Melissa J Brown
Biographic Data
| ID | 3621739 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Melissa J Brown |
| GIVEN NAMES | Melissa J |
| FAMILY NAME | Brown |
| SIGNATURE | BROWN M J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 62 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 14 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1996 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2016 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Footbinding, Industrialization, and Evolutionary Explanation
Explaining Culture Scientifically
What exactly is culture? The authors of this volume suggest that the study of one of anthropology's central questions may be a route to developing a scientific paradigm for the field. The contributors - prominent scholars in anthropology, biology, and economics - approach culture from very different theoretical and methodological perspectives, through studies grounded in fieldwork, surveys, demography, and other empirical data. From humans to chi…
Le célibat masculin involontaire en Chine rurale
Si un homme dispose d'un réseau d'intermédiaires, ses chances de se marier en sont-elles accrues ? En exploitant des données d'enquête recueillies en 2008 dans le district X de la province d'Anhui en Chine, les auteurs analysent les déterminants de la probabilité de premier mariage selon le type de réseau d'un échantillon d'hommes âgés de 18 à 50 ans vivant en milieu rural ( N = 412). L'âge au premier mariage des hommes se concentre entre 22 et 2…
Marriage Mobility and Footbinding in Pre-1949 Rural China
We provide evidence contrary to long-standing general expectations that before 1949 most Chinese women married up the social hierarchy and that footbinding facilitated this hypergamy. In our sample of 7,314 rural women living in Sichuan, Northern, Central, and Southwestern China in the first half of the twentieth century, two-thirds of women did not marry up. In fact, 22 percent of all women, across regions, married down. In most regions, more wo…
Feet and Fabrication
The early twentieth-century transformations of rural Chinese women’s work have received relatively little direct attention. By contrast, the former custom of footbinding continues to fascinate and is often used to illustrate or contest theories about Chinese women’s status. Arguing that for rural women at least, footbinding needs to be understood in relation to rural economic conditions, the authors focus on changes in textile production and in f…
Changing authentic identities
Despite ideological rhetoric to the contrary, identity changes and authenticity depend on social experience - the lived interactions of individuals as well as the broad range of political-economic, historical, and personal factors that shape those interactions. Because governments influence social experience, they can shape identities of their populations. Plains Aborigines in colonial Taiwan became Han Taiwanese after Japanese authorities banned…
Ethnic Identity, Cultural Variation, and Processes of Change
Watson’s view that culture held late imperial China together appears to be problematic with regard to standardization and insightful with regard to social theory. Ethnographic evidence about the assimilation of non-Han minority peoples to Han identity shows that orthopraxy led to many nonstandard cultural practices and beliefs. Theoretical implications include reassessment of the canonical interpretive assumption that cultural ideas are the prima…
Is Taiwan Chinese?
The Cultural Impact of Gendered Social Roles and Ethnicity
The differential gendering of a social role in Han and Aborigine religious traditions impacted cultural content when the actual social order resulted in a person holding that role who did not match gendered expectations. The actual holder of the gendered social role of spirit medium influenced both the social rules for who could achieve that role in the future and the religious practices and meanings for which that role holder was responsible. An…
Local Government Agency
Ethnic Classification and Culture
Specific cultural practices, or their absence, definitively mark many ethnic identities. Why then are cultural practices frequently at odds with ethnic categories? The case of the Tujia, an ethnic minority in China, demonstrates the disjuncture between officially assigned ethnic categories, culture and local identity. It also suggests a potential explanation for why such disjunctures occur. State officials apparently classified Tujia in terms of …
Reconstructing Ethnicity
Ethnic identity can have a different basis locally than it does at the level of the larger society or ethnic group. This point is illustrated with a reconstruction of the early twentieth-century ethnic classification used in three villages in southwestern Taiwan. Discrepancies between estimates of ethnic intermarriage based on government records and on interview reports result from cross-ethnic adoptions. Interview reports more accurately portray…
