Transforming Patriarchy: Chinese Families in the Twenty-First Century ed. by Gonçalo D. Santos and Stevan Harrell (review)

Arguably, ethnographic studies in China have contributed most significantly to comparative anthropology in the arenas of family and kinship and, especially, gender studies. The works of Margery Wolf in particular figured centrally in the second-wave feminism that profoundly changed the discipline in the 1970s. The outlines of Chinese-style patriliny, virilocality, gender ideology, and associated phenomena became a widely discussed example of "patriarchy"–to the degree that it is difficult to disentangle the history of late twentieth-century anthropology of Chinese societies (including, in addition to mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong's New Territories, and overseas Chinese communities in Southeast Asia) from wider anthropological interest in the social construction of gender and in the disposition of power and agency across gender and generation cross-culturally.

By the same token, Chinese history over the past century encompasses a velocity and magnitude of social transformation and cultural change that, simply put, defies analytical comprehension. The egalitarian policies of the Maoist era aimed to eradicate, among other feudal evils, China's traditional patriarchal hierarchies; the reforms of the post-Mao era in many respects encouraged some measure of resurgence of traditional family arrangements, but also brought radically transformative family-planning initiatives and massive rural-urban migration, thereby complicating any straightforwardly conservative trajectory; and China's emergence as a major actor in a globalizing economy has been accompanied by profound cultural as well as economic changes that impact family life dramatically. Mindful of these circumstances, this edited collection asks whether China can still be viewed as a patriarchal society; what "patriarchy" means given a wide variety of differing circumstances and changing familial arrangements; and whether it is possible to discern a clear trajectory into the future of cultural change regarding gender and the politics of family dynamics.

Needless to say, there are no simple or singular answers to these questions, and an important virtue of this collection is that it conveys very efficiently a sense of the broad range of empirical variation revolving around changing family, gender, and generational relations. The editors, Santos and Harrell, provide a very useful overview of the terrain traversed in the individual contributions, drawing some useful generalizations. At a most general level, they conclude that although the studies collected in the volume document important transformations, "with all the changes in the classic patriarchal nexus, China remains a heavily male-dominated or andrarchical, society, even though women continue to have significant power both inside and outside the family" (p. 27).

Focusing on han Chinese (i.e., not minority ethnic groups), the compiled studies include both urban and rural examples drawn from different regions of China. A recurring but not unanimous theme is to complicate if not dispute the notion that Chinese society is abandoning kin-based obligations, generational reciprocities that favor parents over children, and subordination of women. In this regard, several contributors question and complicate Yan Yunxiang's influential study The Individualization of Chinese Society (Oxford & NY: Berg, 2009) which paints a picture of more fundamental change–diminishing emphasis on filial piety, increasing emphasis on affect over obligation in both filial and marital relations, etc. In other words, the general tenor of the studies collected here is that filial values and patrilineal thinking persist despite significant familial adaptations. One of the strengths of the volume is how the various studies assess the particulars of this balance in varying circumstances.

Arguably more important than generalizations of the foregoing sort are the empirical details of the ethnographically varied case studies. Highlights include Brown's apt discussion of how women's productive labor associated with family objectives is diminished by designating it as "helping out," thereby denying full recognition to the value of the labor they contribute. Shi Lihong's study (in China's northeast) argues that funding sons' educations comprises a substantial economic burden...