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6 - A Constitutional Agenda

Remaking the Family to Make a New State

from Part II - Building the Nation through Restructuring the Family

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2021

Yue Du
Affiliation:
Cornell University, New York
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Summary

Chapter 6 traces the logic beneath state-sponsored reconfiguration of family order in general, and generational relations in particular, within the context of China’s constitutional transformation in the first half of the twentieth century. Within a few decades, an empire that “ruled through the principle of filiality” became a modern republic that denounced the father–son cardinal bond in power succession and abandoned generational hierarchies in laws. Social practice on the ground witnessed gradual and uneven changes; but state builders, from late Qing legal reformers to Nationalist lawmakers, persisted in the statist direction they designed for China, in the hope of atomizing individual citizens as the first step to connect them directly to the state. The generation-long building of new sociolegal mechanisms, while obstructive to the formation of a stable political order in the short term, laid the foundation for the rebirth of China as a modern state.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • A Constitutional Agenda
  • Yue Du, Cornell University, New York
  • Book: State and Family in China
  • Online publication: 29 October 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108974479.008
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  • A Constitutional Agenda
  • Yue Du, Cornell University, New York
  • Book: State and Family in China
  • Online publication: 29 October 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108974479.008
Available formats
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To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • A Constitutional Agenda
  • Yue Du, Cornell University, New York
  • Book: State and Family in China
  • Online publication: 29 October 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108974479.008
Available formats
×