Frank Dikotter's Books

China After Mao

The Rise of a Superpower

By: Frank Dikötter

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China After Mao

The Rise of a Superpower

By: Frank Dikötter

“A blow-by-blow account ... An important corrective to the conventional view of China's rise.”--Financial Times From internationally renowned historian Frank Dikötter, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize, a myth-shattering history of China from the death of Chairman Mao to Xi Jinping. Through decades of direct experience of the People's Republic combined with extraordinary access to hundreds of hitherto unseen documents in communist party archives, the author of The People's Trilogy offers a riveting account of China's rise from the disaster of the Cultural Revolution. He takes us inside the country's unprecedented four-decade economic transformation--from rural villages to industrial metropoles and elite party conclaves--that vaulted the nation from 126th largest economy in the world to second largest. A historian at the pinnacle of his field, Dikötter challenges much of what we think we know about how this happened. Casting aside the image of a society marching unwaveringly toward growth, in lockstep to the beat of the party drum, he recounts instead a fascinating tale of contradictions, illusions, and palace intrigue, of disasters narrowly averted, shadow banking, anti-corruption purges, and extreme state wealth existing alongside everyday poverty. He examines China's navigation of the 2008 financial crash, its increasing hostility towards perceived Western interference, and its development into a thoroughly entrenched dictatorship with a sprawling security apparatus and the most sophisticated surveillance system in the world. As this magisterial book makes clear, the communist party's goal was never to join the democratic world, but to resist it--and ultimately defeat it.

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433

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Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

1639730524

ISBN 13

9781639730520

Mao's Great Famine

The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962

By: Frank Dikötter

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Mao's Great Famine

The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-1962

By: Frank Dikötter

Winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize An unprecedented, groundbreaking history of China's Great Famine that recasts the era of Mao Zedong and the history of the People's Republic of China. "Between 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up to and overtake Britain in less than 15 years The experiment ended in the greatest catastrophe the country had ever known, destroying tens of millions of lives." So opens Frank Dikötter's riveting, magnificently detailed chronicle of an era in Chinese history much speculated about but never before fully documented because access to Communist Party archives has long been restricted to all but the most trusted historians. A new archive law has opened up thousands of central and provincial documents that "fundamentally change the way one can study the Maoist era." Dikötter makes clear, as nobody has before, that far from being the program that would lift the country among the world's superpowers and prove the power of Communism, as Mao imagined, the Great Leap Forward transformed the country in the other direction. It became the site not only of "one of the most deadly mass killings of human history,"--at least 45 million people were worked, starved, or beaten to death--but also of "the greatest demolition of real estate in human history," as up to one-third of all housing was turned into rubble). The experiment was a catastrophe for the natural world as well, as the land was savaged in the maniacal pursuit of steel and other industrial accomplishments. In a powerful mesghing of exhaustive research in Chinese archives and narrative drive, Dikötter for the first time links up what happened in the corridors of power-the vicious backstabbing and bullying tactics that took place among party leaders-with the everyday experiences of ordinary people, giving voice to the dead and disenfranchised. His magisterial account recasts the history of the People's Republic of China.

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449

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

080277928X

ISBN 13

9780802779281

The Tragedy of Liberation

A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957

By: Frank Dik�tter

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The Tragedy of Liberation

A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957

By: Frank Dik�tter

The Chinese Communist party refers to its victory in 1949 as a "liberation." In China the story of liberation and the revolution that followed is not one of peace, liberty, and justice. It is first and foremost a story of calculated terror and systematic violence.' So begins Frank Dikötter's stunning and revelatory chronicle of Mao Zedong's ascension and campaign to transform the Chinese into what the party called New People. Following the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek in 1949, after a bloody civil war, Mao hoisted the red flag over Beijing's Forbidden City, and the world watched as the Communist revolution began to wash away the old order. Due to the secrecy surrounding the country's records, little has been known before now about the eight years that followed, preceding the massive famine and Great Leap Forward. Drawing on hundreds of previously classified documents, secret police reports, unexpurgated versions of leadership speeches, eyewitness accounts of those who survived, and more, The Tragedy of Liberation bears witness to a shocking, largely untold history. Interweaving stories of ordinary citizens with tales of the brutal politics of Mao's court, Frank Dikötter illuminates those who shaped the 'liberation' and the horrific policies they implemented in the name of progress. People of all walks of life were caught up in the tragedy that unfolded, and whether or not they supported the revolution, all of them were asked to write confessions, denounce their friends, and answer queries about their political reliability. One victim of thought reform called it a 'carefully cultivated Auschwitz of the mind.' Told with great narrative sweep, The Tragedy of Liberation is a powerful and important document giving voice at last to the millions who were lost, and casting new light on the foundations of one of the most powerful regimes of the twenty-first century"--

