The politics of common reading vernacular knowledge and everyday technics in China, 1894-1954 Joan Judge

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Judge, Joan, 1958- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Commonplace books--China--History--19th century.

Commonplace books.

Commonplace books--China--History--20th century.

Books and reading--China--History--19th century.

Books and reading.

Books and reading--China--History--20th century.

Publishers and publishing--China--History--19th century.

Publishers and publishing.

Publishers and publishing--China--History--20th century.

Community publishing--China--History--19th century.

Community publishing.

Community publishing--China--History--20th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Chicago The University of Chicago Press 2025

Summary:

"Examines the transformation of vernacular knowledge during a pivotal period of modern Chinese history, 1894 to 1954. What did common readers read in the midst of the revolutions that punctuated China's long Republic (1894-1954)? How did they manage the often-unprecedented challenges of the era? What did they know and how did they know it? In The Politics of Common Reading, Joan Judge traces the unfolding of a consequential politics of accommodation that engaged commoners as knowers rather than as an unenlightened mass. A response to the institutional failures of the era, this politics was enacted through an informal knowledge infrastructure comprised of low-budget publishers, rustic bookstalls, and a piecemeal national network. As yet unstudied, this infrastructure produced and circulated up to ten times the number of books as official, mainstream channels. A corpus of some five hundred of these cheap collections of recipes and techniques serves as the basis for this book. Judge focuses on four challenges common readers faced: how to cure an opium addiction, avoid an electric shock, prevent a cholera infection, and graft a plant. She further draws on government, archival, periodical, and fiction materials in devising composites of individual common readers so that we can better know them: details of the crises they faced, the remedies they tried, and the knowledge they relied on as they concocted cures and applied technologies. She argues that the acts of conciliation and assemblage these readers engaged in shaped the broader epistemic terrain from which historical change was actualized in China's century of revolution"-- De Gruyter Brill

Contents:

Introduction: the mundane revolution

Common reading. Common readers ; The commoners' corpus ; The commoners' book network

Vernacular knowledge. How to cure an opium addiction ; How to avoid an electric shock ; How to treat a cholera infection ; How to graft a plant

Conclusion: the politics of common reading

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Online resource; title from PDF title page (De Gruyter Brill, viewed December 23, 2025)

Other Format:

Print version Judge, Joan, 1958- Politics of common reading

ISBN:

9780226842769

0226842762

OCLC:

1564059840

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license