Alternate Civilities
Alternate Civilities: Democracy and Culture in China and Taiwan. Robert P. Welter. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999. ix. 172 pp., figures, appendix, bibliography, index
Negotiating Ethnicities in China and Taiwan
On Becoming Chinese
Negotiating Ethnicities in China and Taiwan
Ethnic Classification and Culture
Specific cultural practices, or their absence, definitively mark many ethnic identities. Why then are cultural practices frequently at odds with ethnic categories? The case of the Tujia, an ethnic minority in China, demonstrates the disjuncture between officially assigned ethnic categories, culture and local identity. It also suggests a potential explanation for why such disjunctures occur. State officials apparently classified Tujia in terms of …
Ethnic Identity, Cultural Variation, and Processes of Change
Watson’s view that culture held late imperial China together appears to be problematic with regard to standardization and insightful with regard to social theory. Ethnographic evidence about the assimilation of non-Han minority peoples to Han identity shows that orthopraxy led to many nonstandard cultural practices and beliefs. Theoretical implications include reassessment of the canonical interpretive assumption that cultural ideas are the prima…
Changing authentic identities
Despite ideological rhetoric to the contrary, identity changes and authenticity depend on social experience - the lived interactions of individuals as well as the broad range of political-economic, historical, and personal factors that shape those interactions. Because governments influence social experience, they can shape identities of their populations. Plains Aborigines in colonial Taiwan became Han Taiwanese after Japanese authorities banned…
Local Government Agency
Feet and Fabrication
The early twentieth-century transformations of rural Chinese women’s work have received relatively little direct attention. By contrast, the former custom of footbinding continues to fascinate and is often used to illustrate or contest theories about Chinese women’s status. Arguing that for rural women at least, footbinding needs to be understood in relation to rural economic conditions, the authors focus on changes in textile production and in f…
Reconstructing Ethnicity
Ethnic identity can have a different basis locally than it does at the level of the larger society or ethnic group. This point is illustrated with a reconstruction of the early twentieth-century ethnic classification used in three villages in southwestern Taiwan. Discrepancies between estimates of ethnic intermarriage based on government records and on interview reports result from cross-ethnic adoptions. Interview reports more accurately portray…
Le célibat masculin involontaire en Chine rurale
Si un homme dispose d'un réseau d'intermédiaires, ses chances de se marier en sont-elles accrues ? En exploitant des données d'enquête recueillies en 2008 dans le district X de la province d'Anhui en Chine, les auteurs analysent les déterminants de la probabilité de premier mariage selon le type de réseau d'un échantillon d'hommes âgés de 18 à 50 ans vivant en milieu rural ( N = 412). L'âge au premier mariage des hommes se concentre entre 22 et 2…
Marriage Mobility and Footbinding in Pre-1949 Rural China
We provide evidence contrary to long-standing general expectations that before 1949 most Chinese women married up the social hierarchy and that footbinding facilitated this hypergamy. In our sample of 7,314 rural women living in Sichuan, Northern, Central, and Southwestern China in the first half of the twentieth century, two-thirds of women did not marry up. In fact, 22 percent of all women, across regions, married down. In most regions, more wo…
Alternate Civilities
Alternate Civilities: Democracy and Culture in China and Taiwan. Robert P. Welter. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999. ix. 172 pp., figures, appendix, bibliography, index
Footbinding, Industrialization, and Evolutionary Explanation
The Cultural Impact of Gendered Social Roles and Ethnicity
The differential gendering of a social role in Han and Aborigine religious traditions impacted cultural content when the actual social order resulted in a person holding that role who did not match gendered expectations. The actual holder of the gendered social role of spirit medium influenced both the social rules for who could achieve that role in the future and the religious practices and meanings for which that role holder was responsible. An…
On Becoming Chinese
Negotiating Ethnicities in China and Taiwan
Negotiating Ethnicities in China and Taiwan
Alternate Civilities
Alternate Civilities: Democracy and Culture in China and Taiwan. Robert P. Welter. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1999. ix. 172 pp., figures, appendix, bibliography, index
