This book examines major areas of late imperial Chinese culture, and their relation to Chinese culture today, focusing on the competence and sophistication of ordinary people. The work provides an overview of late imperial society and its responses to forces for change. Its ethnographically rich treatment of changes in family life under Communist rule is based on the author's fieldwork. Kinship beyond the family is treated through comparisons of the author's fieldwork sites in China and Taiwan. In dealing with the use of contracts and commodification within one community setting, it illuminates the broader economic culture of late imperial China. This book powerfully confirms that China's modernity has deep roots in its own tradition, and in doing so offers an excellent introduction to the anthropological view of China. "A splendidly useful and revealing collection... a splendid summary of some of Cohen's best and most significant contributions to Chinese anthropology." -- The China Journal This book examines major areas of late imperial Chinese culture, and their relation to Chinese culture today, focusing on the competence and sophistication of ordinary people. The work provides an overview of late imperial society and its responses to forces for change. Its ethnographically rich treatment of changes in family life under Communist rule is based on the author's fieldwork. Kinship beyond the family is treated through comparisons of the author's fieldwork sites in China and Taiwan. In dealing with the use of contracts and commodification within one community setting, it illuminates the broader economic culture of late imperial China. This book powerfully confirms that China's modernity has deep roots in its own tradition, and in doing so offers an excellent introduction to the anthropological view of China. This book examines major areas of late imperial Chinese culture, and their relation to Chinese culture today, focusing on the competence and sophistication of ordinary people. The work provides an overview of late imperial society and its responses to forces for change. Its ethnographically rich treatment of changes in family life under Communist rule is based on the author's fieldwork. Kinship beyond the family is treated through comparisons of the author's fieldwork sites in China and Taiwan. In dealing with the use of contracts and commodification within one community setting, it illuminates the broader economic culture of late imperial China. This book powerfully confirms that China's modernity has deep roots in its own tradition, and in doing so offers an excellent introduction to the anthropological view of China. Myron L. Cohen is Professor of Anthropology at Columbia University and an affiliate of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute. He is the author of House United, House Divided: The Chinese Family in Taiwan, and Asia Case Studies in the Social Sciences: A Guide for Teaching. Kinship, Contract, Community, and State Anthropological Perspectives on China By MYRON L. COHEN STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Copyright © 2005 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-8047-5067-7 Contents Introduction.................................................................................................................................1SECTION I: Late Imperial China and Its Legacies1 Introduction to Arthur H. Smith's Village Life in China....................................................................................192 Being Chinese: The Peripheralization of Traditional Identity...............................................................................393 Cultural and Political Inventions in Modern China: The Case of the Chinese "Peasant".......................................................60SECTION II: The Family4 North China Rural Families: Changes During the Communist Era...............................................................................77SECTION III: Lineage Studies5 Lineage Development and the Family in China................................................................................................1536 Lineage Organization in North China........................................................................................................1657 Lineage Organization in East China.........................................................................................................195SECTION IV: Historical Anthropology: The Minong Community During Qing8 Commodity Creation in Late Imperial China..................................................................................................2239 Writs of Passage in Late Imperial China: Contracts and the Documentation of Practical Understandings in Minong, Taiwan.....................252Notes........................................................................................................................................307Bibliography...........................