This thesis explores issues of subjectivity and gender around ritual activity in Xianyou county, Fujian Province, China. It focuses on three groups of women: Buddhist nuns, mediums and village women engaged in the ritual caretaking of their families. It also examines a spirit writing text from the late Qing dynasty (1644-1911). It is suggested that subject positions and kin positions are to a certain extent coextensive and that participation in certain rituals is what constitutes one as a gendered subject (as a "woman") and in certain kin roles (as wife, daughter-in-law, etc.). Other gendered subject positions (such as that of melancholic lover) are explored in an attempt to complicate any simple determinism that might accompany to easy a correspondence of kin position with sex role.

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Gender relations as well as the social situation of Manchu women have long been ignored in studies of the cultural evolution of the Manchu. By setting the discussion of Manchu women in the context of cultural adaptation, this study reintroduces gender and women's problems into the research on the Manchu culture by outlining the social changes in Manchu society over 300 years, which in turn have affected the social position of Manchu women. A literature review provides a theoretical framework to the understanding of the interaction between the social system of Manchu society and environmental stress. An emphasis is laid on the role of the state in cultural evolution and its influence on Manchu women. Two factors significantly affecting Manchu women's lives are the introduction of the Banner system and the process of systematic sinification. Cultural assimilation and maintenance are also major topics covered in this study. The results of a field investigation at Outer Firearm Camp In Beijing reveal a pattern of a mixture of Han and Manchu customs, which serves as a good example of how a cultural system be partially destroyed and partially preserved in the process of adaptation, and how women's status remains higher among the Manchu than among the Han. The Manchu's basic cultural value system with its emphasis on women's equality has proven to be remarkably stable despite many social adaptations to extreme pressures from the outside world. / Graduation date: 1996 / Best scan available for p.53 and p.106.

viii, 116 p. A print copy of this thesis is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / As Mainland China transitions from a planned socialist economy to one more market-focused, its economic successes have garnered attention worldwide. However, this astounding economic growth brought with it a number of negative side effects, including corruption and a resurgence ofprostitution. Gender relations have also undergone major shifts from state mandated gender equality in the Mao era to a call for the refeminization ofwomen in the Reform era. How is the Chinese population navigating this transition? In this thesis, I utilize existing melodrama theory and relevant sociological studies to explore how three Chinese TV dramas-I'm Not a Hero (2004), Close to You, Make Me Warm (2006), and Give Me a Cigarette (2006), later renamed Evening Rain--expose and explore some of these existing social problems, providing a platform for their viewers to reflect on and explore these issues on their own. / Committee in Charge: Tze-Ian Sang, Chair; Alison Groppe; Eileen Otis

published_or_final_version / Social Work and Social Administration / Master / Master of Philosophy

This thesis investigates various representational modes and strategies in the Shanghai courtesan illustrations in Dianshizhai Pictorial. The aim of the study is to examine how Shanghai's early modern identity was imaged, imagined and contested through the courtesan figure. I argue that by establishing a new urban iconography, Dianshizhai Pictorial transformed the Shanghai courtesan from a traditional archetypical meiren to a universal image of the urban beauty. On the one hand, the modern city, previously an alien concept, was made familiar and acceptable through the image of the Shanghai courtesan. On the other hand, the ambivalence of the courtesan's new image mirrored a mixed feeling of fear, anxiety and disdain towards the emerging metropolis. The courtesan illustrations, hence, served as an important domain where different public understandings of the city were negotiated and expressed in pictorial terms.

The thesis searches for the roots of the Chinese appreciation for the concepts contained in the early Mādhyamika texts in the currents in Chinese philosophy and the political climate in China during the Eastern Chin and Liu Sung periods. We also seek to account for the characteristic emphasis in hsüan-hsüeh thought on descriptions of a hypothetical sage-ruler and of "Non-being" (and in Buddhist thought on the divine saviour and the eternal life of the "spirit") in the social/political situation in China during this period. We examine the many points of correspondence and similarities between Taoist philosophy and concepts originating in the Prajnāpāramitā texts. Selected translations from the Ming-fo-lun (Treatise Illuminating the Buddha) by Tsung Ping (375-443) are used as examples of a Chinese layman's appraisal of the Buddhist "Path" vis-a-vis those of the philosophical Taoists and Confucianists and to give an overall picture of the philosophical climate of the period. The thesis concludes that there is a wealth of similarity between the Buddhist ideas being introduced to Chinese in the Post-Han period, and China's own philosophical output before and during this period. A continuity is identified between the tenets of hsüan-hsüeh and these Buddhist ideas. We further conclude that the Chinese interest in the limitless powers of the Buddha--like the emphasis in hsüan-hsüeh thought on the qualities of the sage-ruler--can be attributed to the social strife in the period and the erosion of faith in mundane political philosophies. The life of the "spirit" and the countenance of the Buddha offered truly lasting stability and reassurance which the more worldly doctrines had been unable to provide. As a final note, the thesis considers the common appreciation for Buddhism among Indians and Chinese as indicative of universal features of religious systems. We conclude that as common components of the Mādhyamika system practiced in India and China, the recognition of an all powerful deity and transcendent realm coupled with the idea of men's potential to interact and identify with these may be acknowledged as two of the fundamental features of a particular religious doctrine shared for a time by these two ancient civilizations. / Arts, Faculty of / Asian Studies, Department of / Graduate

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University of Macau / Faculty of Law

This thesis is based on fieldwork carried out m Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture, Yunnan Province, China. The main focus of the work is the Dai people, one of China's fifty-five so called 'Minority Nationalities'. I aim to paint a picture of the complex processes through which Dai ways of being and images of them are created and recreated. This is not to suggest that the Dai constitute a bounded group. Although Chinese official discourse presents a static, rigid picture of the so-called 'Minority Nationalities', I hope to have demonstrated that the everyday experiences of those in Banna are governed by a fluid and dynamic relationality. Images of 'Minority Nationalities' abound in China, these images are multiple and often contradictory. The Dai are known throughout China for their beauty, a beauty often portrayed as highly erotic. In this thesis I explore the implications of this image and the role of the Dai in its formation and continuity. With this in mind I examine the ways that the striking Dai aesthetic is used in the intricate power plays of Xishuangbanna. This work examines aspects of the Dai lived aesthetic and as such it has chapters on tattoo, architecture and feminine beauty. Dai aesthetic knowledge is interlaced with strands of moral, philosophical and cosmological insight, thus this work also includes a chapter on morality, autonomy and cooperation. The penultimate chapter uses vivid ethnography of the Water Splashing festival as a example of play of identities in Xishuangbanna. The Conclusion reiterates that the processes by which images, identities and aesthetic understandings are generated, and by which limits are explored and transgressed in Xishuangbanna are dialogic in character.