A01=Neil J. Diamant
arranged marriage
Author_Neil J. Diamant
beijing
bigamy
Category=JHBK
Category=NHF
chairman mao
china
chinese family
chinese law
communism
concubine
courtship
cultural revolution
divorce
domestic violence
domesticity
engagement
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
family
family relationships
family structure
frontier
gender
gender studies
history
history of sex
legal culture
marriage
marriage law
nonfiction
peasants
peoples republic
rural areas
rural communities
sexuality
shanghai
social change
state legitimacy
suburbs
urban china
violence
Product details
- ISBN 9780520217201
- Weight: 862g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 04 Mar 2000
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
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In 1950, China's new Communist government enacted a Marriage Law to allow free choice in marriage and easier access to divorce. Prohibiting arranged marriages, concubinage, and bigamy, it was one of the most dramatic efforts ever by a state to change marital and family relationships. In this comprehensive study of the effects of that law, Neil J. Diamant draws on newly opened urban and rural archival sources to offer a detailed analysis of how the law was interpreted and implemented throughout the country. In sharp contrast to previous studies of the Marriage Law, which have argued that it had little effect in rural areas, Diamant argues that the law reshaped marriage and family relationships in significant--but often unintended--ways throughout the Maoist period. His evidence reveals a confused and often conflicted state apparatus, as well as cases of Chinese men and women taking advantage of the law to justify multiple sexual encounters, to marry for beauty, to demand expensive gifts for engagement, and to divorce on multiple occasions.
Moreover, he finds, those who were best placed to use the law's more liberal provisions were not well-educated urbanites but rather illiterate peasant women who had never heard of sexual equality; and it was poor men, not women, who were those most betrayed by the peasant-based revolution.
Neil J. Diamant is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Tel Aviv University.
