Cultural Centrality And Political Change In Chinese History

Author : Roger V. Des Forges
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780804740449
Total Pages : 460 pages
Book Rating : 4.45/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Cultural Centrality and Political Change in Chinese History written by Roger V. Des Forges and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ming period of Chinese history is often depicted as one of cultural aridity, political despotism, and social stasis. Recent studies have shown that the arts continued to flourish, government remained effective, people enjoyed considerable mobility, and China served as a center of the global economy. This study goes further to argue that China’s perennial quest for cultural centrality resulted in periodic political changes that permitted the Chinese people to retain control over social and economic developments. The study focuses on two and a half million people in three prefectures of northeast Henan, the central province in the heart of the "central plain”--a common synecdoche for China. The author argues that this population may have been more representative of the Chinese people at large than were the residents of more prosperous regions. Many diverse individuals in northeast Henan invoked historical models to deal with the present and shape the future. Though they differed in the lessons they drew, they shared the view that the Han dynasty was particularly relevant to their own time. Han and Ming politics were integral parts of a pattern of Chinese historical development that has lasted to the present.

Author : Qizhi Zhang
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3662464829
Total Pages : 472 pages
Book Rating : 4.23/5 ( download)

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Download or read book An Introduction to Chinese History and Culture written by Qizhi Zhang and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-04-15 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book breaks with convention and provides an overview of Chinese history in the form of special topics. These topics include the major issues of “A Scientific Approach to the Origins of Chinese Civilization,” “Ancient Chinese Society and the Change of Dynasties,” “The Golden Ages of the Han, Tang and Qing Dynasties: a Comparative Analysis,” “Transportation Systems and Cultural Communication in Ancient China,” “Ethnic Relations in Chinese History,” “The Systems of Politics, Law and Selecting Officials in Ancient China,” “Agriculture, Handicraft and Commerce in Ancient China,” “The Military Thought and Military Systems of Ancient China,” “The Rich and Colorful Social Life in Ancient China,” “The Evolution of Ancient Chinese Thought,” “The Treasure House of Ancient Chinese Literature and Art,” “The Emergence and Progress of Ancient Chinese Historiography,” “Reflection on Ancient Chinese Science and Technology,” “New Issues in the Modern History of China,” and “A General Progression to the Socialist Modernization of the People’s Republic of China.” The book is based on current literature and research by university students. The modern history section is relatively concise, while the topics related to ancient Chinese history are longer, reflecting the country’s rich history and corresponding wealth of materials. There is also an in-depth discussion on the socialist modernization of the People’s Republic of China. The book provides insights into Chinese history, allowing readers “to see the value of civilization through history; to see the preciseness of history through civilization.” It focuses on the social background, lifestyle and development processes to illustrate ideologies and ideas.

Author : Hong Yung Lee
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 9780520032972
Total Pages : 388 pages
Book Rating : 4.77/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Politics of the Chinese Cultural Revolution written by Hong Yung Lee and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1978-01-01 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Kirk A. Denton
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
ISBN 13 : 0824840062
Total Pages : 362 pages
Book Rating : 4.68/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Exhibiting the Past written by Kirk A. Denton and published by University of Hawaii Press. This book was released on 2013-12-31 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Mao era, China’s museums served an explicit and uniform propaganda function, underlining official Party history, eulogizing revolutionary heroes, and contributing to nation building and socialist construction. With the implementation of the post-Mao modernization program in the late 1970s and 1980s and the advent of globalization and market reforms in the 1990s, China underwent a radical social and economic transformation that has led to a vastly more heterogeneous culture and polity. Yet China is dominated by a single Leninist party that continues to rely heavily on its revolutionary heritage to generate political legitimacy. With its messages of collectivism, self-sacrifice, and class struggle, that heritage is increasingly at odds with Chinese society and with the state’s own neoliberal ideology of rapid-paced development, glorification of the market, and entrepreneurship. In this ambiguous political environment, museums and their curators must negotiate between revolutionary ideology and new kinds of historical narratives that reflect and highlight a neoliberal present. In Exhibiting the Past, Kirk Denton analyzes types of museums and exhibitionary spaces, from revolutionary history museums, military museums, and memorials to martyrs to museums dedicated to literature, ethnic minorities, and local history. He discusses red tourism—a state sponsored program developed in 2003 as a new form of patriotic education designed to make revolutionary history come alive—and urban planning exhibition halls, which project utopian visions of China’s future that are rooted in new conceptions of the past. Denton’s method is narratological in the sense that he analyzes the stories museums tell about the past and the political and ideological implications of those stories. Focusing on “official” exhibitionary culture rather than alternative or counter memory, Denton reinserts the state back into the discussion of postsocialist culture because of its centrality to that culture and to show that state discourse in China is neither monolithic nor unchanging. The book considers the variety of ways state museums are responding to the dramatic social, technological, and cultural changes China has experienced over the past three decades.

Author : Richard L. Davis
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 1684170222
Total Pages : 304 pages
Book Rating : 4.27/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Wind Against the Mountain written by Richard L. Davis and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Davis has expertly crafted a stirring narrative of the last years of Song, focusing on loyalist resistance to Mongol domination as more than just a political event. Davis convincingly argues that Song martyrs were dying for more than dynasty alone: martyrdom can be linked to other powerfully compelling symbols as well. Seen from the perspective of the conquered, the phenomenon of martyrdom reveals much about the cultural history of the Song. Davis challenges the traditional view of Song martyrdom as a simple expression of political duty by examining the phenomenon instead from the perspective of material life and masculine identity. He also explores the tensions between the outer court of militant radicals and an inner court run by female regents—tensions that reflect the broader split between factions of Song government as well as societal conflict. Davis reveals the true magnitude of the loyalist phenomenon in this beautifully written, fascinating study of Song political loyalty and cultural values.