Ethnic Classification and Culture
Specific cultural practices, or their absence, definitively mark many ethnic identities. Why then are cultural practices frequently at odds with ethnic categories? The case of the Tujia, an ethnic minority in China, demonstrates the disjuncture between officially assigned ethnic categories, culture and local identity. It also suggests a potential explanation for why such disjunctures occur. State officials apparently classified Tujia in terms of …
Reconstructing Ethnicity
Ethnic identity can have a different basis locally than it does at the level of the larger society or ethnic group. This point is illustrated with a reconstruction of the early twentieth-century ethnic classification used in three villages in southwestern Taiwan. Discrepancies between estimates of ethnic intermarriage based on government records and on interview reports result from cross-ethnic adoptions. Interview reports more accurately portray…
Local Government Agency
The Cultural Impact of Gendered Social Roles and Ethnicity
The differential gendering of a social role in Han and Aborigine religious traditions impacted cultural content when the actual social order resulted in a person holding that role who did not match gendered expectations. The actual holder of the gendered social role of spirit medium influenced both the social rules for who could achieve that role in the future and the religious practices and meanings for which that role holder was responsible. An…
Is Taiwan Chinese?
Ethnic Identity, Cultural Variation, and Processes of Change
Watson’s view that culture held late imperial China together appears to be problematic with regard to standardization and insightful with regard to social theory. Ethnographic evidence about the assimilation of non-Han minority peoples to Han identity shows that orthopraxy led to many nonstandard cultural practices and beliefs. Theoretical implications include reassessment of the canonical interpretive assumption that cultural ideas are the prima…
Changing authentic identities
Despite ideological rhetoric to the contrary, identity changes and authenticity depend on social experience - the lived interactions of individuals as well as the broad range of political-economic, historical, and personal factors that shape those interactions. Because governments influence social experience, they can shape identities of their populations. Plains Aborigines in colonial Taiwan became Han Taiwanese after Japanese authorities banned…
Feet and Fabrication
The early twentieth-century transformations of rural Chinese women’s work have received relatively little direct attention. By contrast, the former custom of footbinding continues to fascinate and is often used to illustrate or contest theories about Chinese women’s status. Arguing that for rural women at least, footbinding needs to be understood in relation to rural economic conditions, the authors focus on changes in textile production and in f…
Marriage Mobility and Footbinding in Pre-1949 Rural China
We provide evidence contrary to long-standing general expectations that before 1949 most Chinese women married up the social hierarchy and that footbinding facilitated this hypergamy. In our sample of 7,314 rural women living in Sichuan, Northern, Central, and Southwestern China in the first half of the twentieth century, two-thirds of women did not marry up. In fact, 22 percent of all women, across regions, married down. In most regions, more wo…
Le célibat masculin involontaire en Chine rurale
Si un homme dispose d'un réseau d'intermédiaires, ses chances de se marier en sont-elles accrues ? En exploitant des données d'enquête recueillies en 2008 dans le district X de la province d'Anhui en Chine, les auteurs analysent les déterminants de la probabilité de premier mariage selon le type de réseau d'un échantillon d'hommes âgés de 18 à 50 ans vivant en milieu rural ( N = 412). L'âge au premier mariage des hommes se concentre entre 22 et 2…
Explaining Culture Scientifically
What exactly is culture? The authors of this volume suggest that the study of one of anthropology's central questions may be a route to developing a scientific paradigm for the field. The contributors - prominent scholars in anthropology, biology, and economics - approach culture from very different theoretical and methodological perspectives, through studies grounded in fieldwork, surveys, demography, and other empirical data. From humans to chi…
Footbinding, Industrialization, and Evolutionary Explanation
Political science (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Gender Studies (8 works) · Anthropology (7 works) · China (7 works) · Ethnic group (7 works) · Law (6 works) · China's Ethnic Minorities and Relations (5 works) · Chinese history and philosophy (5 works) · Social science (5 works)