Familial Properties

Familial Properties
Author: Nhung Tuyet Tran
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2018-05-31
Genre: History
ISBN: 0824874900

Familial Properties is the first full-length history of Vietnamese gender relations in the precolonial period. Author Nhung Tuyet Tran shows how, despite the bias in law and practice of a patrilineal society based on primogeniture, some women were able to manipulate the system to their own advantage. Women succeeded in taking pragmatic advantage of socioeconomic turmoil during a time of war and chaos to acquire wealth and, to some extent, control what happened to their property. Drawing from legal, literary, and religious sources written in the demotic script, classical Chinese, and European languages, Tran argues that beginning in the fifteenth century, state and local communities produced laws and morality codes limiting women’s participation in social life. Then in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, economic and political turmoil led the three competing states—the Mac, Trinh, and Nguyen—to increase their military service demands, producing labor shortages in the fields and markets of the countryside. Women filled the vacuum left by their brothers, husbands, and fathers, and as they worked the lands and tended the markets, they accumulated monetary capital. To protect that capital, they circumvented local practice and state law guaranteeing patrilineal inheritance rights by soliciting the cooperation of male leaders. In exchange for monetary and landed donations to the local community, these women were elected to become spiritual patrons of the community whose souls would be forever preserved by collective offering. By tracing how the women, local leaders, and court elites negotiated gender models to demarcate their authority, Tran demonstrates that despite the Confucian ethos of the times, survival strategies were able to subvert gender norms and create new cultural models. Gender, thus, as a signifier of power relations, was central to the relationship between state and local communities in early modern Vietnam. Rich and detailed in its use of documentary evidence from a range of archives, this work will be of great interest to scholars of Southeast Asian history and the comparative study of gender.

China's Gilded Age

China's Gilded Age
Author: Yuen Yuen Ang
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 275
Release: 2020-05-28
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1108802389

Why has China grown so fast for so long despite vast corruption? In China's Gilded Age, Yuen Yuen Ang maintains that all corruption is harmful, but not all types of corruption hurt growth. Ang unbundles corruption into four varieties: petty theft, grand theft, speed money, and access money. While the first three types impede growth, access money - elite exchanges of power and profit - cuts both ways: it stimulates investment and growth but produces serious risks for the economy and political system. Since market opening, corruption in China has evolved toward access money. Using a range of data sources, the author explains the evolution of Chinese corruption, how it differs from the West and other developing countries, and how Xi's anti-corruption campaign could affect growth and governance. In this formidable yet accessible book, Ang challenges one-dimensional measures of corruption. By unbundling the problem and adopting a comparative-historical lens, she reveals that the rise of capitalism was not accompanied by the eradication of corruption, but rather by its evolution from thuggery and theft to access money. In doing so, she changes the way we think about corruption and capitalism, not only in China but around the world.

Continuing Vietnamese

Continuing Vietnamese
Author: Binh Nhu Ngo
Publisher: Tuttle Publishing
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2021-02-16
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 146290095X

"Quite simply the most serious early intermediate textbook currently available for thoughtful American students at the university level."--Professor Stephen O'Harrow, Director, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hawai'i at Manoa This is a second-year, intermediate Vietnamese language course designed for high school, college or self-study. Continuing Vietnamese is your next step toward master; it follows the best-selling, linguistically-based Elementary Vietnamese, and helps you progress to an intermediate level of communicating in Vietnamese. Invaluable for anyone planning to travel, study or work in Vietnam, this complete language course has been extensively tested at Harvard University. The accompanying native-speaker audio helps to develop listening comprehension and ensure correct pronunciation. The book contains ten lessons, each composed of two parts. Part 1, the dialogue part, introduces the learner to conversational Vietnamese as it's currently spoken in Hanoi so that the learner will be able to participate in engaging conversation on a variety of topics. Part 2, the narrative part, includes written materials that are characteristic of formal Vietnamese. It aims to develop the learner's reading and writing skills as well as speaking skills. The lessons focuse on various aspects of life in present-day Vietnam, including topics such as culture, history, geography, economy, theater, music, tourism, literature, poetry, cinema and sports. Each lesson helps you to learn Vietnamese by building your Vietnamese proficiency using several complementary elements to thoroughly develop your skills in reading, writing, listening and speaking. Key features of Continuing Vietnamese include: Online audio recordings offering native speakers' renditions of all the dialogues and narratives, vocabulary, grammar and usage explanations, everyday Vietnamese expressions, pronunciation drills and exercises, and even some popular Vietnamese proverbs. Exercises and practice activities which hone your skills throughout the learning process. Cultural notes that help bring Vietnam to life. A contemporary focus on today's Vietnamese speech patterns. A format that sharpens all four language skills: listening, speaking, writing and reading. All media content is alternatively accessible on the Tuttle Publishing website.

The Good Women of China

The Good Women of China
Author: Xinran
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2008-11-26
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0307485536

When Deng Xiaoping’s efforts to “open up” China took root in the late 1980s, Xinran recognized an invaluable opportunity. As an employee for the state radio system, she had long wanted to help improve the lives of Chinese women. But when she was given clearance to host a radio call-in show, she barely anticipated the enthusiasm it would quickly generate. Operating within the constraints imposed by government censors, “Words on the Night Breeze” sparked a tremendous outpouring, and the hours of tape on her answering machines were soon filled every night. Whether angry or muted, posing questions or simply relating experiences, these anonymous women bore witness to decades of civil strife, and of halting attempts at self-understanding in a painfully restrictive society. In this collection, by turns heartrending and inspiring, Xinran brings us the stories that affected her most, and offers a graphically detailed, altogether unprecedented work of oral history.

The Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature (1000 BCE-900 CE)

The Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature (1000 BCE-900 CE)
Author: Wiebke Denecke
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 625
Release: 2017
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 0199356599

This volume introduces readers to classical Chinese literature from its beginnings (ca. 10th century BCE) to the tenth century BCE through a conceptual framework centered on textual production and transmission. It focuses on recuperating historical perspectives for the period it surveys, and attempts to draw connections between the past and present.

Confucianisms for a Changing World Cultural Order

Confucianisms for a Changing World Cultural Order
Author: Roger T. Ames
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2017-11-30
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0824872584

In a single generation, the rise of Asia has precipitated a dramatic sea change in the world’s economic and political orders. This reconfiguration is taking place amidst a host of deepening global predicaments, including climate change, migration, increasing inequalities of wealth and opportunity, that cannot be resolved by purely technical means or by seeking recourse in a liberalism that has of late proven to be less than effective. The present work critically explores how the pan-Asian phenomenon of Confucianism offers alternative values and depths of ethical commitment that cross national and cultural boundaries to provide a new response to these challenges. When searching for resources to respond to the world’s problems, we tend to look to those that are most familiar: Single actors pursuing their own self-interests in competition or collaboration with other players. As is now widely appreciated, Confucian culture celebrates the relational values of deference and interdependence—that is, relationally constituted persons are understood as embedded in and nurtured by unique, transactional patterns of relations. This is a concept of person that contrasts starkly with the discrete, self-determining individual, an artifact of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Western European approaches to modernization that has become closely associated with liberal democracy. Examining the meaning and value of Confucianism in the twenty-first century, the contributors—leading scholars from universities around the world—wrestle with several key questions: What are Confucian values within the context of the disparate cultures of China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam? What is their current significance? What are the limits and historical failings of Confucianism and how are these to be critically addressed? How must Confucian culture be reformed if it is to become relevant as an international resource for positive change? Their answers vary, but all agree that only a vital and critical Confucianism will have relevance for an emerging world cultural order.