A01=Joanna Handlin Smith
Author_Joanna Handlin Smith
Category=JHMC
Category=NHF
charitable distributions
charitable giving
charitable institutions
charity
china
chinese history
class
class disparity
doing good
economic change
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
family
historical
history
human condition
late imperial china
late ming society
local society
medical dispensaries
medicine
ming dynasty
moral leadership
needs
passion
politics
poverty
power and wealth
religion
religious boundaries
saving lives
social change
social classes
social networks
social unrest
soup kitchens
tradition of charity
wealth
Product details
- ISBN 9780520253636
- Weight: 726g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 11 Mar 2009
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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An unprecedented passion for saving lives swept through late Ming society, giving rise to charitable institutions that transcended family, class, and religious boundaries. Analyzing lecture transcripts, administrative guidelines, didactic tales, and diaries, Joanna Handlin Smith abandons the facile explanation that charity was a response to poverty and social unrest and examines the social and economic changes that stimulated the fervor for doing good. With an eye for telling details and a finesse in weaving the voices of her subjects into her narrative, Smith brings to life the hard choices that five men faced when deciding whom to help, how to organize charitable distributions, and how to balance their communities' needs against the interests of family and self.She thus shifts attention from tired questions about whether the Chinese had a tradition of charity (they did) to analyzing the nature of charity itself.
Skillfully organized and engaging, "The Art of Doing Good" moves from discussions about moral leadership and beliefs to scrutiny of the daily operation of soup kitchens and medical dispensaries, and from examining local society to generalizing about the just use of resources and the role of social networks in charitable giving. Smith's work will transform our thinking about the boundaries between social classes in late imperial China and about charity in general.
Joanna Handlin Smith is the Editor Emeritus of the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies and the author of Action in Late Ming Thought: The Reorientation of Lu K'un and Other Scholar-Officials (UC Press).
