"Huang Liu-hung was one of some 1,500 local magistrates in seventeenth-century China, and he wrote this book as a manual for other magistrates ... In it readers will find insight into everyday life and legal processes during the early Ch'ing period, as well as into the mentality of the ruling elite and its attitude toward the common people ... Also provides a basis for comparing China's present with its past, particularly in matters concerning the pursuit of ideological conformity and political control"--From publisher description.

The Class of 1761 reveals the workings of China's imperial examination system from the unique perspective of a single graduating class. The author follows the students' struggles in negotiating the examination system along with bureaucratic intrigue and intellectual conflict, as well as their careers across the Empire—to the battlefields of imperial expansion in Annam and Tibet, the archives where the glories of the empire were compiled, and back to the chambers where they in turn became examiners for the next generation of aspirants. The book explores the rigors and flexibilities of the examination system as it disciplined men for political life and shows how the system legitimated both the Manchu throne and the majority non-Manchu elite. In the system's intricately articulated networks, we discern the stability of the Qing empire and the fault lines that would grow to destabilize it.

Is suicide wrong, profoundly morally wrong? Almost always wrong, but excusable in a few cases? Sometimes morally permissible? Imprudent, but not wrong? Is it sick, a matter of mental illness? Is it a private matter or a largely social one? Could it sometimes be right, or a "noble duty," or even a fundamental human right? Whether it is called "suicide" or not, what role may a person play in the end of his or her own life? This collection of primary sources--the principal texts of ethical interest from major writers in western and nonwestern cultures, from the principal religious traditions, and from oral cultures where observer reports of traditional practices are available, spanning Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Oceania, the Arctic, and North and South America--facilitates exploration of many controversial practical issues: physician-assisted suicide or aid-in-dying; suicide in social or political protest; self-sacrifice and martyrdom; suicides of honor or loyalty; religious and ritual practices that lead to death, including sati or widow-burning, hara-kiri, and sallekhana, or fasting unto death; and suicide bombings, kamikaze missions, jihad, and other tactical and military suicides. This collection has no interest in taking sides in controversies about the ethics of suicide; rather, rather, it serves to expand the character of these debates, by showing them to be multi-dimensional, a complex and vital part of human ethical thought.

The Ming dynasty was the last great Chinese dynasty before the Manchu conquest in 1644. During that time, China, not Europe, was the centre of the world. The author examines the changing landscape of life over the three centuries of Ming (1368-1644).

Case studies fascinate because they link individual instances to general patterns and knowledge to action without denying the priority of individual situations over the generalizations derived from them. In this volume, an international group of senior scholars comes together to consider the use of cases to produce empirical knowledge in premodern China. They trace the process by which the project of thinking with cases acquired a systematic and public character in the ninth century CE and after. Premodern Chinese experts on medicine and law circulated printed case collections to demonstrate efficacy or claim validity for their judgments. They were joined by authors of religious and philosophical texts. The rhetorical strategies and forms of argument used by all of these writers were allied with historical narratives, exemplary biographies, and case examples composed as aids to imperial statecraft. The innovative and productive explorations gathered here present a coherent set of interlocking arguments that will be of interest to comparativists as well as specialists on premodern East Asia. For China scholars, they examine the interaction of different fields of learning in the late imperial period, the relationship of evidential reasoning and literary forms, and the philosophical frameworks that linked knowledge to experience and action. For comparativists, the essays bring China into a global conversation about the methodologies of the human sciences. Contributors: Chu Honglam, Charlotte Furth, Hsiung Ping-chen, Jiang Yonglin, Yasuhiko Karasawa, Robert Sharf, Pierre-Étienne Will, WuYanhong, Judith T. Zeitlin.

"Spanning thousands of years, this new collection brings together writings and teachings about sex, marriage, and family from the Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, and Confucian traditions. Chosen and introduced by leading scholars of each religion, the volume's selections include a wide array of traditional texts. The book also contains contemporary writings, responding to the changing mores and conditions of modern life." "Sex, Marriage and Family in World Religions reveals the similarities and differences among the various religions and the development of ideas and teachings within each tradition. It sheds light on each religion's views on a wide variety of subjects, including sexuality and sexual pleasure, the meaning and purpose of marriage, the role of betrothal, the status of women, the place of romance, grounds for divorce, celibacy, and sexual deviance."--BOOK JACKET.