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401

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Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

1620403498

ISBN 13

9781620403495

The Cultural Revolution

A People's History, 1962—1976

By: Frank Dikötter

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The Cultural Revolution

A People's History, 1962—1976

By: Frank Dikötter

The concluding volume--following Mao's Great Famine and The Tragedy of Liberation--in Frank Dikötter's award-winning trilogy chronicling the Communist revolution in China. After the economic disaster of the Great Leap Forward that claimed tens of millions of lives from 1958–1962, an aging Mao Zedong launched an ambitious scheme to shore up his reputation and eliminate those he viewed as a threat to his legacy. The Cultural Revolution's goal was to purge the country of bourgeois, capitalistic elements he claimed were threatening genuine communist ideology. Young students formed the Red Guards, vowing to defend the Chairman to the death, but soon rival factions started fighting each other in the streets with semiautomatic weapons in the name of revolutionary purity. As the country descended into chaos, the military intervened, turning China into a garrison state marked by bloody purges that crushed as many as one in fifty people. The Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962–1976 draws for the first time on hundreds of previously classified party documents, from secret police reports to unexpurgated versions of leadership speeches. After the army itself fell victim to the Cultural Revolution, ordinary people used the political chaos to resurrect the market and hollow out the party's ideology. By showing how economic reform from below was an unintended consequence of a decade of violent purges and entrenched fear, The Cultural Revolution casts China's most tumultuous era in a wholly new light.

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433

Publisher

Bloomsbury Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1632864231

ISBN 13

9781632864239

Dictators

The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century

By: Frank Dikötter

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Dictators

The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century

By: Frank Dikötter

A New Statesman, Financial Times and Economist Book of the Year 'Brilliant' NEW STATESMAN, BOOKS OF THE YEAR 'Enlightening and a good read' SPECTATOR 'Moving and perceptive' NEW STATESMAN Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung, Ceausescu, Mengistu of Ethiopia and Duvalier of Haiti. No dictator can rule through fear and violence alone. Naked power can be grabbed and held temporarily, but it never suffices in the long term. A tyrant who can compel his own people to acclaim him will last longer. The paradox of the modern dictator is that he must create the illusion of popular support. Throughout the twentieth century, hundreds of millions of people were condemned to enthusiasm, obliged to hail their leaders even as they were herded down the road to serfdom. In Dictators, Frank Dikötter returns to eight of the most chillingly effective personality cults of the twentieth century. From carefully choreographed parades to the deliberate cultivation of a shroud of mystery through iron censorship, these dictators ceaselessly worked on their own image and encouraged the population at large to glorify them. At a time when democracy is in retreat, are we seeing a revival of the same techniques among some of today's world leaders? This timely study, told with great narrative verve, examines how a cult takes hold, grows, and sustains itself. It places the cult of personality where it belongs, at the very heart of tyranny.

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304

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Bloomsbury Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1526626985

ISBN 13

9781526626981

Mao's Great Famine

The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62

By: Frank Dikötter

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Mao's Great Famine

The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62

By: Frank Dikötter

Between 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell. Mao Zedong threw his country into a frenzy with the Great Leap Forward, an attempt to catch up and overtake Britain in less than 15 years. The experiment ended in the greatest catastrophe the country had ever known, destroying tens of millions of lives. So opens Frank Dikotter's astonishing, riveting, magnificently detailed chronicle of an era in Chinese history much speculated about but never before fully documented because access to Communist Party archives has long been restricted to all but the most trusted historians. A new archive law has opened up thousands of central and provincial documents that fundamentally change the way one can study the Maoist era. Dikotter makes clear, as nobody has before, that far from being the program that would lift the country among the world's superpowers and prove the power of communism, as Mao imagined, the Great Leap Forward transformed the country in the other direction. It became the site not only of one of the most deadly mass killings of human history, as at least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death, but also the greatest demolition of real estate in human history, as up to a third of all housing was turned into rubble. The experiment was a catastrophe for the natural world as well, as the land was savaged in the maniacal pursuit of steel and other industrial accomplishments. In a powerful meshing of exhaustive research and narrative drive, Dikotter for the first time links up what happened in the corridors of power - the vicious backstabbing and bullying tactics that took place among party leaders - with the everyday experiences of ordinary people, giving voice to the dead and disenfranchised. His magisterial account recasts the history of the People's Republic of China.

