Christian Henriot

Scythe and the City (eBook, ePUB)

A Social History of Death in Shanghai

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

The issue of death has loomed large in Chinese cities in the modern era. Throughout the Republican period, Shanghai swallowed up lives by the thousands. Exposed bodies strewn around in public spaces were a threat to social order as well as to public health. In a place where every group had its own beliefs and set of death and funeral practices, how did they adapt to a modern, urbanized environment? How did the interactions of social organizations and state authorities manage these new ways of thinking and acting?

Recent historiography has almost completely ignored the ways in which death created such immense social change in China. Now, Scythe and the City corrects this problem. Christian Henriot's pioneering and original study of Shanghai between 1865 and 1965 offers new insights into this crucial aspect of modern society in a global commercial hub and guides readers through this tumultuous era that radically redefined the Chinese relationship with death.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 496
• Erscheinungstermin: 18. Mai 2016
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780804798747
• Artikelnr.: 48420433

Autorenporträt

Christian Henriot is Professor of Modern History at Aix-Marseille University and the author of numerous books on modern Chinese history, including Prostitution and Sexuality in Shanghai: A Social History, 1849-1949 (2001). He is also Project Director of Virtual Shanghai (virtualshanghai.net).

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
Introduction
chapter abstract
The introduction offers various paths on the study of death in China and
Europe, while it also sets the stage for the study of death in Shanghai
proper.
1Scythe and the City: The Measure of Death
chapter abstract
This chapter is an attempt to take the measure of death in the city through
the reconstruction of demographic series and a study of the causes of
death. It establishes not just the quantitative parameters of death in the
city. It also unveils the dramatic condition in which most urbanites lived,
their lives and hopes cut short by disease, malnutrition, work conditions,
and so on. The chapter demonstrates Shanghai was a gigantic whirlpool that
drew its vitality from the masses of migrants that moved into the city.
2Guilds, Charities, and the Community Management of Death
chapter abstract
The second chapter examines the role of community organizations, especially
the guilds and charities, in the management of death in the city. Up to the
1920s, before the emergence of commercial funeral companies, community
organizations were the sole social actors that took care of the disposal of
dead bodies. This chapter also studies the earlier forms of regulation by
the imperial administration and the foreign municipal authorities.
3Funeral Companies and the Commoditization of the Dead Body
chapter abstract
. This chapter takes up the new trend commercial funeral companies set in
motion from the mid-1920s, when an American company established the first
funeral parlor, to the extraordinary boom during the Sino-Japanese War and
its problematic legacy, a full-blown ghost city in the midst of Shanghai,
in the postwar and early Communist period.
4A Final Resting Place: From Burial Grounds to Modern Cemeteries
chapter abstract
Due to the particular political and spatial configuration of the city, the
space devoted to the final resting place was sharply divided and
fragmented. This chapter focuses on the process of transformation of
Chinese burial grounds and the rise of modern cemeteries in the twentieth
century. It examines the role of private companies in the light of the
official prescriptions from the state and the inability of local municipal
authorities to respond adequately to social demand.
5Foreign Cemeteries and the Colonial Space of Death
chapter abstract
This chapter addresses the specific issue of the colonial space of death
that private individuals and communities, but mostly the two foreign
municipal councils, created through the establishment and management of
cemeteries reserved to foreigners, with only very few exceptions. In
pre-1949 Shanghai, foreign cemeteries established a trail of permanent and
temporary burial grounds in the core urban area.
6Invisible Deaths, Silent Deaths
chapter abstract
This chapter examines the issue of the invisible deaths, those of the most
destitute, especially infants and children, whose bodies ended up in back
alleys, vacant land, almost everywhere in the city. This was the most
gruesome aspect of death as despite its unthinkable magnitude it dissolved
under a veil of social invisibility.
7Funerals and the Price of Death
chapter abstract
Death had a price. From the performance of funeral rituals, to funeral
apparels, and to funeral processions, death (re)created a complete
hierarchy in even sharper lines than among the living. Funerals were a
central rite of passage in which families invested considerable amounts of
money, as much as they could afford, sometimes beyond their means. This
chapter provides keys to situate the importance of funeral ceremonies in
Chinese death culture and to establish the parameters of
inclusion/exclusion of various social groups. It also examines the
fundamental issue of the price of death and the economy of death in
Shanghai.
8The Cremated Body: From Social Curse to Political Rule
chapter abstract
Earth burial was the fundamental way of disposing of the dead. Yet other
forms emerged, for example, cremation. This chapter is devoted to the
introduction of cremation in Shanghai and its slow diffusion until the war
made it a compulsory measure to dispose of the unclaimed bodies of the
poor. The image of cremation as a curse goes a long way to explain the
strong resistance of the population and the cautious approach the
authorities took, even after 1950, in promoting it. Yet, by the Cultural
Revolution, this had become a standard practice.
9The Management of Death under Socialism
chapter abstract
All through the late imperial and Republican period, customs and practices
changed along with the emergence of new funeral organizations and the
effect of official regulation. Yet the core set of beliefs and practices
evolved slowly until the new Communist regime challenged the whole death
culture. The final chapter examines the measures through which the CCP took
over the control of all organizations involved in the management of death
and reorganized drastically the funeral social landscape.