Deciding a child's fate : women and birth -- Reforming customs : scholars and morality -- Seeing bodies : experts and evidence -- Saving souls : missionaries and redemption -- Reframing female infanticide : the emerging nation
Summary
This study breaks down the relationship between female infanticide and Chinese culture and reconstructs that association as a product of historical processes of the nineteenth century. It takes as its explicit focus the changing perception of female infanticide in Chinese history. Without diminishing the seriousness of the problem of excess female mortality in either the Chinese present or past, it seeks to disrupt the familiar narrative about the continuity of female victimhood in China from the pre-modern era to the present, and to introduce the possibility of historical change
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-241) and index
