Drawing on participant observations, in-depth interviews, and content analysis of online materials, Lai investigates the role of individual choice, relationships, and institutions in unmarried Chinese women’s decisions to terminate their pregnancies.Where many previous studies have focused on abortion in China as a state-mandated procedure to enforce the one-child policy, Lai looks at a new era, where abortion is primarily based on individuals’ decisions. While young women in China...

Family relations are undergoing dramatic changes globally and locally. At the same time, certain features of family life endure. This popular book, now in a fully updated second edition, presents a comprehensive assessment of recent research on 'family', parenting, childhood and interpersonal ties.A Sociology of Family Life queries assumptions about a disintegration of 'the family' by revealing a remarkable persistence of commitment and reciprocity across cultures, within ...

Public discourse on Asian parenting tends to fixate on ethnic culture as a static value set, disguising the fluidity and diversity of Chinese parenting. Such stereotypes also fail to account for the challenges of raising children in a rapidly modernizing world, full of globalizing values. In Raising Global Families, Pei-Chia Lan examines how ethnic Chinese parents in Taiwan and the United States negotiate cultural differences and class inequality to raise children in the contexts ...

This is the first ethnographic study of lala (lesbian, bisexual, and transgender) communities and politics in China, focusing on the city of Shanghai. Based on several years of in-depth interviews, the volume concentrates on lalas’ everyday struggle to reconcile same-sex desire with a dominant rhetoric of family harmony and compulsory marriage, all within a culture denying women’s active and legitimate sexual agency. Lucetta Yip Lo Kam reads discourses on homophobia in China, including the...

Elaine Jeffreysexplores the issues of sex and sexuality in a non-Western context by examining debates surrounding the emergence of new sexual behaviours, and the appropriate nature of their regulation, in the People's Republic of China. Commissioned from Western and mainland Chinese scholars of sex and sexuality in China, the chapters in this volume are marked by a diversity of subject material and theoretical perspectives, but turn on three related concerns. First, the book situates China...

Fengshu Liu situates the lives of Chinese youth and the growth of the Internet against the backdrop of rapid and profound social transformation in China. In 2008, the total of Internet users in China had reached 253 million (in comparison with 22.5 million in 2001). Yet, despite rapid growth, the Internet in China is so far a predominantly urban-youth phenomenon, with young people under thirty (especially those under twenty-four), mostly members of the only-child generation, as the main gr...

Tongzhi, which translates into English as “same purpose” or “same will,” was once widely used to mean “comrade.” Since the 1990s, the word has been appropriated by the LGBT community in China and now refers to a broad range of people who do not espouse heteronormativity.Tongzhi Living, the first study of its kind, offers insights into the community of same-sex-attracted men in the metropolitan city of Dalian in northeast China. Based on ethnographic fieldwork by T...

What is the state of intimate romantic relationships and marriage in urban China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan? Since the 1980's, the character of intimate life in these urban settings has changed dramatically. While many speculate about the 21st century as Asia's century, this book turns to the more intimate territory of sexuality and marriage—and observes the unprecedented changes in the law and popular expectations for romantic bonds and the creation of new families.Wives, Husbands...

Each successive wave of revolution to hit modern China—political, cultural, and economic—has radically reshaped Chinese society. Whereas patriarchy defined the familial social structure for thousands of years, changing realities in the last hundred years have altered and even reversed long-held expectations. Transforming Patriarchy explores the private and public dimensions of these changes in present-day China. Patriarchy is not dead, but it is no longer the default arrangement f...

Research on the family has expanded considerably across Asia but studies tend to be fragmented, focusing on narrow issues within limited areas (cities, towns, small communities) and may not be accessible to international readers. These limitations make it difficult for researchers, students, policy makers, and practitioners to obtain the information they need. The Routledge Handbook of Families in Asia fills that gap by providing a current and comprehensive analysis of As...

The essays in this volume present contemporary anthropological perspectives on Chinese kinship, its historical complexity and its modern metamorphoses. The collection draws particular attention to the reverberations of larger socio-cultural and politico-economic processes in the formation of sociality, intimate relations, family histories, reproductive strategies and gender relations – and vice-versa.Drawing on a wealth of ethnographic material from the late imperial period and fro...

Behind the Silence is the first in-depth work in any language to explore the diverse perspectives of mainland Chinese regarding induced abortion and fetal life in the context of the world's most ambitious and intrusive family planning program. Bringing to light the range of Chinese views and experiences, Nie Jing-Bao draws on extensive primary sources and intensive fieldwork, including surveys by and interviews with hundreds of rural, urban, and overseas Chinese. Nie's exploration...