Research Catalog

Title

Sex, culture and modernity in China : medical science and the construction of sexual identities in the early Republican period / Frank Dikötter.

Author

Dikötter, Frank

Publication

Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, c1995.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

ix, 233 p. : ill.; 23 cm.

Summary

With the disintegration of Confucian cosmology after the fall of the imperial system in China, medical science was introduced as an epistemological foundation for social order. The construction of sexuality as a dangerous drive which was thought to form the very core of the individual led to the emergence of a wide range of identities like the menstruating girl, the hysterical housewife, the masturbating adolescent and the syphilitic husband. The naturalization of desire also introduced a tension between the sexual responsibilities of the individual and the coercive intervention of civil society in the name of the collective health of future generations. Although new categories of analysis, such as 'population', 'race', 'sex', 'woman' and 'youth' were introduced to early Republican China from abroad, their reception and adaptation were founded on cultural reorientations which may have taken place as long before as the 17th and 18th centuries. Instead of describing the rise of normative naturalism as a derivative discourse from 'the West', this book recognizes that the roots of modernizing representations may have had to be sought in a rich and diverse past in China itself. The author's analysis is based on medical and lay texts such as handbooks, marriage guides and introductions to physiology and sexual hygiene. The epilogue demonstrates how the sexual identities invented early this century are still in place in China today.

Subject

• Women
• Gender Identity
• Adolescent
• Sexual Behavior
• Sex customs > China > History
• Sexual ethics > China > History
• Sex role > China > History
• Women > China > History
• Youth > China > History
• China

Genre/Form

• History
• History.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 187-221) and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

1. Introduction -- 2. The Passive Sex: The Naturalization of Gender Distinctions -- 3. Sexual Desire and Human Procreation -- 4. 'Four Hundred Million Siblings': The Regulation of 'Population' -- 5. 'Civilization is Syphilization': The Cultural Meanings of 'Disease' -- 6. The Cultural Construction of 'Youth' -- 7. Epilogue: The Regulation of Sexuality in the People's Republic.

ISBN

0824816765 (hbk.)

LCCN

^^^94046204^

OCLC

• 31710389
• SCSB-11931914

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library