essay
The power and pollution of Chinese women
Studies in Chinese society • Stanford, Calif. • Published In 1978 • Pages: 269-290, 362-363
By: Martin, Emily.
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
This essay considers the polluting or dangerous powers of women in the light of women's ambiguous social position and Taiwanese notions of ideal family structure. The key problem appears to be not one of popular belief in the inherent inferiority of women per se, but rather women's close association with substances that are ritually unclean (e.g., menstrual blood), and their status as outsiders in a kinship system focused on male lines of descent. Conditions in which women are thought to be dangerous or anomalous, such as during pregnancy, childbirth, and widowhood, are discussed in detail along with more general Chinese notions of clean and unclean bodily substances.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Gender status
- Purification and atonement
- Ethnoanatomy
- Menstruation
- Childbirth
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Taiwan Hokkien
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 1995
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- Asia
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- East Asia
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- essay
- Evaluation
- Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Ethnologist
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- M. A. Marcus
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- 1969-1972
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- not specified
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- Ch'i-nan village, Taipei hsien, Hai-shan region, Taiwan
- NotesAdditional notes
- Emily M. Ahern
- Includes bibliography
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Taiwanese