Gerritsen, Anne

Histoire sociale/Social history

English

Histoire sociale / Social History (E-Journal, York University)

attitudes about sexuality, the body, and women. Finally, Toby Thacker provides anengaging analysis of how music cuts clear dividing lines between inclusion andexclusion.The final section offers theoretical approaches and reflections that link all of thecontributions. Pascal Grosse, Adelaide von Saldern, and Kathleen Canningconfirm that “citizenship provides a common denominator that complicates ourunderstanding of the interdependent relationship between politics and culturewhile enabling a transcendence of hitherto distinct historical fields and perspec-tives” (pp. 13–14).In the concluding chapter, Geoff Eley makes a final plea to suggest that citizen-ship can inform us about the meanings of continuity and rupture in Germany’spast. The contributors cut across the traditional turning points of 1914, 1918,and 1945 to demonstrate that citizenship provides a framework through whichthe German past can be compared in diverse periods and political contexts(pp. 233–246).The common thread that binds these contributions is the notion that citizenshipis a cultural construction and a process through which the public and the auth-orities define and compete for inclusion. The book does not come to any firm con-clusions; rather, its aim is to suggest new avenues for further investigation. Itsarguments are coherent and it offers a solid examination of the negotiation andconstruction of citizenship. A chapter on the Federal Republic of Germany, orat best a comparison of citizenship construction between the FRG and theGerman Democratic Republic, would help complete the picture by further explor-ing the impact of ideological constructions on popular practice in very differentpolitical contexts. However, as the editors suggest, they do not pretend to offera total analysis, but rather a solid starting point. For this, they should becongratulated.Patryk J. PolecUniversity of OttawaFAURE, David — Emperor and Ancestor: State and Lineage in South China.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007. Pp. 464.For some books, reading the review is enough; a brief synopsis and a sense of howthe reviewed work fits into the wider scholarly literature are all one has time toabsorb anyway. For other books, the review only needs to say one thing: readthis book. David Faure’s masterpiece falls into the latter category. A shortreview cannot do it justice; for a full review, I refer the reader to JohnLagerwey’s review essay (“State and Local Society in Late Imperial China” inT’oung Pao, vol. 93, 2007, pp. 459–479). Here I only briefly discuss what thebook sets out to do and how that contributes to the wider field.Faure’s argument is deceptively simple. The single-surname village, where allmembers trace their descent to a common ancestor, was a construct as well as242 Histoire sociale / Social HistoryHistoire sociale – Social History, vol. XLII, no 83 (Mai-May 2009)the functional reality that Maurice Freedman made it out to be, intended to inte-grate local society and the central state. This construct or “aspiration” (p. 11)appeared as the dominant organizational feature in south China during theJiajing period (1520s to 1550s) and disappeared again in the twentieth century.The first part of the book charts how this lineage society could come intobeing. Beginning with the earliest records available for the area of his focus(the Pearl River Delta, and particularly the town of Foshan) in the Tang, Fauredemonstrates the slow impact of Neo-Confucianism on the organization ofsociety from the Southern Song and on the introduction of the lijia, not somuch as the state intended it (as a population record) but as a land registrythat facilitated the collection of taxes, especially when the Single Whip reformsconverted all levies and corvee duties to a single monetary payment. Here liesthe crux of Faure’s contribution: his work shows that the ritual performance oflineage, with its ancestral halls and genealogies, made it possible for the localityto be part of the central state. The representation of lineage in our sources, inother words, reveals the official, legitimizing agenda of the state.Faure’s work makes a contribution to the field of late imperial history in thewidest possible sense, in part through the presentation of meticulous and detailedresearch at the local level (although at times the level of detail makes it hard forthe reader to grasp its link with the overarching argument of the book) and in partby proposing a way of reading the local in the context of the late imperial state anda way of understanding how the local was co-opted for the purposes of the centralstate. If this study of the Pearl River Delta does not claim to provide a blueprintfor all of China, it does offer a way of doing local history: gathering the types ofdocuments he has used here (including steles, privately held genealogies, con-tracts) and reading them with a critical awareness of the ways in which thosesources reflect “the process by which the imperial state was formed” (p. 367).In Jizhou (or