Norms and the State in China (review)

434 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1996 knowledge production, becomes historically specific rather than subsumed under die universalist pretensions of only one of the imperialisms. Benjamin A. Elman University of California at Los Angeles Ben Elman is a professor ofhistory specializing in late imperial Chinese intellectual and cultural historyfrom 1400 to 1900. Chun-chieh Huang and Erik Zürcher, editors. Norms and the State in China. Leiden, New York, and Köln: E. J. Brill, 1993. xxvi, 416 pp. Hardcover $171.00, isbn 90-04-09665-5. Like many anthologies these days, this book is a conference volume with a theme. The theme, as the tide indicates, concerns the relationship between the social norms and the state in China past and present. The book grew out of a conference on "Norms and Their Popularization in Chinese Culture," held in in Leiden in July 1991, and the end result is a total of nineteen essays preceded by an introduction and a preface. Other than the one article on ancient cosmology, which appears by itself for the purpose of "setting the stage," the other eighteen pieces are evenly distributed under three headings: "Norms and Popularization in Premodern China," "Traditional Norms and Contemporary Society," and "Norms and Their Propagation in Mainland China." As the contributors vary considerably in their academic training and orientation, and as the topics cover a large area of research interests, the body ofknowledge assembled in diese tiiree groups of papers reflects different outlooks and approaches. The first group, "Norms and Popularization in Premodern China," presented in the context of cultural history, stays closest to the original design of the conference , with a particular focus on the ways in which political and social norms were manifested. Several of the six authors here (Ubelhor, Clunas, Idema, Zürcher, Zurndorfer, and Wagner) are seasoned hands in diis field and write about topics from their ongoing research. Their command of source materials and the quality of their discussion of die questions at issue—community compacts, consumption y niversi y practiCes, Ming drama, early Chinese Christianity, Ming and Qing women, and Taiping ideology—are testimony to their experience and scholarship. This is not to say, however, that new versions of old work are the only things presented here. Clunas' study on Ming consumption law, Zurcher's analysis of a ofHawai'i Press Reviews 435 Chinese Christian convert in the late Ming, and Zurndorfer's introduction to the eighteenth-century Chinese woman philologist Wang Chao-yuan are all quite fresh and illuminating. One regret is the unusual brevityof these essays; this shortchanges considerably the possibility ofdisplaying the true richness ofthese studies. (The seemingly random length ofthe papers, which range from ten to forty-one pages, is a problem throughout the volume, but diis first section suffers most from brevity, with three laconic pieces each no more than eleven pages long, notes and references included.) Next, considering die title of the book and the heading for this first section, the question ofhow the notion of "norm" is to be defined in the context of Chinese history is not resolved. In the studies offered here, state institutions and Confucian values seem to be vaguely accepted as the main foundation ofsocial and cultural norms during the last five centuries. This is an assumption that readers are allowed to walk away with without any clarification. Given the quality of the essays and the recognized stature of the autiiors, one cannot but feel unsatisfied . The end result would have been livelier and more stimulating if there had been some sort ofvigorous intellectual exchange on the theoretical and empirical aspects ofthe major theme. The offerings do whet one's appetite nonetiieless, however, and they are individually ifnot necessarily collectively rewarding. The next group ofpapers, "Traditional Norms and Contemporary Society," emphasizes social and cultural transformation in postwar Taiwan. Out of the six pieces included here, four focus on changes and developments in the intellectual, social, linguistic, and folklore arenas. One ofthe other two essays, Bordsgaard's study of Confucianism on the mainland, is included here alongside Huang's work on Confucianism in Taiwan presumably for comparison. The remaining essay, Chou's elaboration of the tradition of respect for the...