When Qing Law Encountered British Anthropology

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rui Liu
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Marriage Law ◽  
Knowledge Source ◽  
Chinese Law ◽  
Anthropological Study

Abstract This article conducts a textual and reception analysis of George Jamieson’s translation of Qing marriage law with the aim of probing a translational encounter between traditional Chinese law and British anthropology. Approaching a Qing clause against marriage between persons of the same family name as an object of anthropological study, Jamieson annotated his rendition with rich paratexts to orient it under the concept of exogamy. After reflecting upon predecessors’ theories, he advanced his own by restructuring existing anthropological constructs. Taking his translation as a knowledge source, Jamieson further highlighted the existence of an endogamous limit upon the exogamy rule; this observation was absorbed by Henry Maine to strengthen his argument that exogamy and endogamy were not oppositional in agnatic societies. As revealed in Jamieson’s interaction with British anthropologists, he proved himself more than a translator of Qing marriage law but also a contributor to nineteenth-century British anthropology.

Heaven Has Eyes

2020 ◽  
pp. 303-308
Author(s):  
Xiaoqun Xu
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Chinese Law ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Agents ◽  
Western Influences ◽  
Law And Justice

The conclusion points out the multidimensional interactions of many factors in the functions of Chinese law and justice in the past and present and delineates four overlapping historical contexts for an understanding of such functions. These are the indigenous traditions in the long history of China; Western influences from the nineteenth century and especially on the transformations in the twentieth century; interactions between lawmakers and state agents, and between state actions and societal responses; and the reality of justice being done in relative and imperfect ways under the best circumstances, due to human fallibility.

Delivering Justice in Qing China

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linxia Liang
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Chinese Law ◽  
Civil Trials ◽  
Criminal Matters

Traditional Chinese law, including Qing law, was often criticized as being inapplicable in civil trials, and it was often believed that the magistrate's court preferred mediation rather than decision-making. This volume challenges these views. With a detailed analysis of the Qing law codes and of 100 nineteenth-century case records from Baodi county, the volume examines much-debated issues such as the approach of Qing law to civil and criminal matters, punishment and mediation in civil trials, Confucius' preference for education and the idea of anti-litigation. This book brings a lawyer's perspective to some of the most debated issues in Chinese legal history.

Policing Marriage under the ‘Tree of Despotism’: The Struggle over Marital, Civic and Police-Judicial Relations in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Edinburgh

2016 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
David G. Barrie
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Judicial Power ◽  
Power Struggle ◽  
Marriage Law ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Judicial Ruling ◽  
Male Authority ◽  
State Relations ◽  
The Church

In 1850 an attempt by the Conservative MP for Bute, James Wortley, to legalise marriage with a deceased wife's sister kick-started an unprecedented and remarkable chain of events in Edinburgh. Over a few short weeks, Scotland's capital became embroiled in a power struggle that would bring Presbyterian churchmen together in a manner that few issues had done since the Disruption, involve the city's religious, civic and judicial elites in a high-profile disturbance and trial, and lay the foundations for a landmark judicial ruling. Although touching upon a number of important historiographical themes relating to marriage, religion, Scottish national identity, and church-state relations, what binds the story together was not only the personalities involved, the events that unfolded, or the perceived conceptual links between them, but male anxieties over control, governance, and masculine honour. In reconstructing this narrative, the essay argues that this was a controversy not just about marriage law, or the perceived abuse of police and judicial power, but of male authority—within the household, the church, and municipal office. It sheds new light on the important role that Scottish values, beliefs, and traditions played in the marriage with a deceased wife's sister debate, and furthers historiographical understanding on police-judicial relations by exploring the intricacies of mid-nineteenth-century Scottish governance.

Herman Melville’s Politics of Imperialism: Colonizing and De-Colonizing Spaces of Ethnicity

2006 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel A. Blumenthal
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Native American ◽  
The Other ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
Social Harmony ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
White American ◽  
Anthropological Study ◽  
Political Relationship ◽  
The One

There is, in Herman Melville’s works, a constant struggle to situate the narrative within the context of a racial and ethnic “Other.” Melville’s narrators—almost invariably white, Euro-American males—appear at times in tense opposition to, and at other times in social harmony with, the African, Native American, Polynesian, and Oriental presences in his texts. In essence, Melville situates these non-white characters against the dominantly-raced narrator as racial “Others.” This ethnic “othering” entails a dangerous politics of racial separation, hierarchizing, and colonization, yet simultaneously allows for and even encourages a social critique of nineteenth-century white American imperialist attitudes toward non-white peoples. Indeed, this is what makes Melville such a difficult figure to decipher both literarily and historically. By marking these races as alien and “other,” indeed by striving to “mark” them at all, Melville at once conducts a constructive anthropological study as well as sets the destructive foundation for a race-driven, American imperialist project aimed at alienated and “othered” races. Indeed, Melville constructs for his readership a difficult paradox; his texts on the one hand call for white intervention and colonization of ethnic and racial spaces, and on the other, they illuminate the counter-productivity of such colonization. What, then, was Melville’s relationship to the ongoing imperialist project of nineteenth-century America? To reach an answer to this question we will examine Melville’s political relationship to two Pacific Ocean land groups (the Marquesan Islands and the Sandwich Islands), establish a pattern to his paradoxical imperialist and anti-imperialist philosophies, and finally, construct a model of his international, inter-ethnic political philosophy.

scholarly journals Perspectives on Health: Working with Communities as Cultural Anthropologists and Bioarchaeologists

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-48
Author(s):  
Samantha Purhcase
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Short Discussion ◽  
Community Culture ◽  
Middle Holocene ◽  
Anthropological Study ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Post Industrial

   The anthropological study of health has always been an integral part of the discipline. With the development of cultural anthropology and physical anthropology (specifically, bioarchaeology) in the nineteenth century came different theories and methodologies concerning the study and definition of communities. Still today, cultural anthropology and bioarchaeology share the same broad goals of exploring the evolving relationships between experiences of health and the community, culture, and environment (being natural, domestic, political, and social). That cultural anthropologists study extant cultures and bioarchaeologists do not has necessitated the evolution of different methodological practices. Here, I explore some of the differences between these two sub-disciplines: their differing notions of community, how they engage with communities, and the relevance of their work to the communities they study. I contextualize this analysis with a short discussion of the sub-disciplines’ co-evolution and ground it with examples from my research with middle Holocene Siberian, Russian Federation, and Anglo-Saxon to Post-Industrial British communities. 

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