Strangers in the Family: Gender, Patriliny, and the Chinese in Colonial Indonesia

In Strangers in the Family, Guo-Quan Seng provides a gendered history of settler Chinese community formation in Indonesia during the Dutch colonial period (1816–1942). At the heart of this story lies the creolization of patrilineal Confucian marital and familial norms to the colonial legal, moral, and sexual conditions of urban Java.

Departing from male-centered narratives of Ooverseas Chinese communities, Strangers in the Family tells the history of community- formation from the perspective of women who were subordinate to, and alienated from, full Chinese selfhood. From native concubines and mothers, creole Chinese daughters, and wives and matriarchs, to the first generation of colonial-educated feminists, Seng showcases women's moral agency as they negotiated, manipulated, and debated men in positions of authority over their rights in marriage formation and dissolution. In dialogue with critical studies of colonial Eurasian intimacies, this book explores Asian-centered inter-ethnic patterns of intimate encounters. It shows how contestations over women's place in marriage and in society were formative of a Chinese racial identity in colonial Indonesia.

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Strangers in the Family: Gender, Patriliny, and the Chinese in Colonial Indonesia

In Strangers in the Family, Guo-Quan Seng provides a gendered history of settler Chinese community formation in Indonesia during the Dutch colonial period (1816–1942). At the heart of this story lies the creolization of patrilineal Confucian marital and familial norms to the colonial legal, moral, and sexual conditions of urban Java.

Departing from male-centered narratives of Ooverseas Chinese communities, Strangers in the Family tells the history of community- formation from the perspective of women who were subordinate to, and alienated from, full Chinese selfhood. From native concubines and mothers, creole Chinese daughters, and wives and matriarchs, to the first generation of colonial-educated feminists, Seng showcases women's moral agency as they negotiated, manipulated, and debated men in positions of authority over their rights in marriage formation and dissolution. In dialogue with critical studies of colonial Eurasian intimacies, this book explores Asian-centered inter-ethnic patterns of intimate encounters. It shows how contestations over women's place in marriage and in society were formative of a Chinese racial identity in colonial Indonesia.

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Strangers in the Family: Gender, Patriliny, and the Chinese in Colonial Indonesia

Strangers in the Family: Gender, Patriliny, and the Chinese in Colonial Indonesia

by Guo-Quan Seng
Strangers in the Family: Gender, Patriliny, and the Chinese in Colonial Indonesia

Strangers in the Family: Gender, Patriliny, and the Chinese in Colonial Indonesia

by Guo-Quan Seng

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Overview

In Strangers in the Family, Guo-Quan Seng provides a gendered history of settler Chinese community formation in Indonesia during the Dutch colonial period (1816–1942). At the heart of this story lies the creolization of patrilineal Confucian marital and familial norms to the colonial legal, moral, and sexual conditions of urban Java.

Departing from male-centered narratives of Ooverseas Chinese communities, Strangers in the Family tells the history of community- formation from the perspective of women who were subordinate to, and alienated from, full Chinese selfhood. From native concubines and mothers, creole Chinese daughters, and wives and matriarchs, to the first generation of colonial-educated feminists, Seng showcases women's moral agency as they negotiated, manipulated, and debated men in positions of authority over their rights in marriage formation and dissolution. In dialogue with critical studies of colonial Eurasian intimacies, this book explores Asian-centered inter-ethnic patterns of intimate encounters. It shows how contestations over women's place in marriage and in society were formative of a Chinese racial identity in colonial Indonesia.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781501772535
Publisher: Southeast Asia Program Publications
Publication date: 11/15/2023
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 270
File size: 60 MB
Note: This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author

Guo-Quan Seng is Assistant Professor in the history departmentof History at the National University of Singapore. He is the coauthor of The University Socialist Club and the Contest for Malaya.

What People are Saying About This

Yew-Foong Hui

In bringing together an expansive array of primary materials and scholarly literature, Guo-Quan Seng introduces readers to new ways of interpreting the intimacy of gender relations involving the creole Chinese of the Dutch East Indies.

Saskia Wieringa

Comprehensive and persuasive. Strangers in the Family sheds new light on the subject formation of Chinese Indonesians over almost three centuries by showing how colonial, orientalist, and Confucianist ideologies and practices perpetuated and (re)created them as strangers.

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