Death in Beijing : murder and forensic science in Republican China / Daniel Asen, Rutgers University--Newark.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Asen, Daniel S., author.

Series:

Science in history (Cambridge University Press)

Science in history

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Murder--Investigation--China--Beijing--History--20th century.

Murder.

Forensic sciences--China--Beijing--History--20th century.

Forensic sciences.

Violent deaths--Social aspects--China--Beijing--History--20th century.

Violent deaths.

Murder victims--China--Beijing--History--20th century.

Murder victims.

City and town life--China--Beijing--History--20th century.

City and town life.

Social change.

History.

Death--Social aspects.

Murder--Investigation.

Beijing (China)--History--20th century.

Beijing (China).

Death--Social aspects--China--History--20th century.

Death.

Social change--China--History--20th century.

China--History--Republic, 1912-1949.

China.

China--Beijing.

Physical Description:

ix, 258 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Summary:

"In this innovative and engaging history of homicide investigation in Republican Beijing, Daniel Asen explores the transformation of ideas about death in China in the first half of the twentieth century. In this period, those who died violently or under suspicious circumstances constituted a particularly important population of the dead, subject to new claims by police, legal and medical professionals, and a newspaper industry intent on covering urban fatality in sensational detail. Asen examines the process through which imperial China's old tradition of forensic science came to serve the needs of a changing state and society under these dramatically new circumstances. This is a story of the unexpected outcomes and contingencies of modernity, presenting new perspectives on China's transition from empire to modern nation state, competing visions of science and expertise, and the ways in which the meanings of death and dead bodies changed amid China's modern transformation"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

1. Suspicious deaths and city life in Republican Beijing

2. On the case with the Beijing procuracy

3. Disputed forensics and skeletal remains

4. Publicity, professionals, and the cause of forensic reform

5. Professional politics of a crime scene

6. Dissection and its discontents

7. Legal medicine during the Nanjing decade

Conclusion: A history of forensic modernity

Glossary.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781107126060

1107126061

9781107571600

110757160X

OCLC:

946726014