Prosperity's Predicament
Identity, Reform, and Resistance in Rural Wartime China
By (author) Isabel Brown Crook, Christina Kelley Gilmartin With Yu Xiji Edited by Gail Hershatter University of California, Santa Cruz, Emily Honig University of California
Publication date:
26 September 2013Length of book:
336 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersDimensions:
237x157mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9781442225749
This classic in the annals of village studies will be widely read and debated for what it reveals about China's rural dynamics as well as the nature of state power, markets, the military, social relations, and religion. Built on extraordinarily intimate and detailed research in a Sichuan village that Isabel Crook began in 1940, the book provides an unprecedented history of Chinese rural life during the war with Japan. It is an essential resource for all scholars of contemporary China.
Prosperity was a rural West China township of 1,500 households when the originators of this study arrived there in 1940 to conduct a social survey for a 'rural reconstruction' effort launched by Chinese reformers. The two women befriended the locals, gathering data on their livelihoods and many stories of small town life. More than 70 years later, the data and stories have been analyzed and interpreted with the help of three noted scholars of modern Chinese history. The result is a fascinating portrait of a village during a time of much hardship and war. The efforts of the Nationalist Chinese government and its allies to ban opium and gambling and alleviate poverty failed for the most part, the authors argue, due to their inability to dislodge entrenched interests that controlled opium, salt, taxes, and the military conscription process. The working out of power struggles over these issues, as well as women's and men's desperate strategies for surviving in this harsh world, are described with an immediacy that is invaluable. Although the war against Japan was being fought on distant battlefields, Prosperity clearly suffered its ill effects. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.