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Author

Gail Hershatter

Other affiliations: Williams College
Bio: Gail Hershatter is an academic researcher from University of California, Santa Cruz. The author has contributed to research in topics: China & Sinology. The author has an hindex of 16, co-authored 29 publications receiving 1699 citations. Previous affiliations of Gail Hershatter include Williams College.

Papers
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Journal ArticleDOI
01 Sep 1989

258 citations

Book
01 Jan 1988
TL;DR: In this paper, the pleasures of adornment and the dangers of sexuality are discussed in the context of growing up female and making a friend: changing patterns of courtship and family relations.
Abstract: Introduction 1. Growing up female 2. The pleasures of adornment and the dangers of sexuality 3. making a friend: changing patterns of courtship 4. Marriage 5. Family relations 6. Divorce 7. Violence against women 9. Feminist voices Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index.

240 citations

Book
13 Mar 1997
TL;DR: Hershatter as discussed by the authors examines prostitution in Shanghai from the late nineteenth century to the present and finds that prostitutes in Shanghai were near the bottom of class and gender hierarchies, yet they were central figures in Shanghai urban life, entering the historical record whenever others wanted to appreciate, castigate, count, regulate, cure, pathologize, warn about, rescue, eliminate or deploy them as a symbol in a larger social panorama.
Abstract: This pioneering work examines prostitution in Shanghai from the late nineteenth century to the present. Drawn mostly from the daughters and wives of the working poor and declasse elites, prostitutes in Shanghai were near the bottom of class and gender hierarchies. Yet they were central figures in Shanghai urban life, entering the historical record whenever others wanted to appreciate, castigate, count, regulate, cure, pathologize, warn about, rescue, eliminate, or deploy them as a symbol in a larger social panorama. Over the past century, prostitution has been understood in many ways: as a source of urbanized pleasures, a profession full of unscrupulous and greedy schemers, a changing site of work for women, a source of moral danger and physical disease, a marker of national decay, and a sign of modernity.For the Communist leadership of the 1950s, the elimination of prostitution symbolized China's emergence as a strong, healthy, and modern nation. In the past decade, as prostitution once again has become a recognized feature of Chinese society, it has been incorporated into a larger public discussion about what kind of modernity China should seek and what kind of sex and gender arrangements should characterize that modernity. Prostitutes, like every other non-elite group, did not record their own lives. How can sources generated by intense public argument about the 'larger' meanings of prostitution be read for clues to those lives?Hershatter makes use of a broad range of materials: guidebooks to the pleasure quarters, collections of anecdotes about high-class courtesans, tabloid gossip columns, municipal regulations prohibiting street soliciting, police interrogations of streetwalkers and those accused of trafficking in women, newspaper reports on court cases involving both courtesans and streetwalkers, polemics by Chinese and foreign reformers, learned articles by Chinese scholars commenting on the world history of prostitution and analyzing its local causes, surveys by doctors and social workers on sexually transmitted disease in various Shanghai populations, relief agency records, fictionalized accounts of the scams and sufferings of prostitutes, memoirs by former courtesan house patrons, and interviews with former officials and reformers. Although a courtesan may never set pen to paper, we can infer a great deal about her strategizing and working of the system through the vast cautionary literature that tells her customers how not to be defrauded by her. Newspaper accounts of the arrests and brief court testimonies of Shanghai streetwalkers let us glimpse the way that prostitutes positioned themselves to get the most they could from the legal system. Without recourse to direct speech, Hershatter argues, these women have nevertheless left an audible trace. Central to this study is the investigation of how things are known and later remembered, and how, later still, they are simultaneously apprehended and reinvented by the historian.

218 citations

Book
01 Jan 2007
TL;DR: Hershatter as discussed by the authors surveys more than 650 scholarly works, discussing Chinese women in the context of marriage, family, sexuality, labor, and national modernity, and offers keen analytic insights and judgments about the works themselves and the evolution of related academic fields.
Abstract: This indispensable guide for students of both Chinese and women's history synthesizes recent research on women in twentieth-century China. Written by a leading historian of China, it surveys more than 650 scholarly works, discussing Chinese women in the context of marriage, family, sexuality, labor, and national modernity. In the process, Hershatter offers keen analytic insights and judgments about the works themselves and the evolution of related academic fields. The result is both a practical bibliographic tool and a thoughtful reflection on how we approach the past.

141 citations


Cited by
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Book
Judith Lorber1
01 Jan 1994
TL;DR: Lorber as discussed by the authors argues that gender is a product of socialization, subject to human agency, organization, and interpretation, and that it is a social institution comparable to the economy, the family, and religion in its significance and consequences.
Abstract: In this innovative book, a well-known feminist and sociologist-who is also the founding editor of Gender & Society-challenges our most basic assumptions about gender. Judith Lorber argues that gender is wholly a product of socialization, subject to human agency, organization, and interpretation, and that it is a social institution comparable to the economy, the family, and religion in its significance and consequences. Calling into question the inevitability and necessity of gender, she envisions a society structured for equality, where no gender, racial ethnic, or social class group is allowed to monopolize positions of power.

1,642 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality by Aihwa Ong as discussed by the authors is a seminal work in the field of transnationality. ix. 322 pp., notes, bibliography, index.
Abstract: Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Aihwa Ong. Durham, NIC: Duke University Press, 1999. ix. 322 pp., notes, bibliography, index.

1,517 citations

01 Jan 1992
TL;DR: The body politics of Julia Kristeva and the Body Politics of JuliaKristeva as discussed by the authors are discussed in detail in Section 5.1.1 and Section 6.2.1.
Abstract: Preface (1999) Preface (1990) 1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire I. 'Women' as the Subject of Feminism II. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire III. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary and Beyond V. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance VI. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement 2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix I. Structuralism's Critical Exchange II. Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade III. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender IV. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification V. Reformulating Prohibition as Power 3. Subversive Bodily Acts I. The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva II. Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity III. Monique Wittig - Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions Conclusion - From Parody to Politics

1,125 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Li et al. as mentioned in this paper found that income inequality in a major Chinese city declined only slightly during the first decade of reform policies; it then increased dramatically in the subsequent five years.
Abstract: Research on transitional socialist societies has explored trends in income inequality and issues concerning who gains and who loses during market reforms. We find that income inequality in a major Chinese city declined only slightly during the first decade of reform policies; it then increased dramatically in the subsequent five years. Strategic position in the state bureaucracy continues to be an important determinant of income, although connections to the market system are becoming alternate sources of advantage. We interpret these findings in light of the historical and institutional context of urban China

526 citations