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420

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1408812193

ISBN 13

9781408812198

The Age of Openness

China Before Mao

By: Frank Dikötter

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The Age of Openness

China Before Mao

By: Frank Dikötter

Accessible to general readers and full of valuable insights for specialists, China before Mao presents a fresh way of approaching the country's modern history and shows that in politics, society, culture, and the economy, China was at its most diverse on the eve of World War II."--BOOK JACKET.

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140

Publisher

Univ of California Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520258819

ISBN 13

9780520258815

The Discourse of Race in Modern China

By: Frank Dikötter

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The Discourse of Race in Modern China

By: Frank Dikötter

Dikötter writes accessible history and has won the prestigious BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for his book Mao's Great Famine. The author shows how and why notions of 'race' became so widespread in China, now updated to include the continuation of this trend into the twenty-first century. He examines how Western notions of scientific racism have played out in China.

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240

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0190231130

ISBN 13

9780190231132

Narcotic Culture

A History of Drugs in China

By: Frank Dikötter,Lars Laamann,Zhou Xun

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Narcotic Culture

A History of Drugs in China

By: Frank Dikötter,Lars Laamann,Zhou Xun

To this day, the perception persists that China was a civilization defeated by imperialist Britain's most desirable trade commodity, opium—a drug that turned the Chinese into cadaverous addicts in the iron grip of dependence. Britain, in an effort to reverse the damage caused by opium addiction, launched its own version of the "war on drugs," which lasted roughly sixty years, from 1880 to World War II and the beginning of Chinese communism. But, as Narcotic Culture brilliantly shows, the real scandal in Chinese history was not the expansion of the drug trade by Britain in the early nineteenth century, but rather the failure of the British to grasp the consequences of prohibition. In a stunning historical reversal, Frank Dikötter, Lars Laamann, and Zhou Xun tell this different story of the relationship between opium and the Chinese. They reveal that opium actually had few harmful effects on either health or longevity; in fact, it was prepared and appreciated in highly complex rituals with inbuilt constraints preventing excessive use. Opium was even used as a medicinal panacea in China before the availability of aspirin and penicillin. But as a result of the British effort to eradicate opium, the Chinese turned from the relatively benign use of that drug to heroin, morphine, cocaine, and countless other psychoactive substances. Narcotic Culture provides abundant evidence that the transition from a tolerated opium culture to a system of prohibition produced a "cure" that was far worse than the disease. Delving into a history of drugs and their abuses, Narcotic Culture is part revisionist history of imperial and twentieth-century Britain and part sobering portrait of the dangers of prohibition.

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100

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226149056

ISBN 13

9780226149059

The Tragedy of Liberation

A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957

By: Frank Dikötter

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The Tragedy of Liberation

A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957

By: Frank Dikötter

The second installment in 'The People's Trilogy', the groundbreaking series from Samuel Johnson Prize-winning author Frank Dikötter 'For anyone who wants to understand the current Beijing regime, this is essential background reading' Anne Applebaum 'Essential reading for all who want to understand the darkness that lies at the heart of one of the world's most important revolutions' Guardian 'Dikötter performs here a tremendous service by making legible the hugely controversial origins of the present Chinese political order' Timothy Snyder In 1949 Mao Zedong hoisted the red flag over Beijing's Forbidden City. Instead of liberating the country, the communists destroyed the old order and replaced it with a repressive system that would dominate every aspect of Chinese life. In an epic of revolution and violence which draws on newly opened party archives, interviews and memoirs, Frank Dikötter interweaves the stories of millions of ordinary people with the brutal politics of Mao's court. A gripping account of how people from all walks of life were caught up in a tragedy that sent at least five million civilians to their deaths.

