Fenjia: Household Division and Inheritance in Qing and Republican China (First Edition)

David Wakefield

ISBN 10: 0824820924 / ISBN 13: 9780824820923

Published by University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, 1998

About this Item

First printing, with full number line. A near-fine copy (fine but for some bowing to boards) in a fine jacket. A clean, tight, unread copy. Light sun-fading to jacket spine.

Seller Inventory # FLAHIVE-1010

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Fenjia: Household Division and Inheritance in Qing and Republican China (First Edition)
• Publisher: University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu
• Publication Date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0824820924
• ISBN 13: 9780824820923
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Fine
• Seller catalogs:
  • China

About this title

Synopsis

The division of household property in agricultural societies lies at the centre of the transmission of economic control from one generation to the next. In assembling a body of data concerned with fenjia (household division) in Qing and Republican China, this text investigates one of the central topics in understanding how Chinese society functioned and continues to function. In his presentation of case studies of household division, the author determines that equal division was the rule, yet living parents and single siblings had property rights as well. Variations in inheritance orientations had dramatic effects on landownership patterns, lineage property patterns, lineage strength, class formations and even on state efficiency and its influence on village society. The text explores social class, women and the nuclear family, family documents and law in order to weave the different traditions into a vision of how inheritance, family, lineage and state interacted over the course of Qing and Republican China.