Research Catalog

Title

Death in Beijing : murder and forensic science in Republican China / Daniel Asen, Rutgers University – Newark.

Author

Asen, Daniel S.

Publication

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

ix, 258 pages; 24 cm.

Summary

"In this innovative and engaging history of homicide investigation in Republican Beijing, Daniel Asen explores the transformation of ideas about death in China in the first half of the twentieth century. In this period, those who died violently or under suspicious circumstances constituted a particularly important population of the dead, subject to new claims by police, legal and medical professionals, and a newspaper industry intent on covering urban fatality in sensational detail. Asen examines the process through which imperial China's old tradition of forensic science came to serve the needs of a changing state and society under these dramatically new circumstances. This is a story of the unexpected outcomes and contingencies of modernity, presenting new perspectives on China's transition from empire to modern nation state, competing visions of science and expertise, and the ways in which the meanings of death and dead bodies changed amid China's modern transformation"--

Series Statement

Science in history

Uniform Title

Science in history (Cambridge University Press)

Subject

• Murder > Investigation > History > China > Beijing > 20th century
• Forensic sciences > China > Beijing > History > 20th century
• Violent deaths > Social aspects > History > China > Beijing > 20th century
• Murder victims > China > Beijing > History > 20th century
• City and town life > China > Beijing > History > 20th century
• Death > Social aspects > History > China > 20th century
• Social change > China > History > 20th century
• TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / History
• Beijing (China) > History > 20th century
• China > History > Republic, 1912-1949

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

1. Suspicious deaths and city life in Republican Beijing -- 2. On the case with the Beijing procuracy -- 3. Disputed forensics and skeletal remains -- 4. Publicity, professionals, and the cause of forensic reform -- 5. Professional politics of a crime scene -- 6. Dissection and its discontents -- 7. Legal medicine during the Nanjing decade -- Conclusion: A history of forensic modernity -- Glossary.

Call Number

JFE 16-10827

ISBN

• 9781107126060
• 1107126061
• 97811071571600 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

2016017600

OCLC

YBP 2016017600

Author

Asen, Daniel S., author.

Title

Death in Beijing : murder and forensic science in Republican China / Daniel Asen, Rutgers University – Newark.

Publisher

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Science in history

Science in history (Cambridge University Press)

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Research Call Number

JFE 16-10827