Background
Dikötter, Frank was born on November 30, 1961 in Geleen, The Netherlands. Arrived in England, 1985.
( In 1995 the People's Republic of China passed a controv...)
In 1995 the People's Republic of China passed a controversial Eugenics Law, which, after a torrent of international criticism, was euphemistically renamed the Maternal and Infant Health Law. Aimed at "the implementation of premarital medical checkups" to ensure that neither partner has any hereditary, venereal, reproductive, or mental disorders, the ordinance implies that those deemed "unsuitable for reproduction" should undergo sterilization or abortion or remain celibate in order to prevent "inferior births." Using this recent statute as a springboard, Frank Dikötter explores the contexts and history of eugenics in both Communist China and Taiwan. Dikötter shows how beginning in Late Imperial China, Western eugenics was imported and combined with existing fears of cultural, racial, or biological degeneration in Chinese society, leading to government regulation of sexual reproduction. Imperfect Conceptions is a revealing look at the cultural history of medical explanations of birth defects that demonstrates how Chinese assumptions about the relationship of the individual to society form the very core of their attitudes toward procreation. Dikötter explains the patrilineal model of descent, where a person is viewed as the culmination of his or her ancestors and is held responsible for the health of all future generations. By this logic, a pregnant woman's behavior and attitude directly influence the well-being of her baby, and a deformed or retarded child reflects a moral failing on the part of the parents. Dikötter also shows how the holistic medicine practiced in China blurs any distinction between individual and environment so that people are held responsible for illness. Drawing on cultural, social, economic, and political approaches, Dikötter goes beyond a simple authoritarian model to provide a more complex view of eugenic policy, showing how a variety of voices including those of popular journalists, social reformers, medical writers, sex educators, university professors, and politicians all disseminate information that supports rather than questions the state's program. Imperfect Conceptions reveals how Chinese cultural currents--fear and fascination with the deviant and the urge to draw clear boundaries between the normal and the abnormal--have combined with medical discourse to form a program of eugenics that is viewed with alarm by the rest of the world.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0231113706/?tag=2022091-20
(Former owner's name, otherwise near fine copy in the dust...)
Former owner's name, otherwise near fine copy in the dust-wrapper."With the disintegration of Confucian cosmology after the fall of the imperial system in China, medical science was introduced as an epistemological foundation for social order. The construction of sexuality as a dangerous drive which was thought to form the very core of the individual led to the emergence of a wide range of identities like the menstruating girl, the hysterical housewife, the masturbating adolescent and the syphilitic husband. The naturalization of desire also introduced a tension between the sexual responsibilities of the individual and the coercive intervention of civil society in the name of the collective health of future generations. Although new categories of analysis, such as 'population', 'race', 'sex', 'woman' and 'youth' were introduced to early Republican China from abroad, their reception and adaptation were founded on cultural reorientations which may have taken place as long before as the 17th and 18th centuries. Instead of describing the rise of normative naturalism as a derivative discourse from 'the West', this book recognizes that the roots of modernizing representations may have had to be sought in a rich and diverse past in China itself. The author's analysis is based on medical and lay texts such as handbooks, marriage guides and introductions to physiology and sexual hygiene. The epilogue demonstrates how the sexual identities invented early this century are still in place in China today. " (Publisher)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0824816765/?tag=2022091-20
(This is the first systematic analysis of racial prejudice...)
This is the first systematic analysis of racial prejudice in China, a complex and sensitive subject that has been almost completely ignored by Chinese and Western scholars.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804723346/?tag=2022091-20
(First published in 1992, The Discourse of Race in Modern ...)
First published in 1992, The Discourse of Race in Modern China rapidly became a classic, showing for the first time on the basis of detailed evidence how and why racial categorisation be- came so widespread in China. After the country's devastating defeat against Japan in 1895, leading reformers like Yan Fu, Liang Qichao and Kang Youwei turned away from the Confucian classics to seek enlightenment abroad, hoping to find the keys to wealth and power on the distant shores of Europe. Instead, they discovered the notion of 'race', and used new evolutionary theories from Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer to present a universe red in tooth and claw in which 'yellows' competed with 'whites' in a deadly struggle for survival. After the fall of the empire in 1911, prominent politicians and writers in republican China continued to measure, classify and rank people from around the world ac- cording to their supposed biological features, all in the name of science. Racial thinking remains popular in the People's Republic of China, as serologists, geneticists and anthropometrists continue to interpret human variation in terms of 'race'. This new edition has been revised and expanded to include a new chapter taking the reader up to the twenty-first century.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1849044880/?tag=2022091-20
(First published in 1992, The Discourse of Race in Modern ...)
First published in 1992, The Discourse of Race in Modern China rapidly became a classic, showing for the first time on the basis of detailed evidence how and why racial categorisation became so widespread in China. After the country's devastating defeat against Japan in 1895, leading reformers like Yan Fu, Liang Qichao and Kang Youwei turned away from the Confucian classics to seek enlightenment abroad, hoping to find the keys to wealth and power on the distant shores of Europe. Instead, they discovered the notion of 'race', and used new evolutionary theories from Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer to present a universe red in tooth and claw in which 'yellows' competed with 'whites' in a deadly struggle for survival. After the fall of the empire in 1911, prominent politicians and writers in republican China continued to measure, classify and rank people from around the world according to their supposed biological features, all in the name of science. Racial thinking remains popular in the People's Republic of China, as serologists, geneticists and anthropometrists continue to interpret human variation in terms of 'race'. This new edition has been revised and expanded to include a new chapter taking the reader up to the twenty-first century.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0190231130/?tag=2022091-20
馮客
historian university professor
Dikötter, Frank was born on November 30, 1961 in Geleen, The Netherlands. Arrived in England, 1985.
Bachelor, University Geneva, Switzerland, 1984. Master of Arts, University Geneva, Switzerland, 1985. Doctor of Philosophy, University London, 1990.
Dikötter is chair professor of humanities at the University of Hong Kong, where he teaches courses on both Mao Zedong and the Great Chinese Famine. He was formerly a professor of the modern history of China from the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London. Dikötter"s work has been described as "Boldly and engagingly revisionist" by Pankaj Mishra.
This led to a public dispute between Dikötter and Mishra.
Dikötter claimed the impact of prohibition of opium on the Chinese people led to greater harm than the effects of the drug itself in Narcotic Culture and Patient Zero. These works have been poorly received by academics, with Chinese historian Kathleen L. Lodwick saying
Narcotic Culture appears to be one of the revisionist histories of which there have been several lately that have aimed at convincing us that imperialism wasn’t all that bad, or at least that we should not blame the imperialists, in this case the opium traders who made vast fortunes from the trade, for the social problems they created.
Closer attention to accuracy in the bibliography would have caught some errors, which appear more than once and so are not simply typos. He called for the rehabilitation of the history of Republican China between 1912 and 1949 in The Age of Openness.
His most recent books Mao"s Great Famine and The Tragedy of Liberation deal with the early years of the People"s Republic of China and specifically the terror and famine associated with lieutenant
(First published in 1992, The Discourse of Race in Modern ...)
(First published in 1992, The Discourse of Race in Modern ...)
( In 1995 the People's Republic of China passed a controv...)
(This is the first systematic analysis of racial prejudice...)
(Former owner's name, otherwise near fine copy in the dust...)
(Will be shipped from US. Brand new copy.)
(Will be shipped from US. Brand new copy.)
(Will be shipped from US. Brand new copy.)
Board directors Contemporary China Institute. Member Association for Asian Studies, British Association for Chinese Studies (president since 1999).