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401

Publisher

A&C Black

Published Date

ISBN 10

1408837595

ISBN 13

9781408837597

The Tragedy of Liberation

A History of the Chinese Revolution, 1945-57

By: Frank Dikötter

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The Tragedy of Liberation

A History of the Chinese Revolution, 1945-57

By: Frank Dikötter

In 1949 Mao Zedong hoisted the red flag over Beijing's Forbidden City. Instead of liberating the country, the communists destroyed the old order and replaced it with a repressive system that would dominate every aspect of Chinese life. In an epic of revolution and violence which draws on newly opened party archives, interviews and memoirs, Frank Dik�tter interweaves the stories of millions of ordinary people with the brutal politics of Mao's court. A gripping account of how people from all walks of life were caught up in a tragedy that sent at least five million civilians to their deaths.

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401

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A&C Black

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ISBN 10

1408837579

ISBN 13

9781408837573

Dictators

The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century

By: Frank Dikötter

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Dictators

The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century

By: Frank Dikötter

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304

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Bloomsbury Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1526626985

ISBN 13

9781526626981

Sex, Culture and Modernity in China

Her Tumultuous Life's Journey to the West

By: Frank Dikotter

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Sex, Culture and Modernity in China

Her Tumultuous Life's Journey to the West

By: Frank Dikotter

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243

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Hong Kong University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

9622093825

ISBN 13

9789622093829

China After Mao

The Rise of a Superpower

By: Frank Dikötter

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China After Mao

The Rise of a Superpower

By: Frank Dikötter

_______________ A SPECTATOR AND NEW STATESMAN BOOK OF THE YEAR 'A revolutionary book' Sunday Times 'A pulsating account that makes clear how important it is to look beneath the surface when it comes to any period or region in history – but above all to China' Peter Frankopan, TLS 'Essential reading for anyone who wants to know what has shaped today's China and what the Chinese Communist Party's choices mean for the rest of the world' New Statesman Books of the Year _______________ From the Samuel Johnson Prize-winning author of Mao's Great Famine, a timely and compelling account of China in the wake of Chairman Mao In China After Mao, award-winning historian Frank Dikötter explores how the People's Republic of China was transformed from a backwater economy in the 1970s into the world superpower of today. His account is the first to be based on hundreds of previously unseen archival documents, from the secret minutes of top party meetings to confidential bank reports. Unfolding with great narrative sweep, this riveting, richly detailed chronicle recasts our understanding of an era that both the regime and foreign admirers celebrate as an economic miracle. In charting four decades of so-called 'Reform and Opening Up' and China's emergence as a world power, Dikötter tells a fascinating tale of contradictions and illusions, of shadow banking, anti-corruption drives and extreme state wealth standing alongside everyday poverty. He examines China's approach to the 2008 financial crash, the country's increasing hostility towards perceived Western interference and its development into a thoroughly entrenched dictatorship – one equipped with a sprawling security apparatus and the most sophisticated surveillance system in the world. Ultimately, the book concludes, the communist party's goal was never to join the democratic sphere, but to resist it – and then defeat it. Praise for Frank Dikötter and the People's Trilogy: 'Harrowing and brilliant' Ben Macintyre 'The historian of China' Spectator 'One of the few books that anyone who wants to understand the twentieth century simply must read' New Statesman 'The seminal English language work on the subject' Sunday Times 'Gripping and masterful' - Simon Sebag Montefiore

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419

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1526657449

ISBN 13

9781526657442

Narcotic Culture

A History of Drugs in China

By: Frank Dikötter,Lars Peter Laamann,Xun Zhou

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Narcotic Culture

A History of Drugs in China

By: Frank Dikötter,Lars Peter Laamann,Xun Zhou

China was turned into a nation of opium addicts by the pernicious forces of imperialist trade. This study systematically questions this assertion on the basis of abundant archives from China, Europe and the US, showing that opium had few harmful effects on either health or longevity.

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350

Publisher

C. HURST & CO. PUBLISHERS

Published Date

ISBN 10

1850657254

ISBN 13

9781850657255

The Age of Openness

China Before Mao

By: Frank Dikötter

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The Age of Openness

China Before Mao

By: Frank Dikötter

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144

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Univ of California Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520258819

ISBN 13

9780520258815

Crime, Punishment and the Prison in Modern China

By: Frank Dikötter

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Crime, Punishment and the Prison in Modern China

By: Frank Dikötter

This book is a richly textured social and cultural study exploring the profound effects and lasting repercussions of superimposing Western-derived models of repentance and rehabilitation on traditional categories of crime and punishment.

