“Ma Xiwu’s Way of Judging” emerged in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region in the 1940s. Generally as... more “Ma Xiwu’s Way of Judging” emerged in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region in the 1940s. Generally assumed to be a legacy of Communist revolutionary legal practice in civil law and often described simply as a form of mediation, it is in fact, this article argues, a complicated legal process, produced in a particular historical and social setting. Although generalized as the Party’s policy and problematized when it was promoted to a broader geographical and social reality, it presented an attempt by the revolutionary state to bridge local culture and the modern legal system, to reduce antagonism caused by legal formalism. Ma’s Way created procedures for mass participation in constructing a modern judicial system and redefined the dynamic state–society interplays. As an historical tradition in the making since the 1940s, its multifaceted nature allowed its adoption into the contemporary judicial system and community life in a variety of new forms.
“Ma Xiwu’s Way of Judging” emerged in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region in the 1940s. Generally as... more “Ma Xiwu’s Way of Judging” emerged in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region in the 1940s. Generally assumed to be a legacy of Communist revolutionary legal practice in civil law and often described simply as a form of mediation, it is in fact, this article argues, a complicated legal process, produced in a particular historical and social setting. Although generalized as the Party’s policy and problematized when it was promoted to a broader geographical and social reality, it presented an attempt by the revolutionary state to bridge local culture and the modern legal system, to reduce antagonism caused by legal formalism. Ma’s Way created procedures for mass participation in constructing a modern judicial system and redefined the dynamic state–society interplays. As an historical tradition in the making since the 1940s, its multifaceted nature allowed its adoption into the contemporary judicial system and community life in a variety of new forms.
Xiaoping Cong examines the social and cultural significance of Chinese revolutionary legal practi... more Xiaoping Cong examines the social and cultural significance of Chinese revolutionary legal practice in the construction of marriage and gender relations. Her book is an empirically rich investigation of the ways in which a 1943 legal dispute over an arranged marriage in a Chinese village became a legal, political and cultural exemplar on the national stage. This conceptually groundbreaking study revisits the Chinese Revolution and its impact on women and society by presenting a Chinese experience that cannot and should not be theorized in the framework of Western discourse. Taking a cultural-historical perspective, Cong shows how the Chinese Revolution and its legal practices produced new discourses, neologisms and cultural symbols that contained China's experience in twentieth-century social movements, and how revolutionary practice was sublimated into the concept of 'self-determination', an idea that bridged local experiences with the tendency of the twentieth-century world, and that is a revolutionary legacy for China today.
“Ma Xiwu’s Way of Judging” emerged in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region in the 1940s. Generally as... more “Ma Xiwu’s Way of Judging” emerged in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region in the 1940s. Generally assumed to be a legacy of Communist revolutionary legal practice in civil law and often described simply as a form of mediation, it is in fact, this article argues, a complicated legal process, produced in a particular historical and social setting. Although generalized as the Party’s policy and problematized when it was promoted to a broader geographical and social reality, it presented an attempt by the revolutionary state to bridge local culture and the modern legal system, to reduce antagonism caused by legal formalism. Ma’s Way created procedures for mass participation in constructing a modern judicial system and redefined the dynamic state–society interplays. As an historical tradition in the making since the 1940s, its multifaceted nature allowed its adoption into the contemporary judicial system and community life in a variety of new forms.
“Ma Xiwu’s Way of Judging” emerged in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region in the 1940s. Generally as... more “Ma Xiwu’s Way of Judging” emerged in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region in the 1940s. Generally assumed to be a legacy of Communist revolutionary legal practice in civil law and often described simply as a form of mediation, it is in fact, this article argues, a complicated legal process, produced in a particular historical and social setting. Although generalized as the Party’s policy and problematized when it was promoted to a broader geographical and social reality, it presented an attempt by the revolutionary state to bridge local culture and the modern legal system, to reduce antagonism caused by legal formalism. Ma’s Way created procedures for mass participation in constructing a modern judicial system and redefined the dynamic state–society interplays. As an historical tradition in the making since the 1940s, its multifaceted nature allowed its adoption into the contemporary judicial system and community life in a variety of new forms.
Xiaoping Cong examines the social and cultural significance of Chinese revolutionary legal practi... more Xiaoping Cong examines the social and cultural significance of Chinese revolutionary legal practice in the construction of marriage and gender relations. Her book is an empirically rich investigation of the ways in which a 1943 legal dispute over an arranged marriage in a Chinese village became a legal, political and cultural exemplar on the national stage. This conceptually groundbreaking study revisits the Chinese Revolution and its impact on women and society by presenting a Chinese experience that cannot and should not be theorized in the framework of Western discourse. Taking a cultural-historical perspective, Cong shows how the Chinese Revolution and its legal practices produced new discourses, neologisms and cultural symbols that contained China's experience in twentieth-century social movements, and how revolutionary practice was sublimated into the concept of 'self-determination', an idea that bridged local experiences with the tendency of the twentieth-century world, and that is a revolutionary legacy for China today.