Ji’an, as this part of Jiangxi became known from the Ming dynastyonward), I found Song and Yuan dynasty literati writing about local temples in anattempt to construct a local identity that fit with the imperial vision of the place oflocal communities. By the fifteenth century, the literati focus shifted away fromtemples for local gods towards the institutions associated with lineage societysuch as inscriptions for newly built lineage halls and prefaces for new editionsof genealogical compilations. (See Ji’an Literati and the Local in Song-Yuan-Ming China, Brill, 2007.) Faure’s work provides a way of fitting such local devel-opments into an empire-wide narrative and recognizing its significance for theintegration of Jizhou/Ji’an into the ideological structures of the imperial state.In that sense, Faure’s contribution goes beyond China to offer valuable insightsto any historian of localities and regions. Rather than providing the minutiae ofa given locality over time for their own sake, leaving to others the work of adjust-ing the larger picture in accordance with local peculiarities, Faure makes the inte-gration between local and empire his focal point. Local historians have come along way from describing “communities” as static and unitary entities.Historians have learned from geographers about putting places in temporal andspatial contexts and have begun to see how the ways in which the histories ofComptes rendus / Book Reviews 243Histoire sociale – Social History, vol. XLII, no 83 (Mai-May 2009)places are told reflect relations of power within those communities. The represen-tation of Chinese society as fundamentally shaped by lineage institutions and thenarratives of Chinese history that reveal the emergence and growth of this lineagesociety tell the story not so much of Chinese society and its history, but of theemergence and the extent of literati power. When we heed Faure’s call not tobe “armchair” historians (p. 368) and head to the field, what we see are lineageinstitutions. The villages in Ji’an I visited repeatedly between 2000 and 2007have very few architectural remnants of their illustrious past. Lineage hallsabound, however, in all sizes and shapes, many in a state of severe disrepair,some still in use as agricultural storage spaces or thriving community centres forthe elderly. The enduring presence of these lineage halls tells us somethingabout the social endurance of literati aspiration in this region.For local historians of late imperial China, Faure’s book is essential reading. Ithas much to offer anyone with an interest in the political, socio-economic, and cul-tural formations of the post-Tang period, and it offers new insights for anyone withan interest in the history of the local.Anne GerritsenWarwick University and Asia Research Center,National University of SingaporeFOLLAIN, Antoine — Le village sous l’Ancien Re´gime, Paris, Fayard, 2008, 607 p.D’entre´e de jeu, disons que ce livre laisse son lecteur perplexe. Les traits de ge´niey coˆtoient de basses insultes, les critiques les plus constructives de´bouchent sur desimpasses et les stimulantes questions qui y sont souleve´es commandent des chan-tiers d’une telle ampleur qu’une ge´ne´ration d’historiens franc¸ais ne suffirait pas a`la taˆche. Rien ne semble pleinement satisfaire Antoine Follain, meˆme son propretravail. Pourtant, il y a fort a` parier que ce livre deviendra une lecture incontour-nable pour tous les ruralistes, puisque Follain y recadre toutes les the´matiquesrelatives au village en invitant ses colle`gues a` observer les ruraux « dansl’action et en situation », en utilisant d’abord des archives locales et en posantles questions nationales – construction de l’E´tat moderne, lutte entre le pouvoirroyal, le pouvoir seigneurial et l’E´glise – dans un deuxie`me temps. Cette approchepermet, d’une part, d’e´chapper a` la myopie de l’histoire locale et, d’autre part,d’e´viter de se laisser enfermer dans la proble´matique de la capacite´ d’action despaysans face a` des pouvoirs externes, qui ne prend pas suffisamment en compteles dynamiques internes de la vie au village.Le livre est divise´ en six axes, qui comportent chacun deux chapitres. Lepremier axe s’intitule « Comparer et relativiser » et passe en revue l’historiogra-phie du sujet, d’abord a` l’e´chelle nationale (chapitre 1) puis dans le cas spe´cifiquede la Normandie, terrain d’enqueˆte de l’auteur pour les vingt dernie`res anne´es(chapitre 2). Ce premier axe est a` l’image de l’entreprise mene´e par Follain :e´valuer les re´sultats obtenus ailleurs en France et de´velopper l’exemple244 Histoire sociale / Social HistoryHistoire sociale – Social History, vol. XLII, no 83 (Mai-May 2009)

FAURE, David — Emperor and Ancestor: State and Lineage in South China.

Anne Gerritsen

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&lt;i&gt;Emperor and Ancestor: State and Lineage in South China&lt;/i&gt; (review)

https://hssh.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/hssh/article/download/38746/35147

FAURE, David — Emperor and Ancestor: State and Lineage in South China.

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