight into the interplay between the micro- and macro-politics of everyday life and the workings of governmentality in late imperial China, showing that gender principles were woven into the very fabric of empire, from cosmology and ideologies of rule to the material foundations of the state and the everyday practices of the domestic sphere. This authoritative text will be welcomed by students and scholars of Chinese history, as well as those working on global history and the histories of gender, technology and agriculture. Furthermore, it will be of great use to those interested in social and cultural anthropology and material culture. Book jacket.

Contents:

Section I Material foundations of the moral order 37

1 Machines for living: domestic architecture and the engineering of the social order in late imperial China 39

2 Instructive and nourishing landscapes: natural resources, people and the state in late imperial China 57

Section II Gynotechnics: crafting womanly virtues 91

3 Women's work and women's place: textiles and gender 93

4 Structures of feeling: decorum, desire and a place of one's own 121

5 Tales of fertility: reproductive narratives in late imperial medical cases 155

Section III Androtechnics: the writing-brush, the plough and the nature of technical knowledge 173

6 Science, technique, technology: passages between matter and knowledge in imperial Chinese agriculture 175

7 A gentlemanly occupation: the domestication of farming knowledge 199

8 Agricultural illustrations: blueprint or icon? 219.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780415639569

0415639565

9780415639590

041563959X

9780203083307

020308330X

OCLC:

796752922