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Book Cover
E-book
Author Liu, Huwy-min Lucia

Title Governing Death, Making Persons The New Chinese Way of Death
Published Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2023

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Description 1 online resource (271 p.)
Contents Governing Death, Making Persons -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- List of Abbreviations -- Note on Anonymity and Transliteration -- Introduction -- Part 1: The Funeral Industry and The Making of market Subjects -- 1. Civil Governance -- 2. Market Governance -- 3. The Fragile Middle -- Part 2: Death Ritual and Pluralist Subjectivity -- 4. Individualism, Interrupted -- 5. Dying Socialist in "Capitalist" Shanghai -- 6. Dying Religious in a Socialist Ritual -- 7. Pluralism, Interrupted -- Conclusion -- Notes -- References -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E
F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Z
Summary Governing Death, Making Persons tells the story of how economic reforms and changes in the management of death, in China, affected the governance of persons. The Chinese Communist Party has sought to channel the funeral industry and death rituals into vehicles for reshaping people into "modern" citizens and subjects. Since the Reform and Opening period and the marketization of state funeral parlors, the Party has promoted personalized funerals in the hope of promoting a market-oriented and individualistic ethos. However, things did not go as planned.Huwy-min Lucia Liu writes about funerals she witnessed and the life stories of two kinds of funeral workers: state workers who are quasi-government officials and semi-legal private funeral brokers. She shows that end-of-life commemoration in urban China today is characterized by the resilience of social conventions and not a shift toward market economy individualization. Rather than seeing a rise of individualism and the decline of a socialist self, Liu sees the durability of socialist, religious, communal, and relational ideas of self, woven together through creative ritual framings in spite of their contradictions
Analysis funeral parlors in china, funeral governance in china, shanghai funeral industry, chinese death rituals
Notes Description based upon print version of record
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Subject Death care industry -- Government ownership -- China
Death care industry -- Government policy -- China
Funeral rites and ceremonies -- Government policy -- China
Funeral rites and ceremonies -- China -- Shanghai
SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / General.
Funeral rites and ceremonies
China.
Asian history.
Cultural studies: customs & traditions.
Sociology: death & dying.
Anthropology.
Family and Relationships.
China
China -- Shanghai
Form Electronic book
LC no. 2022010643
ISBN 9781501767241
1501767240
1501767232
9781501767234