Dissertation Research: Ethnography of Gender Texts in a Central China Village

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9312260 Cohen This project involves the dissertation research of a student in cultural anthropology from Columbia University. The student is studying how Chinese peasants communicate values about gender relations through their linguistic forms of proverbs and folk sayings. The sayings are thought of as representing traditional wisdom and shared folk experience, and are used to sanction behavior. Using household surveys, personal interviews, elicitation of life histories and participant observation as well as archival research, the project will describe how rural Chinese women are changing gender relations in the face of tradition. This research is important because it sheds light on the changing roles of women and men in traditional societies. With changes in employment opportunities, traditional gender roles change all over the world, and this one case study of how the changes are instituted in a traditional society will provide valuable comparative material to understand similar processes in different places. In addition dissertation research increases the scientific capacity of the nation. ***