Laurel Boussen and Hill Gates
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780804799553
- eISBN:
- 9781503601079
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804799553.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This book examines the once widespread practice of footbinding from the perspective of China’s gendered labor system. In contrast to the common belief that footbinding was motivated by the quest for ...
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This book examines the once widespread practice of footbinding from the perspective of China’s gendered labor system. In contrast to the common belief that footbinding was motivated by the quest for beauty and was practiced primarily to attract a husband, this book emphasizes that footbinding was extremely widespread, not limited to the elite, and must be understood in the context of girls’ and women’s labor. In preindustrial China, rural women and girls produced vast amounts of cloth and other handcraft goods at home for local use and for market networks with a global reach. Up to the early twentieth century, footbinding coincided with and corresponded to a household labor regime in which small girls were required to help their mothers by performing tedious sedentary work with their hands. Drawing on interviews and surveys with thousands of rural women who grew up in the era when footbinding was being abandoned, this book reconnects footbinding to the intensive hand labor expected of young girls and women. Examining the decline of footbinding in early twentieth-century China, the book argues that in the aggregate, industrialization and the disruption of traditional handcraft occupations that used the labor of young girls, particularly in textiles, hastened the demise of footbinding.Less
This book examines the once widespread practice of footbinding from the perspective of China’s gendered labor system. In contrast to the common belief that footbinding was motivated by the quest for beauty and was practiced primarily to attract a husband, this book emphasizes that footbinding was extremely widespread, not limited to the elite, and must be understood in the context of girls’ and women’s labor. In preindustrial China, rural women and girls produced vast amounts of cloth and other handcraft goods at home for local use and for market networks with a global reach. Up to the early twentieth century, footbinding coincided with and corresponded to a household labor regime in which small girls were required to help their mothers by performing tedious sedentary work with their hands. Drawing on interviews and surveys with thousands of rural women who grew up in the era when footbinding was being abandoned, this book reconnects footbinding to the intensive hand labor expected of young girls and women. Examining the decline of footbinding in early twentieth-century China, the book argues that in the aggregate, industrialization and the disruption of traditional handcraft occupations that used the labor of young girls, particularly in textiles, hastened the demise of footbinding.
John Van Engen
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801451829
- eISBN:
- 9780801471056
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801451829.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
This chapter examines medieval representations of labor and modern scholars' efforts to understand the meaning of work in the Middle Ages. No history of labor and leisure in premodern Europe will ...
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This chapter examines medieval representations of labor and modern scholars' efforts to understand the meaning of work in the Middle Ages. No history of labor and leisure in premodern Europe will make sense of persisting attitudes apart from their reshaping by medieval religious teaching and practice. Turning monks out into fields and shops validated hand work for everyone, as inviting peasant laborers into the confines of the monastery also validated the work of prayer for the lowest social ranks. To become redemptive, hand labor's value rested on its lesser social, intellectual, and spiritual standing. With idle leisure (otiositas) as the proclaimed enemy of the human soul, no one dared argue that life was leisure—all was work.Less
This chapter examines medieval representations of labor and modern scholars' efforts to understand the meaning of work in the Middle Ages. No history of labor and leisure in premodern Europe will make sense of persisting attitudes apart from their reshaping by medieval religious teaching and practice. Turning monks out into fields and shops validated hand work for everyone, as inviting peasant laborers into the confines of the monastery also validated the work of prayer for the lowest social ranks. To become redemptive, hand labor's value rested on its lesser social, intellectual, and spiritual standing. With idle leisure (otiositas) as the proclaimed enemy of the human soul, no one dared argue that life was leisure—all was work.
Laurel Bossen and Hill Gates
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780804799553
- eISBN:
- 9781503601079
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804799553.003.0004
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter continues the inquiry at the western edges of the North China Plain in Shanxi and Shaanxi. Here the four village sites present differences in cotton production, political influence, ...
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This chapter continues the inquiry at the western edges of the North China Plain in Shanxi and Shaanxi. Here the four village sites present differences in cotton production, political influence, proximity to urban trade centers, and to the railroad. One northern site in Shanxi experienced the direct effects of the nearby Communist base in the 1930s. One village in Shaanxi lay in the heart of a rich cotton-growing region while the other in Shaanbei lacked locally grown cotton. The chapter focuses on the political and economic changes affecting women’s and girls’ hand work as well as the timing of footbinding’s decline at each site.Less
This chapter continues the inquiry at the western edges of the North China Plain in Shanxi and Shaanxi. Here the four village sites present differences in cotton production, political influence, proximity to urban trade centers, and to the railroad. One northern site in Shanxi experienced the direct effects of the nearby Communist base in the 1930s. One village in Shaanxi lay in the heart of a rich cotton-growing region while the other in Shaanbei lacked locally grown cotton. The chapter focuses on the political and economic changes affecting women’s and girls’ hand work as well as the timing of footbinding’s decline at each site.
Chris Myers Asch
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807872024
- eISBN:
- 9781469603537
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807878057_asch.14
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter focuses on the twentieth century and how so much changed on the surface of Sunflower County during the time. Forest gave way to farmland, hand labor yielded to machines, gravel lost out ...
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This chapter focuses on the twentieth century and how so much changed on the surface of Sunflower County during the time. Forest gave way to farmland, hand labor yielded to machines, gravel lost out to asphalt, family-run general stores surrendered to corporate chains. Underneath it all lay one constant: the land itself, the deep, rich soil that first had lured white and black settlers to the area and seduced them into braving predators and pestilence in hopes of earning a fortune. Though agricultural scientists have boosted its production with performance-enhancing chemicals, Sunflower County's soil in the twenty-first century remains a marvel of nature. Farmers still grouse about the relative difficulty of growing crops on the crumbly “gumbo” or “buckshot” soil inland, but they can hardly complain about the sandy loam soils along the county's streams that continue to produce ever-greater yields of cotton, soybeans, corn, and rice.Less
This chapter focuses on the twentieth century and how so much changed on the surface of Sunflower County during the time. Forest gave way to farmland, hand labor yielded to machines, gravel lost out to asphalt, family-run general stores surrendered to corporate chains. Underneath it all lay one constant: the land itself, the deep, rich soil that first had lured white and black settlers to the area and seduced them into braving predators and pestilence in hopes of earning a fortune. Though agricultural scientists have boosted its production with performance-enhancing chemicals, Sunflower County's soil in the twenty-first century remains a marvel of nature. Farmers still grouse about the relative difficulty of growing crops on the crumbly “gumbo” or “buckshot” soil inland, but they can hardly complain about the sandy loam soils along the county's streams that continue to produce ever-greater yields of cotton, soybeans, corn, and rice.
