Asia: Case Studies in the Social Sciences - A Guide for Teaching

Case Studies in the Social Sciences - A Guide for Teaching

Myron L. Cohen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315288154
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies

The material in this study is covered by Myron L. Cohen on religion and family organization in China; John R. Bowen on family, kinship, and Islam in Indonesia; Robert W. Hefner on hierarchy and stratification in Java; and Nancy Rosenberger on gender roles in Japan. Further material is provided by William W. Kelly on rural society in Japan; Theodore C. Bestor on urban life in Japan; Stephen R. Smith on the family in Japan; Doranne Jacobson on gender relations in India; Lawrence A. Babb on religion in India; Owen M. Lynch on stratification, inequality, and the caste system in India; Laurell Kendall on changing gender relations in Korea; Andrew G. Walder on comparative revolution in China and Vietnam, Maoism, and the sociology of work in China and Japan; Moni Nag on the comparative demography of China, Japan, and India; and Helen Hardacre on the new religions of Japan. Other contributors offering information through case studies are Hiroshi Ishida on stratification and mobility in Japan; Robert C. Liebman on work and education compared in Japan and the US; Joseph W. Elder on education, urban society, urban problems, and industrial society in India; Andrew J. Nathan on totalitarianism, authoritarianism, and democracy in China; Jean C. Oi on mobilisation and participation in China; Edwin A. Winckler on political development in Taiwan; Carl H. Lande on political parties and representation in the Philippines ; Clark N. Neher on political development and political participation in Thailand; and Benedict R. O'G. Anderson on political culture, the military, and authoritarianism in Indonesia. The final chapters of this work include studies by Stephen Philip Cohen on the military in India and Pakistan; Paul R. Brass on democracy and political participation in India; T.J. Pempel on Japanese democracy and political culture, political parties and representation, and bureaucracy in Japan; Han-kyo Kim on political development in South Korea; and Thomas G. Rawski on the economies of China and Japan.

I
Anthropology

Anthropology: China

Family Organization in China

Myron L. Cohen

I.	INTRODUCTION: CENTRAL POINTS
II.	MAJOR TOPICS
	TRADITIONAL FAMILY ORGANIZATION
	Peasant and Town Families
	Family Property and Social Stratification
	Gender Stratification
	The Collective Family Economy
	Family Division and the Family Cycle
	Variations in Family Size and Complexity
	Demographic Factors
	Economic Factors
	Ideological and Religious Factors
	NEW SOCIAL FORCES AND FAMILY CHANGE IN MODERN TIMES
	THE FAMILY IN CONTEMPORARY CHINA
	The Impact of Collectivization on Family Organization
	Changing Family Pattern
	Decollectivization: The Reestablishment of the Family Economy
	Education and Birth Control
	Continuity and Innovation in Urban Life
III.	ISSUES FOR DISCUSSION
IV.	SELECTED READINGS

I. Introduction: Central Points

The Chinese family provides an excellent illustrative case for the study of several central issues of concern to anthropologists: the role of the family in traditional agrarian (i.e., peasant) societies; differential social change and its impact on the family; rural-urban distinctions in traditional peasant societies; political factors affecting social change.

Role of the Family in Traditional Agrarian Societies. Three interrelated characteristics of late imperial Chinese society all point to the family's significance, making the Chinese case an excellent illustrative example of the family's role in a traditional peasant society:

• the family indeed was the basic working unit of the Chinese economy, both rural and urban;

• there was in late traditional China a deemphasis of the hereditary status relationships so common in other peasant societies (e.g., India's caste system, medieval Europe's hereditary serfs and nobility), and rather a far more "fluid" social system with considerable upward and downward mobility, in terms not of individuals but of families;

• there was in Chinese state ideology, including Confucianism, a concern and preoccupation with familial relationships and ethics far more pronounced than in most other known peasant societies. Indeed, it was commonly held by traditional Chinese thinkers that harmonious families, organized on the basis of "proper" relations, were fundamental to the maintenance of the country's social and political order. In other words, in China, the world's largest premodern state, attention was singularly focused on society's smallest unit.

Differential Social Change: Impact on the Family. The Chinese case also furnishes an important example of the impact of modern political, economic, and cultural factors on family organization. Differential social change is shown by the fact that the traditional Chinese family system of late imperial times largely continued unchanged among the peasantry during the latter portion of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, when the country otherwise was experiencing penetration by the Western powers and undergoing a series of rapid, violent, and remarkable social and economic transformations, culminating in the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949.

Rural-Urban Distinctions in Traditional Peasant Societies. The case of the Chinese family can be used to challenge the common generalization that traditional peasant societies are characterized by severe rural-urban distinctions, for in China the emergence of such distinctions was precisely a symptom of the traditional system's breakdown. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century onset of Western attacks and penetration, there was a pattern of family organization common to rural and urban society and to different socioeconomic strata. Later, with growing industrialization, especially in the port cities, and with the emergence of a wage-earning working class and Western-oriented or radical elites, new family patterns also began to appear, so that there was the beginning of true contrasts, as between rural and urban or modern and traditional.

