Footbinding as fashion : ethnicity, labor, and status in traditional China / John Robert Shepherd.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Shepherd, John Robert, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Footbinding--China--History.

Footbinding.

Women--Employment--China.

Women.

Women--China--Social conditions.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (274 pages)

Place of Publication:

Seattle, Washington : University of Washington Press, 2018.

Summary:

Previous studies of the practice of footbinding in imperial China have theorized that it expressed ethnic identity or that it served an economic function. By analyzing the popularity of footbinding in different places and times, Footbinding as Fashion investigates the claim that early Qing (1644–1911) attempts by Manchu rulers to ban footbinding made it a symbol of anti-Manchu sentiment and Han identity and led to the spread of the practice throughout all levels of society. Detailed case studies of Taiwan, Hebei, and Liaoning provinces exploit rich bodies of previously neglected ethnographic reports, economic surveys, and rare censuses of footbinding to challenge the significance of sedentary female labor and ethnic rivalries as factors leading to the hegemony of the footbinding fashion. The study concludes that, independently of identity politics and economic factors, variations in local status hierarchies and elite culture coupled with status competition and fear of ridicule for not binding girls’ feet best explain how a culturally arbitrary fashion such as footbinding could attain hegemonic status.

Contents:

Introduction: Seeking status, avoiding shame

Chapter 1. The Qing conquest and footbinding

Chapter 2. The Taiwan Census of 1905

Chapter 3. The 1915 Prohibition

Chapter 4. Footbinding for marriage

Chapter 5. Regional variations among the Hoklo Fujianese

Chapter 6. Women's labor in agriculture

Chapter 7. Women's labor in handicrafts

Chapter 8. Banner women and civilian women in the Northeast

Conclusion: The tyranny of fashion

Notes

Chinese character glossary.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780295744421

0295744421