Aims to take the argument first set out in Lineage Organization in South-Eastern China, a step further. This book incorporates some of Professor Freedman's field data and draws on a variety of written sources. It seeks to analyse certain crucial institutions of Chinese society within the framework of contemporary anthropological theory.

Includes bibliographical references.

Winner of the 2009 Society for American Archaeology Book Award Chinese Society in the Age of Confucius is based on the most up-to-date archaeological discoveries. It introduces new data, as well as new ways to think about them - modes of analysis that, while familiar to archaeological practitioners in the West and in Japan, are herein applied to evidence from the Chinese Bronze Age for the first time. The treatment of social stratification, clan and lineage organisation, as well as gender and ethnic differences will be of interest to those involved in the general or comparative analysis of grand themes in the Social Sciences.

This work is the result of more than a decade of research on the Chinese household and lineage in the southeastern province of Fujian during the Ming and Qing period (1368-1911). It offers new interpretations of the Chinese domestic cycle, the relationship between household and larger kinship groups, and the development of lineage society in south China. Using hundreds of previously unknown lineage genealogies, stone inscriptions, and land deeds, Zheng Zhenman provides a candid view of how individuals and families confronted the crucial issues of daily life: how to minimize taxes or military conscription; how to balance the ideological imperatives of ancestor worship with practical concerns; how to deal with the problems of dividing the household estate. His research leads to an exploration of issues such as the relation of state to society and the compatibility of Chinese culture and capitalism. This complete translation allows access to some of the most exciting new research being done in Chinese social history. Zheng's book draws on important materials largely unknown to Western scholars, comes to novel conclusions about society in late imperial China, and illustrates the importance of the non-Western perspective in studying the history of the world outside the West.

Presenting a new approach to the history of Chinese kinship, this book attempts to bridge the gap between anthropological and historical scholarship on the Chinese lineage. It explores the historical development of kinship in the villages of the Fuzhou region of southeastern Fujian province.