Kinship, Contract, Community, and State: Anthropological Perspectives on 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 Tai...