Death in Beijing : murder and forensic science in Republican China / Daniel Asen.

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.

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

Death.

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

Social change.

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

Beijing (China).

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

China.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (ix, 258 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Language Note:

English

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.

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:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 04 Jul 2016).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-316-71195-1

1-316-71309-1

1-316-71328-8

1-316-71347-4

1-316-71366-0

1-316-71423-3

1-316-42198-8