Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2017. ix, 301 pp. (Tables.) US$30.00, paper. ISBN 978-0-295-99982-1.
Is Chinese patriarchy over? This is the central question addressed in this thought-provoking volume, edited by Gonçalo Santos and Stevan Harrell. The book’s twelve chapters, which were all written by anthropologists, reflect the specific ways in which Chinese notions of marriage, family, and “traditional” gender norms have been significantly altered since the People’s Republic of China first opened up to the outside world in the late 1970s. Given the rapid changes brought about by market reforms, this volume is an important and timely contribution to the literature on Chinese gender relations and family life during this key era of economic development and globalization.
Because patriarchy is a broad term that must be considered within a historical and cultural context, this book categorizes China as a “classic” type involving “a hierarchical system of domestic relations that includes multiple intersecting structures of inequality including gender and generational inequalities, among others” (10). For centuries this system of male dominance derived its strength from a combination of economic, institutional, and ideological factors such as virilocality (women joining their husband’s family upon marriage), patrilineal inheritance, and the centralizing of power in the hands of senior male patriarchs. Historically, the sexes were kept separate and unequal by dividing their roles into dichotomies: inside/outside, heavy/light, and skilled/unskilled.
Even so, one must not assume that Chinese women have always been oppressed, powerless victims of circumstance. As Denise Kandiyoti famously discussed, throughout history women have been able to express individual agency, challenge structural limitations, and gain resources for themselves and their children through the use of “patriarchal bargains,” a concept that is extremely salient in today’s China. Undeniably, the rapid modernization of the economy and demographic transformations resulting from decades of fertility regulations have placed Chinese families in uncharted territory. This book primarily highlights changes that have occurred in the late-Reform era (mid-1990s on) in light of globalization, mass labour migration, urbanization, the expanding middle class, and the advent of the Internet. This begs the question: if China no longer fits the definition of classic patriarchy, then how should it be characterized?
The volume is organized into three main sections that address this question in rural areas, urban areas, and in spaces that use online/technological/commodified means. Many studies point to changing childbearing practices, particularly in regards to parental attitudes towards sons. Once the primary objective of Chinese parents, male offspring have become financial and emotional liabilities in an era of restricted childbearing, declining filial piety, and needing to pay for sons’ houses and weddings. Lihong Shi’s fascinating case study in a rural northeast village shows how parents increasingly prefer to have girls due to rising childrearing costs, declining beliefs about needing sons to continue the family line, and new views of sons as financial burdens rather than care providers. Despite young women’s newfound empowerment in this village, it is not enough to overturn societal ideologies of male dominance. Gonçalo Santos draws attention to changing generational relationships by examining issues related to rural grandparents who care for the millions of children left behind when their parents migrate to cities for work. Although the media frames absent parents—especially mothers—as neglectful, the chapter shows that families partition the work of parenting into different roles of breadwinning and caregiving that allow responsibilities to be split across space and family members.
Urban areas, not surprisingly, are also seeing drastic changes in gender and generational relations. Separate studies by Roberta Zavoretti and Elisabeth Engebretsen highlight transformations in heterosexual and lesbian-gay contract marriages respectively. Zavoretti traces the trajectory of one educated, middle-class woman in Nanjing through the process of dating, marriage, and eventually childbearing to show how everyday bargaining within the household can reproduce patriarchy even among affluent urbanites. Engebretsen’s intriguing study discusses how urban, educated lesbians and gay men meet online and undertake a “marriage of convenience” to relieve intense family pressure. Although this arrangement may seem like a sound strategy for LGBT individuals to please their parents and obtain more personal freedom, the author shows that persistent patriarchal ideologies that favour men create a situation in which women have more to lose if they pursue a fake marriage.
The book’s final section highlights how new technologies and commodified practices are being deployed to assist families with childbearing and eldercare. Notably, Kerstin Klein’s chapter on assisted reproductive technologies and sperm donation demonstrates the state’s intervention not just in the fertility, but also the infertility, of its citizens. While the fertility regulations have limited most people’s possibility of adopting a child, there are nonetheless stringent restrictions on sperm donors and total restrictions against obtaining donor eggs that prevent many couples from being able to have a child. The irony of this situation lies in the fact that these urban, educated, affluent prospective parents are exactly the ones upon whom the government depends to create a so-called “high quality” population.
Ultimately, all of these studies suggest that new, modern practices of gender and generation within families continue to coexist with long-standing patriarchal norms. The role of the state can’t be ignored, as it simultaneously encourages (and at times restricts) marriage and childbearing to enhance societal stability while also placing the burden of social security and eldercare onto individual families. The anthropological take on these issues is enlightening, but it would have been useful to incorporate other family and gender-related research emerging out of the fields of history, sociology, and law. Furthermore, the studies hint at globalization without truly engaging in the ways in which transnational actors, ideas, and practices are both flowing into and pulling people out of the country, in the process influencing new approaches to family. As China moves towards becoming the world’s most powerful economy, it is increasingly necessary to examine cross-border processes and interactions. Nonetheless, this volume is a treasure trove of useful, interesting, and in many ways groundbreaking material that will undoubtedly influence the next generation of Chinese gender and family scholars.
Leslie K. Wang
University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, USA
pp. 142-144