Song, "Flow into eternity: Patriarchy, marriage and socialism in a North China village," 2008

Zhifang Song, Ph.D.

Abstract (Summary)
This dissertation studies changes in marriage practice in a North China village through decades of the Communist rule. Using Bourdieu's model of "practice" theory, particularly the notion of "habitus", I see these changes as a result of the interactions between the socialist state and the Chinese patriarchal familial ideal, the core of which is the necessity of perpetuating the patrilineal family line. This patriarchal ideal, embodied as the habitus of villagers and persisting through the decades of the Communist rule, generated, through the agency of the villagers, different marriage practices under different social conditions.

The social reform projects in the first few years after the Communist Party came to power, such as the Land Reform, the promulgation and implementation of the 1950 Marriage Law, and the Collectivization Movement, all brought about some changes in marriage and family in the village, even though some of the changes were not intended by the Communist Party. Three types of marriage practice in the subsequent years are the focus of this dissertation: the sweet potato marriage in the early 1960s, when the famine caused by the Great Leap Forward forced many families to sell their daughters for food; the exchange marriage during the Cultural Revolution, when people swapped their daughters as brides for their sons; the pseudodowry marriage during the Post-Mao reform era, when families in the village have to provide enormous amount of bridal gifts for their sons' marriages. These marriage practices show that even though the Communist Party had the liberation of women as one of its political agenda, the deep penetration of the Communist state into the village community during the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution subjected women to more patriarchal oppression. In contrast, the retreat of the Communist state from village life during the post-Mao reform has weakened parents' patriarchal power and empowered young women and men, due to the parents' adherence to the patriarchal ideal of perpectuating their family lines. Patriarchs are victimized by their own patriarchal ideal.

Advisor: Seaman, Gary
Committee members: Cooper, Eugene,  Wills, John