Political Factors Affecting Social Change in the Family. Discussions of the family and social change rarely take into account political influences, and here again the Chinese case is useful for introducing the political dimension. Indeed, only after the coming to power of the Communist government were there forces set in motion of general significance to Chinese family patterns in city and countryside alike. Through collectivization, families throughout rural and urban China were transformed from self-managing economic units into groups deriving their income from outside work. Linked to this, and to government education and family planning programs, was the emergence of a pronounced trend toward simplification of family structure and reduction in family size. During the past decade, government policy has been to foster decollectivization, especially in the countryside, so that many economic functions have once again devolved to the family level.

The discussion below deals first with the traditional family, then turns to pre-Communist changes, and finally to developments in the People's Republic.

II. Major Topics

Traditional Family Organization

In traditional China during late imperial times the family was the basic unit of economic organization. It obtained its livelihood through the coordinated efforts of its members, who usually would eat together and otherwise be supported by the common family fund. The vast majority of families were farmers, yet as economic and social groups they were organized along the same lines as families whose members might be engaged in any combination of agricultural, commercial, or handicraft activities, or even as those families with wealth, learning, and elite status.

Peasant and Town Families.

The overwhelmingly rural economy had as its foundation the family farm: as tenants or as owner-cultivators, farm families both worked their plots and also were directly responsible for the management of their farm as an enterprise. In the cities and towns of China, non-agricultural production and distribution largely was based upon the family firm or shop. In both city and countryside alike, family management was combined with family labor to as great an extent as possible, so that the family can be seen as an integrated economic unit for the organization and carrying out of productive labor, and also for its management. Under such circumstances, most wealthier families with surplus land found it both easier and more profitable to rent plots to tenant families rather than directly supervise field workers. While their tenants would assume the burdens of such tasks as daily field management, or crop planning, the landlord families would profit from the rent at the same time that they would be able to devote family managerial efforts to a variety of additional entrepreneurial undertakings.

Family Property and Social Stratification.

The close connection between family organization and economic management was reflected in the traditional criteria for status evaluation. On top were those richer and more educated families whose members could avoid physical labor and instead devote their efforts exclusively to the management of their property; in the middle was the largest group, consisting of respected community members who were mainly farmers but also artisans and shopkeepers, who owned and managed land and other property, but had to do physical labor in deriving an income from their holdings; at the bottom of the social ladder were the poor propertyless with no managerial responsibilities, the hired field hands in the countryside or the paid manual laborers in the cities.

Gender Stratification.

The Chinese family was male-centered, most emphatically with respect to the distribution of authority, patterns of residence, patterns of inheritance, and a pronounced preference for male offspring. While women could find ways of expressing their opinions and influencing events, it was mainly the men who directed family affairs, especially these pertaining to farm management or other major economic activities, and the family's overall relationships with the outside world. The father's position of authority was assured from the moment he began to head an independent family unit, but his wife would obtain a degree of authority in her own right only after the passage of many years. Her position was weakest when she was still childless (sonless); it improved when she bore a son; it grew even stronger when a daughter-in-law came under her direction; and by the time she entered into advanced age her authority began to approximate that of her husband, especially in peasant families; if his was the earlier death, full power within the family might sometimes then be in her hands.

The Collective Family Economy.

The family was a group of kin related through marriage, birth, or adoption. The economic foundation of the family was its estate, owned jointly by male members and worked in common by the family as a whole. While the most significant property in the estate was land (owned outright or tenanted under a permanent or near-permanent arrangement), the family could also own residences, farm buildings, tools, livestock, etc. If the family was engaged in commerce, the shop and other assets likewise were family holdings. Associated with joint ownership of the estate was the common budget kept by family members. Persons working family fields or managing the family shop would contribute the earnings to a common fund managed by the family head, who was usually the father, on behalf of the family as a whole. Those working outside for wages were expected to do likewise if they earned a surplus above agreed-upon requirements for subsistence and personal expenses. The family was thus a cohesive unit economically as well as socially, but one strengthened to the extent that it owned property. Once again, there can be seen the tie between the internal economic forces making for family unity and the family's social standing in the community: the property relationships fostering familial solidarity also provided it with status in society at large.

Family Division and the Family Cycle.

In China, marriage as such did not lead to the creation of a new family; rather, it usually meant that the bride moved into her husband's family unit (in a family in which there were no sons, a daughter might be joined by her husband). New families were created through partition of the family estate; with the division of family holdings there was the termination of many of the social and economic obligations and residential arrangements which previously had held the family together. Family partition brought into sharp focus the dominance of males within the family system. It was the men who shared in the division of the estate, and in most cases married brothers obtained equal portions. Each would use his share as the economic foundation for the new, smaller family he now headed, while it was common for an unmarried brother temporarily to continue to maintain a joint estate with one of his married siblings or with his father. There was, therefore, a cyclical process whereby family formation through division was followed by expansion and then division again.

Variations in Family Size and Complexity.

Families large by contemporary Western standards and including more than one married couple most closely approximated the Confucian ideal of numerous male offspring for the perpetuation of the family line and the maintenance of family unity across several generations. Actually, the large family ideal was achieved only in a minority of cases, and in any event it was inevitable that most larger families would split into smaller units at one point or another. In a village, at any given time ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contents by Discipline and Subdiscipline
• Contents by Country and Discipline
• Preface
• Guide to the Reader
• Principles of Transliteration
• Introduction Asia: Case Studies in the Social Sciences
• I. Anthropology
• II. Economics
• III. Political Science
• IV. Sociology
• Index
• Contributors