Throughout most of history, in China the insane were kept within the home and treated by healers who claimed no specialized knowledge of their condition. In the first decade of the twentieth century, however, psychiatric ideas and institutions began to influence longstanding beliefs about the proper treatment for the mentally ill. In The Invention of Madness, Emily Baum traces a genealogy of insanity from the turn of the century to the onset of war with Japan in 1937, revealing th...

The previously untold modern history of acupuncture and its enormous popularity in the United States, examining our ever-changing relationship with “alternative” medicineSince acupuncture first burst into the Western popular consciousness in the 1970s, doctors and the public alike have clamored to try it and struggled with what to make of it. Thousands of studies and millions of dollars have been poured into determining how and why the practice works to stop or man...

In the early twentieth century, scholars around the world believed that “superstition” belonged to a bygone era. Yet despite their confident predictions, superstitious beliefs have endured. Perhaps nowhere has the history of superstition been more prolonged and tumultuous than in China. From the late nineteenth century to the present day, intellectuals and politicians have denigrated practices like divination, ancestor worship, and geomancy as unbefitting of a modern nation, and governing ...

The previously untold modern history of acupuncture and its enormous popularity in the United States, examining our ever-changing relationship with “alternative” medicineSince acupuncture first burst into the Western popular consciousness in the 1970s, doctors and the public alike have clamored to try it and struggled with what to make of it. Thousands of studies and millions of dollars have been poured into determining how and why the practice works to stop or man...

This classic text by Fei Xiaotong, China's finest social scientist, was first published in 1947 and is Fei's chief theoretical statement about the distinctive characteristics of Chinese society. Written in Chinese from a Chinese point of view for a Chinese audience, From the Soil describes the contrasting organizational principles of Chinese and Western societies, thereby conveying the essential features of both. Fei shows how these unique features reflect and are reflected in the...

As a traditional healing art that has established a contemporary global presence, Chinese medicine defies categories and raises many interesting questions. If Chinese medicine is "traditional," why has it not disappeared with the rest of traditional Chinese society? If, as some claim, it is a science, what does that imply about what we call science? What is the secret of Chinese medicine's remarkable adaptability that has allowed it to prosper for more than 2,000 years? In Chinese Medi...

The charismatic form of healing called qigong, based on meditative breathing exercises, has achieved enormous popularity in China during the last two decades. Qigong served a critical social organizational function, as practitioners formed new informal networks, sometimes on an international scale, at a time when China was shifting from state-subsidized medical care to for-profit market medicine. The emergence of new psychological states deemed to be deviant led the Chinese state to "medic...

This provocative book explores the ideology of truth and deception in China, offering a nuanced perspective on social interaction in different cultural settings. Drawing on decades of fieldwork in China, Susan D. Blum offers an authoritative examination of rules, expectations, and beliefs regarding lying and honesty in society. Blum points to a propensity for deception in Chinese public interactions in situations where people in the United States would expect truthfulness, yet argues that ...

Tracing the concept of human rights in Chinese political discourse since the late Qing dynasty, this comprehensive history convincingly demonstrates that-contrary to conventional wisdom-there has been a vibrant debate on human rights throughout the twentieth century. Drawing on little-known sources, Marina Svensson argues that the concept of human rights was invoked by the Chinese people well before the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, and that it has continue...

Chinese students are known worldwide for their accomplishment and ambition, and education is profoundly valued in China. But these facts do not tell the whole story. Intellectuals were persecuted during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) and only recently has a college education been accessible to a majority of Chinese high school graduates. Things are changing rapidly. China’s higher-education system is now the largest in the world, and the number of Chinese students in the United States...

This volume contains a number of articles on modern Chinese history and historiography written by one of the leading academic experts on the subject. The author provides a critique of older approaches to nineteenth-century history and offers powerful reinterpretations of such key events in the recent history of China as the boxer rebellion, Mao's ascension to power in 1949, and the process of political and economic reform in the post-Mao era. This is a strong collection which will be of en...

This book provides the most comprehensive and scientific assessment to date of what it means to appear before war crimes tribunals. This ground-breaking analysis, conducted with the cooperation of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) Victims and Witnesses Section, examines the positive and negative impact that testifying has on those who bear witness to the horrors of war by shedding new light on the process. While most witnesses have positive feelings and b...