- 05 Apr 2009 03:51
#1858747
Private Life under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949-1999 by Yunxiang Yan
By HoniSoit
Private Life under Socialism is a recent anthropological study of the social and familial transformations in one Chinese village since the economic reform of 1978. The author, Yunxiang Yan, has explored the villagers' changing attitudes toward love and intimacy (e.g. from very conservative to far more liberal views, the rise of conjugal love etc.), as well as the transformation in family structure (e.g. the gradual breakdown of patriarchy, the weakening of the notion of filial piety, the growth of nuclear family etc.). Despite its narrow focus, as anthropological studies inevitably have to do, on only one village, you can clearly see the general trends of change that could easily be generalised to much of rural and in some way urban China as well.
Yan is able to tell a seemingly simple but in reality a rather complex story of great changes with many revealing in-depth interviews and careful and acute observations. Yan, though now an academic based in the US, has previously lived in the village he now investigates for some ten years and has since come back to carry out extensive field work over another long period of time. This may have helped him to be able to reveal more intimate details of the 'intimate lives' of the villagers, something anthropologists from outside may not be able to accomplish.
It is a fascinating, very well-written and highly readable book with many interesting stories and human details; it's not a book that will easily bore you once you get into it. While it may not be the kind of book that will interest general readers, it deserves to be read by people who are interested in the social aspects of change in China for the past three decades.
I appreciate any comment
By HoniSoit
Private Life under Socialism is a recent anthropological study of the social and familial transformations in one Chinese village since the economic reform of 1978. The author, Yunxiang Yan, has explored the villagers' changing attitudes toward love and intimacy (e.g. from very conservative to far more liberal views, the rise of conjugal love etc.), as well as the transformation in family structure (e.g. the gradual breakdown of patriarchy, the weakening of the notion of filial piety, the growth of nuclear family etc.). Despite its narrow focus, as anthropological studies inevitably have to do, on only one village, you can clearly see the general trends of change that could easily be generalised to much of rural and in some way urban China as well.
Yan is able to tell a seemingly simple but in reality a rather complex story of great changes with many revealing in-depth interviews and careful and acute observations. Yan, though now an academic based in the US, has previously lived in the village he now investigates for some ten years and has since come back to carry out extensive field work over another long period of time. This may have helped him to be able to reveal more intimate details of the 'intimate lives' of the villagers, something anthropologists from outside may not be able to accomplish.
It is a fascinating, very well-written and highly readable book with many interesting stories and human details; it's not a book that will easily bore you once you get into it. While it may not be the kind of book that will interest general readers, it deserves to be read by people who are interested in the social aspects of change in China for the past three decades.
I appreciate any comment
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