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Page Count

492

Publisher

Columbia University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0231125089

ISBN 13

9780231125086

The Discourse of Race in Modern China

By: Frank Dikötter

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The Discourse of Race in Modern China

By: Frank Dikötter

First published in 1992, The Discourse of Race in Modern China rapidly became a classic, showing for the first time on the basis of detailed evidence how and why racial categorisation became so widespread in China. After the country's devastating defeat against Japan in 1895, leading reformers like Yan Fu, Liang Qichao and Kang Youwei turned away from the Confucian classics to seek enlightenment abroad, hoping to find the keys to wealth and power on the distant shores of Europe. Instead, they discovered the notion of 'race', and used new evolutionary theories from Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer to present a universe red in tooth and claw in which 'yellows' competed with 'whites' in a deadly struggle for survival. After the fall of the empire in 1911, prominent politicians and writers in republican China continued to measure, classify and rank people from around the world according to their supposed biological features, all in the name of science. Racial thinking remains popular in the People's Republic of China, as serologists, geneticists and anthropometrists continue to interpret human variation in terms of 'race'. This new edition has been revised and expanded to include a new chapter taking the reader up to the twenty-first century.

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240

Publisher

Oxford University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0190613335

ISBN 13

9780190613334

Mao's Great Famine

The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62

By: Frank Dikötter

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Mao's Great Famine

The History of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958-62

By: Frank Dikötter

An unprecedented, groundbreaking history of China's Great Famine that recasts the era of Mao Zedong and the history of the People's Republic of China.

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450

Publisher

Bloomsbury Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

0747595089

ISBN 13

9780747595083

Imperfect Conceptions

Medical Knowledge, Birth Defects, and Eugenics in China

By: Frank Dikötter

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Imperfect Conceptions

Medical Knowledge, Birth Defects, and Eugenics in China

By: Frank Dikötter

Imperfect Conceptions reveals how Chinese cultural currents - fear and fascination with the deviant and the urge to draw clear boundaries between the normal and the abnormal - have combined with medical discourse to form a program of eugenics that is viewed with alarm by the rest of the world.

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244

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Columbia University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0231113706

ISBN 13

9780231113700

The Cultural Revolution

A People's History, 1962—1976

By: Frank Dikötter

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The Cultural Revolution

A People's History, 1962—1976

By: Frank Dikötter

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433

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Bloomsbury Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1632864231

ISBN 13

9781632864239

The Discourse of Race in Modern China

Hong Kong Memoirs

By: Frank Dikotter

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The Discourse of Race in Modern China

Hong Kong Memoirs

By: Frank Dikotter

This book is a study of a topic that is both extremely important and highly sensitive: how the Chinese have viewed other ethnic groups across time. The issue of racial differences constitutes a highly marked and oblique discourse in modern China. This is the first book to analyse that shielded rhetoric directly.

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270

Publisher

Hong Kong University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

9622093043

ISBN 13

9789622093041

Taijiquan and The Search for The Little Old Chinese Man

Understanding Identity through Martial Arts

By: A. Frank

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Taijiquan and The Search for The Little Old Chinese Man

Understanding Identity through Martial Arts

By: A. Frank

This book is an ethnographic study of the martial art of taijiquan (or 'tai chi') as it is practiced in China and the United States. Drawing on recent literature on ethnicity, critical race theory, the phenomenology of race, and globalization, the author discusses identity in terms of sensual experience and the transmission/receipt of knowledge.