Zhao Liuyang 趙劉洋. Funü, jiating yu falü shijian 婦女, 家庭與法律實踐: 清代以來的法律社會史 (Women, family and legal ... more Zhao Liuyang 趙劉洋. Funü, jiating yu falü shijian 婦女, 家庭與法律實踐: 清代以來的法律社會史 (Women, family and legal practice: A social legal history since the Qing dynasty). Nanning: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 2022
a book review of Dr. Yue Du's book, State and Family in China: Filial Piety and its Modern Reform... more a book review of Dr. Yue Du's book, State and Family in China: Filial Piety and its Modern Reform, published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. The book review was invited by the journal of American Historians Review.
's book is a fascinating work that not only provides a vivid picture of social life in Northern C... more 's book is a fascinating work that not only provides a vivid picture of social life in Northern China during the late Qing and Republican periods, but also offers an insightful study of a social phenomenon that has long been neglected. Her cutting-edge research is based on a broad use of multiple sources, including local gazetteers, newspapers, personal diaries, court documents, police records, and local magistrates' notes. The book presents many colorful stories about how transactions in people happened and who operated them. It shows how traffickers preyed on their victims; how women, both victims and predators, were sold and sold others; how parents sold their children for profit and survival; and how other social forces and individuals , such as military men, neighbors, relatives, and gangsters, were also involved in trafficking. Meanwhile, ministers, county magistrates, policemen, and social researchers offered their views on these transactions, outlawed them, or treated them as a social subject. The core significance of Ransmeier's work lies in her inquiry into how these transactions in the early twentieth century differed from the slave trade in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the West, and how Western abolition-ism impacted Chinese officials' attitude toward human trafficking in China's social and legal transformation. According to Ransmeier, most Western scholarship approaches the history of slavery from the views of either property relations or power relations. However, she determines that either approach can only partially explain Chinese cases, as China's human trafficking had much more complicated facets and layers. Unlike the slave trade in Euro-American history, in China, especially prior to the mid-twentieth century , transactions in people largely operated through family networks, and was conducted by family members, neighbors, and acquaintances. The purpose of buying and selling people was not to enhance productivity; rather, it was for family adoption, domestic labor, family procreation, or sometimes survival. Thus, this buying and selling occurred widely in society, especially during times of natural and human disasters, and the process involved a range of social groups. To a certain extent, especially among the people in lower social
女性、婚姻與革命-華北及陝 甘寧根據地女性婚姻問題硏究 (Women, marriage and revolution: A study of women's marriage in the r... more 女性、婚姻與革命-華北及陝 甘寧根據地女性婚姻問題硏究 (Women, marriage and revolution: A study of women's marriage in the revolutionary base areas of northern China and the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia border region). Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chuban-she, 2018. 247 pp. RMB 68. ISBN 9787520318044 China scholars in the United States and Europe, and Chinese scholars in China differ in their approach to the study of Chinese women and the Communist revolution. The former are "question/debate-oriented" and incline to be more critical on whether the revolution brought Chinese women equal rights in marriage, family, society, and political participation, while the latter, more "fact/document-oriented," not only hold a much more affirmative view but also see this liberation brought by the revolution as the natural course of a historical and institutional evolution in the twentieth century. Yue and Wang also take this approach in their book, and view "[the alteration of] marriage forms and ... women [involved in it] as a dynamic process of social and cultural phenomenon" (p. 12). This book is composed of eleven chapters divided into three parts, in addition to the introduction and the conclusion. Geographically, it covers two major revolutionary base areas-the Shanxi-Hebei-Shandong-Henan 山西-河 北-山東-河南 border region (abbr. Jin-Ji-Lu-Yu 晉冀魯豫, or JJLY), and the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia 陝西-甘粛-寕夏 border region (abbr. Shaan-Gan-Ning 陝甘寕, or SGN). The first two parts, comprising the first eight chapters, mainly focus on the JJLY base area while the third part with the last three chapters addresses the SGN region. The first part, "Old Morality vs. New Marriages," contains four chapters that discuss the changes the Chinese revolution brought to women living in the JJLY region, and how these changes affected marriage and women's position in family and society. The authors argue that the marriage reform gave women a strong motivation to participate in social movements and productive work, and also undermined the traditional family structure. Chapter 3 is devoted to the issue of divorce, showing that the governments offered a sound policy support to women. To demonstrate the flexibility of the policy in practice, the authors cite many cases that show various motives for divorce and how these cases were dealt with differently. The most important content of this section is the discussion of the local Women's Association and its role in the marriage reform. The authors show how the revolutionary government deliberately selected and trained young women from villages, and encouraged them to engage in the social engineering projects of the localities. The authors also admit Downloaded from Brill.com06/13/2020 09:21:56PM by xkang@gwu.edu via Xiaofei Kang
A book review of Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition ... more A book review of Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed.
Uploads