Introduction: The Chinese Family and the Study of Private Life -- 1. The Changing Local World: Political Economy, Public Life, and Social Networks -- 2. Youth Autonomy and Romance in Courtship -- 3. Sex, Intimacy, and the Language of Love -- 4. Gender Dynamics and the Triumph of Conjugal Power -- 5. Domestic Space and the Quest for Privacy -- 6. The Politics of Family Property -- 7. Elderly Support and the Crisis of Filial Piety -- 8. Birth Control and the Making of a New Fertility Culture -- Conclusion: The Socialist State, the Private Family, and the Uncivil Individual
Summary
For seven years in the 1970s, the author lived in a village in northeast China as an ordinary farmer. In 1989, he returned to the village as an anthropologist to begin the unparalleled span of eleven years' fieldwork that has resulted in this book--a comprehensive, vivid, and nuanced account of family change and the transformation of private life in rural China from 1949 to 1999. [from publisher's advertisement]
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 267-281) and index