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Page Count

328

Publisher

Springer

Published Date

ISBN 10

0230601529

ISBN 13

9780230601529

Exotic Commodities

Modern Objects and Everyday Life in China

By: Frank Dikötter

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Exotic Commodities

Modern Objects and Everyday Life in China

By: Frank Dikötter

Exotic Commodities is the first book to chart the consumption and spread of foreign goods in China from the mid-nineteenth century to the advent of communism in 1949. Richly illustrated and revealing, this volume recounts how exotic commodities were acquired and adapted in a country commonly believed to have remained "hostile toward alien things" during the industrial era. China was not immune to global trends that prized the modern goods of "civilized" nations. Foreign imports were enthusiastically embraced by both the upper and lower classes and rapidly woven into the fabric of everyday life, often in inventive ways. Scarves, skirts, blouses, and corsets were combined with traditional garments to create strikingly original fashions. Industrially produced rice, sugar, wheat, and canned food revolutionized local cuisine, and mass produced mirrors were hung on doorframes to ward off malignant spirits. Frank Dikötter argues that ordinary people were the least inhibited in acquiring these products and therefore the most instrumental in changing the material culture of China. Landscape paintings, door leaves, and calligraphy scrolls were happily mixed with kitschy oil paintings and modern advertisements. Old and new interacted in ways that might have seemed incongruous to outsiders but were perfectly harmonious to local people. This pragmatic attitude would eventually lead to China's own mass production and export of cheap, modern goods, which today can be found all over the world. The nature of this history raises the question, which Dikötter pursues in his conclusion: If the key to surviving in a fast-changing world is the ability to innovate, could China be more in tune with modernity than Europe?

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412

Publisher

Columbia University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0231511876

ISBN 13

9780231511872

Exotic Commodities

Modern Objects and Everyday Life in China

By: Frank Dikötter

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Exotic Commodities

Modern Objects and Everyday Life in China

By: Frank Dikötter

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412

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Columbia University Press

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ISBN 10

0231511876

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9780231511872

Sex, Culture, and Modernity in China

Medical Science and the Construction of Sexual Identities in the Early Republican Period

By: Frank Dikötter

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Sex, Culture, and Modernity in China

Medical Science and the Construction of Sexual Identities in the Early Republican Period

By: Frank Dikötter

With the disintegration of Confucian cosmology after the fall of the imperial system in China, medical science was introduced as an epistemological foundation for social order. The construction of sexuality as a dangerous drive which was thought to form the very core of the individual led to the emergence of a wide range of identities like the menstruating girl, the hysterical housewife, the masturbating adolescent and the syphilitic husband. The naturalization of desire also introduced a tension between the sexual responsibilities of the individual and the coercive intervention of civil society in the name of the collective health of future generations. Although new categories of analysis, such as 'population', 'race', 'sex', 'woman' and 'youth' were introduced to early Republican China from abroad, their reception and adaptation were founded on cultural reorientations which may have taken place as long before as the 17th and 18th centuries. Instead of describing the rise of normative naturalism as a derivative discourse from 'the West', this book recognizes that the roots of modernizing representations may have had to be sought in a rich and diverse past in China itself. The author's analysis is based on medical and lay texts such as handbooks, marriage guides and introductions to physiology and sexual hygiene. The epilogue demonstrates how the sexual identities invented early this century are still in place in China today.

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254

Publisher

University of Hawaii Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0824816765

ISBN 13

9780824816766

Crime, Punishment and the Prison in Modern China

By: Frank Dikötter

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Crime, Punishment and the Prison in Modern China

By: Frank Dikötter

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Page Count

492

Publisher

Columbia University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0231125089

ISBN 13

9780231125086

Imperfect Conceptions

Medical Knowledge, Birth Defects, and Eugenics in China

By: Frank Dikötter

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Imperfect Conceptions

Medical Knowledge, Birth Defects, and Eugenics in China

By: Frank Dikötter

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244

Publisher

Columbia University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0231113706

ISBN 13

9780231113700

Cultures of Confinement

A History of the Prison in Africa, Asia and Latin America

By: Frank Dikötter

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Cultures of Confinement

A History of the Prison in Africa, Asia and Latin America

By: Frank Dikötter

Prisons, it seems, are on the increase everywhere, from democratic Britain to communist China, as ever larger proportions of humanity find themselves behind bars. While prisons now span the world, we know little about their history in global perspective. Rather than interpreting the prison everywhere as the predictable result of 'globalisation', Cultures of Confinement underlines that - like all institutions - it was never simply 'imposed' by colonial powers or 'copied' by elites eager to emulate the West, but was reinvented and transformed by a host of local factors, its success being dependent on its very flexibility. Complex cultural negotiations took place in encounters between different parts of the world, and rather than assigning a passive role to Latin America, Asia and Africa, the authors of this book point out the acts of resistance or appropriation which altered the social practices associated with confinement.

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Page Count

366

Publisher

C. HURST & CO. PUBLISHERS

Published Date

ISBN 10

1850658455

ISBN 13

9781850658450

Book's by Frank Dikotter

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