Author : Susan Naquin
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780300046021
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.22/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Chinese Society in the Eighteenth Century written by Susan Naquin and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1987-01-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the eighteenth century, China's new Manchu rulers consolidated their control of the largest empire China had ever known. In this book Susan Naquin and Evelyn S. Rawski draw on the most recent research to provide a unique overview and reevaluation of the social history of China during this period--one of the most dynamic periods in China's early modern era. "A lucid, original, and scholarly summary of the social, economic, and demographic history of China's last great period of glory. This will be an important book for students of Chinese history."--Jonathan Spence, Yale University "Engaging, complex, and elegantly written. . . . Absorbing and valuable: a thorough, unique, and richly detailed account of the social forms and cultural and religious life of the people."--Choice " An] interesting and well-informed survey of China between about 1680 and 1820."--W.J.F. Jenner, Asian Affairs "I would be a very odd scholar or general reader who could not derive profit from reading this elegant and painstaking survey of the social, cultural, and economic life of the Qing empire in its apparent prime. . . . A superb survey which readers may absorb and cherish."--Alexander Woodside, Pacific Affairs "A highly readable synthesis of recent secondary literature on the subject."--William S. Atwell, Journal of Asian Studies "Their coverage is comprehensive and their writing is clear and lucid. reading this book obtains one a very broad, yet penetrative, view of Chinese society at the time."--Alan P.L. Liu, Asian Thought & Society "The ground covered by this book is vast. . . . Its very breadth conveys with great clarity the extent of current knowledge of premodern China: it also serves as an excellent introduction to the social history of the Qing dynasty."--Hugh D.R. Baker, China Quarterly "This is a most challenging work and ambitious work. . . . Chinese Society in the Eighteenth Century give both the general reader and also the historian who does not study China a tool for grounding himself or herself in the basic patterns and trends that could be found in eighteenth century China as well as in the problems the specialists are now exploring. The book is also of great value to students of traditional and modern China, for it serves to synthesize much of the new literature on China in the High Qing. Thus it serves the 'China hand' as a state of the field essay that shows just where we are even as it suggests directions for future research."--Murray A. Rubinstein, American Asian Review "This excellent book provides an intelligent summary our rapidly changing understanding of Chinese society in a crucial century of political stability and economic and demographic expansion. Susan Naquin and Evelyn S. Rawski are distinguished contributors to the field, energetically engaged in its multinational communication networks."--John E. Wills, Jr., American Historical Review

Author : Benjamin Isadore Schwartz
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674118621
Total Pages : 310 pages
Book Rating : 4.26/5 ( download)

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Download or read book China and Other Matters written by Benjamin Isadore Schwartz and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These writings, representing over a generation of work by one of our most acute commentators on Chinese history, are collected here for the first time and introduced with a masterly prologue. They cut across the boundaries of different fields of knowledge to better understand modern China and traditional Chinese culture. Schwartz's writings are deeply concerned with the conceptual frameworks and presumptions which we as twentieth-century Westerners bring to bear in our study of foreign cultures. He brings the entire complexity concerning modernity to his analysis of the millennial political, social, and cultural history of China. This is also an excavation of the conscious life of the Chinese past, an interpretation of the persistent dominant cultural and sociopolitical orientations of Chinese culture. The constancies of behavior and attitudes are made plain in the contingencies and complexities of short-durational and generational history.

Author : Stuart R. Schram
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521202961
Total Pages : 356 pages
Book Rating : 4.65/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Authority Participation and Cultural Change in China written by Stuart R. Schram and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1973-09-27 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This 1973 volume is a fascinating collection of original studies on the immediate consequences and the likely long-term effects of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the enormous social and political upheaval initiated by Mao Tse-Tung in 1966. The authors discuss a series of connected problems, all intimately related to the central theme of leadership and participation in the Chinese pattern of economic development and social change. The collection is edited by Stuart Schram, who also provides a long introduction; he puts the Cultural Revolution in the broad historical perspective of the Chinese revolution as it has taken shape since the end of the nineteenth century.

Author : Charles O. Hucker
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780804723534
Total Pages : 500 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book China’s Imperial Past written by Charles O. Hucker and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1975 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A panoramic survey of the course of Chinese civilization from prehistory to 1850, when the old China began to give way

Author : Shiping Hua
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1315500477
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.78/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Chinese Political Culture written by Shiping Hua and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-07-08 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until this book, there has been no comprehensive, methodologically aware study of all aspects of Chinese political culture. The book is organized into three major areas: Chinese identities and popular culture (regional identities, anti-politics attitudes, Hong Kong identity); public opinion surveys (the Beijing area, Chinese workers, the Shanghai area); and ideological debates (the "new" Confucianism, masculinity and Confucianism, why authoritarianism is popular in China, the decline of Chinese official ideology). Here is the first work that reveals just how much, how rapidly, and how dramatically China is changing and why our perceptions of China must keep pace.