Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T11:47:32.381Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Niangjia: Chinese Women and Their Natal Families

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2011

Get access

Extract

The classic model of Chinese kinship organization, with its complementary emphases on patrilineality, patrilocality, and patriarchy, continues as a framework for research on Chinese social organization despite accumulating evidence of alternative models or of disjunctures within the elite model. This model has come under critical scrutiny from a variety of perspectives, most notably anthropologically informed historical research (Watson 1982; Watson 1985) that has led to a questioning of the lineage model (Freedman 1965) and field-based research that has drawn attention to the prevalence of uxorilocal and “small daughter-in-law” (tongyangxi) marriage and to the nurturing of uterine families (Wolf and Huang 1980; Wolf 1972). My purpose is to contribute to this reassessment with a discussion of customary practices of postmarital dual residence for women and continuing ties between married women and their natal families. These practices and ties cannot be accounted for within the framework of the structural-functionalist model and require an adaptation of practiceoriented theory. This may illuminate the specific structuring patterns and disjunctures described below as well as suggest possibly fruitful lines of analysis for other societies in which lineages are salient. The contribution of this article is to identify and explore a significant dimension of structuring practices in informal kinship relations in rural China.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Anon, . 1980. Zhonghua gongheguo hunyinfa. [Marriage law of the People's Republic of China]. Beijing: Falu Chubanshe.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chan, Anita, Madsen, Richard, AND Unger, Jonathan. 1984. Chen Village: The Recent History of a Peasant Community in Mao's China. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Collier, Jane F., and Yanagisako, Sylvia J., eds. 1987. Gender and Kinship: Essays Toward a Unified Analysis. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Croll, Elisabeth. 1981. The Politics of Marriage in Contemporary China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Croll, Elisabeth. 1987. “New Peasant Family Forms in Rural China.” Journal of Peasant Studies 14, no. 4:469–99Google Scholar
Diamond, Norma. 1975. “Collectivization, Kinship, and the Status of Women in Rural China.” In Toward an Anthropology of Women, ed. Reiter, Rayna R., 372–95. New York: Monthly Review Press.Google Scholar
Freedman, Maurice. 1965. Lineage Organization in Southeastern China. Rev. ed. London: Athlone.Google Scholar
Gallin, Bernard. 1960. “Matrilateral and Affinal Relationships of a Taiwanese Village.” American Anthropologist 62:632–42.Google Scholar
Glddens, Anthony. 1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory ofStructuration. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, Kay Ann. 1983. Women, the Family, and Peasant Revolution in China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Johnston, Reginald F. [1910] 1986. Lion and Dragon in Northern China. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pruitt, Ida. 1945. A Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Quanguo Nongcun Hunyin Yu Jiating diaocha Xiezuozu. 1987. Quanguo nongcun hunyin yu jiating diaocha wenjuan. [National investigation questionnaire on rural family and marriage]. N.p.Google Scholar
Stockard, Janice E. 1985. “Marriage and Marriage Resistance in the Canton Delta.” Ph.D. diss., Stanford University.Google Scholar
Strathern, Marilyn. 1987. “Producing Difference: Connections and Disconnections in Two New Guinea Highland Kinship Systems.” In Gender and Kinship: Essays Toward a Unified Analysis, ed. Collier, Jane F. and Yanagisako, Sylvia J., 271300. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Strauch, Judith. 1984. “Women in Rural-Urban Circulation Networks: Implications for Social Structural Change.” In Women in the Cities of Asia, ed. Fawcett, James T., Khoo, Siew-Ean, AND Smith, Peter C., 6077. Boulder: Westview.Google Scholar
Topley, Marjorie. 1975. “Marriage Resistance in Rural Kwangtung.” In Women in Chinese Society, ed. Wolf, Margery and Witke, Roxane, 6788. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Watson, James L. 1982. “Chinese Kinship Reconsidered: Anthropological Perspectives on Historical Research.” China Quarterly 92:589622.Google Scholar
Watson, Rubie S. 1985. Inequality Among Brothers: Class and Kinship in South China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wolf, Arthur P., AND Huang, Chieh-Shan. 1980. Marriage and Adoption in China, 1845–1945. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Wolf, Margery. 1972. Women and the Family in Rural Taiwan. Stanford: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wolf, Margery. 1985. Revolution Postponed: Women in Contemporary China. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Yanagisako, Sylvia Junko. 1979Family and Household: The Analysis of Domestic Groups.” Annual Review of Anthropology 8:161205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar