Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014. xii, 326 pp. (Figures, tables.) US$24.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-8047-9184-7.
This book opens the Pandora’s box of marriage issues in China, offering readers a view of the growing anomalies of familial, sexual, and marital mores and the complexities engendered by deviancies in the three Chinese societies of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the PRC. These “hidden” by-products, evolved throughout history and transformed by modernity, are disrupting and restructuring the conventional orders of marriage and family relationships in contemporary China. It is at this historical moment that they are captured by this book and presented as an important topic for discussion and debate: the “deinstitutionalization” of marriage in China (3).
The book incorporates multiple perspectives (legal, socio-demographic, gender, and culture) of scholars who approached the topic in both qualitative and quantitative ways. It is divided into three parts. Part 1 focuses on the PRC. Davis interprets the revised marriage laws/regulations in the PRC and the driving factors and social implications beyond legal amendments. She argues that the paradoxical role of the state as a “legal referee” that increasingly legitimizes marriage freedom (sexual intimacy and conjugal property) and as a Maoist-style “social engineer” that unwaveringly dictates marital fertility and reproduction constitutes a unique feature of marriage deinstitutionalization in China (54–55).
Farrer examines the changing sexual cultures in China, demonstrated by a growing disjuncture between premarital intimacy and marriage/childbearing. He complicates the notion of (modern) love by deconstructing the “feeling rules” in contexts of commitment, intimacy and passion whereby disloyalty, casual sex, and ambiguous relationships are justifiably entangled. It is worth thinking whether that represents a sexual revolution which allows the Chinese to cultivate new cultures of intimacy or a demonstration of a moral vacuum among contemporary youths in the PRC.
Yong and Wang explore the underlying forces of the (re)emergence of late marriages in Shanghai. They argue that marriage reinstitution is more of an evolutionary than revolutionary phenomenon because marriage practices, i.e., marital age and birth planning, feature an increasing degree of individual choices and reduced legislative enforcement (107). Their data analysis adds credit to the inference that China will likely follow a similar trajectory to that in its neighbouring countries in East Asia where the conventional marriage institution has been disrupted and remodelled by the younger generation.
Zhang and Sun capture an interesting phenomenon in Shanghai People’s Park, where parents negotiate a marriage suitor for their daughters. They attribute the highlighted anxieties of parents to three main factors: first, the growing economic pressure; second, demographic changes, such as the implementation of the One-Child Policy; and third, parents’ ideological connections to the socialist past. The discussion of shifting intimacy from the private to the public thus exposes essential issues of China in transition.
Part 2 centres on Hong Kong. Ting outlines the continuities and changes in Hong Kong people’s marital experiences from the 1960s to 2010. He analyzes the correlation between marriage quality and demographics, i.e., gender, age, and educational level. The data analysis, however, doesn’t closely support the conclusion, which emphasizes the “robust institution” of marriage in Hong Kong in spite of the occurrence of new forms of marital and sexual practice in the society (158). Yet this poses a new question: how do we determine if marriage remains a social institution or is deinstitutionalized in a society?
Ho studies Hong Kong males’ rhetoric on their sexual and marital experiences with local and PRC women. He finds conventional masculinities have been overthrown and redefined by modern Hong Kong men who offer multiple interpretations of being “good” and “responsible”: a self-justified definition which simultaneously reflects their insecurities, pride, desires for recognition, and aspirations for romance and sexual relationships outside of marriage. This echoes the broader sociocultural changes of postcolonial Hong Kong.
Erni examines Hong Kong’s first transgender marriage case, which highlights the prevailing social prejudice against people in the new gender categories and the legal resistance to challenging the marriage institution in the local society. His analysis of the cultural and legal discourses (e.g., the court’s statement) stimulates discussions of the meanings of gender/sex and marriage and the legal rights of people “on the edge.”
Part 3 focuses on Taiwan. Kuo analyzes the transformations of Taiwanese family law in response to the emergence of new types of marriage in recent decades. His discussion of Taiwan’s legal reform in response to the private life “reordering” not only demonstrates the increasing trend of deinstitutionalization of marriage in Taiwan but also alarms governments in other societies to initiate legal actions to manage similar challenges.
Yu and Liu’s survey on the determinants of housework division between husbands and wives shows that patriarchal marriage values persist in Taiwan. They argue that the co-existence of the changes and continuities is an incomplete breakdown of the traditional norms instead of a linear process of reinstitutionalization of marriage in Taiwan. This conclusion adds weight to (re)conceptualizing the “deinstitutionalization of marriage” in the Chinese context.
Shen argues that “split marriages” connected through a gendered division of labour can reinforce conjugal ties. This is because geographic separation enables both husbands and wives to cultivate new spaces of their own. Taiwanese (business)men enjoy the freedom of casual sexual liaisons in China whereas their wives gain autonomy and explore their social circles outside home. Her work taps into the counter-force of deinstitutionalization of marriage as it shows that unconventional marriage practices can strengthen the existing institution of marriage.
In analyzing the relationships between gender, population, and sovereignty in cross-Strait marriages, Friedman argues that the regulatory regime in Taiwan, based on a “dependency model” of immigration (290), enhances the unequal status of Chinese marital immigrants as evidenced by their legal and financial reliance on their Taiwanese spouses. She also finds that the state asserts and undergirds its sovereign power through the bureaucratic scrutiny of marriages, a practice that is inseparable from the political contestations across the Strait.
Overall, the chapters are neatly integrated under the theme of “deinstitutionalization of marriage” in China. The book injects new blood into scholarship on the topic of marriage and sexuality and offers alternative ways of thinking and questioning institutions—as symbolized by the cover of the book.
Wang Pan
University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
pp. 706-708