The Strength and Resilience of Shim-pua Marriage
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47611/jsrhs.v12i4.5498Keywords:
marriage, child marriage, china, tradition, government, social norms, culture, culturalAbstract
Shim-pua marriage, also known as tongyangxi, is a traditional Chinese practice where a poorer family’s infant daughter is sold into a wealthier family in exchange for a dowry. The daughter would grow up in the new family, often subjected to difficult chores and maidwork. As the girl matured, she would then be forcefully married to one of the family’s sons. Shim-pua marriage persisted through multiple phases of cultural, social, and political change. But this persistence is indicative of a larger social phenomena. The recurrence of the practice results from the failure of top-down intervention to change underlying social norms. Additionally, Shim-pua marriage is closely connected to modern issues such as human trafficking. This paper provides an in-depth view and analysis of historical revolutions, government action, and people’s response with respect to Shim-pua marriage. It explores the underlying causes of the practice’s persistence, and the socio-economic conditions that fueled it.
Downloads
References or Bibliography
Andrighetto, Giulia, and Eva Vriens. "A research agenda for the study of social norm change." Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A 380, no. 2227 (2020): 5.
Brown, Heather. Marx on gender and the family: A critical study. Brill, 2012.
Bulte, Erwin, Nico Heerink, and Xiaobo Zhang. "China's one‐child policy and ‘the mystery of missing women’: ethnic minorities and male‐biased sex ratios." Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics 73, no. 1 (2011): 21-39.
Chan, Alfred L. Mao's crusade: politics and policy implementation in China's great leap forward. OUP Oxford, 2001.
Chan, Alan, and Sor-hoon Tan. Filial piety in Chinese thought and history. Routledge, 2004.
Centola, Damon, Joshua Becker, Devon Brackbill, and Andrea Baronchelli. "Experimental evidence for tipping points in social convention." Science 360, no. 6393 (2018): 1116-1119.
Dai, Panpan, and Dongmei Sun. "Research on Early Marriage of Rural Female Youth." In 2016 International Conference on Contemporary Education, Social Sciences and Humanities (2015): 534-536.
Fessler, Daniel MT. "Neglected natural experiments germane to the Westermarck hypothesis: the Karo Batak and the Oneida community." Human Nature 18 (2007): 355-364.
Gelfand, Michele J., Jana L. Raver, Lisa Nishii, Lisa M. Leslie, Janetta Lun, Beng Chong Lim, Lili Duan, et al. "Differences between tight and loose cultures: A 33-nation study." Science 332, no. 6033 (2011): 1100-1104.
Gregor, A. James, and Maria Hsia Chang. "Anti-Confucianism: Mao's last campaign." Asian Survey 19, no. 11 (1979): 1073-1092.
HARE‐MUSTIN, RACHEL T. "China's marriage law: A model for family responsibilities and relationships." Family Process 21, no. 4 (1982): 477-481.
Hinton, William, and Fred Magdoff. Fanshen: A documentary of revolution in a Chinese village. NYU Press, 2008.
Jung, Hsiung-Shen, and Jui-Lung Chen. "Causes, consequences and impact of the great leap forward in China." Asian Culture and History 11, no. 2 (2019): 1-58.
Kane, Penny, and Ching Y. Choi. "China's One Child family policy." BMJ 319, no. 7215 (1999): 992-994.
Lei, Lei, and Heili Pals. "Son preference in China: Why is it stronger in rural areas?." Population Review 50, no. 2 (2011).
Lipari, Francesca, and Giulia Andrighetto. "The change in social norms in the Mafia's territories: the anti-racket movement of Addiopizzo." Journal of Institutional Economics 17, no. 2 (2021): 227-242.
Manning, Kimberley Ens. "Making a great leap forward? The politics of women's liberation in Maoist China." Gender & History 18, no. 3 (2006): 574-593.
Marx, Karl. Manifesto of the Communist Party. Simon and Schuster, 2013.
Ng, Roxana. "The marriage law and family change in China with special reference to Kwangtung Province 1950-1953." Ph.D. diss., University of British Columbia, 1975.
Ono, Kazuko. Chinese women in a century of revolution, 1850-1950. Stanford University Press, 1989.
Prosekov, Sergei. "Confucianism and Its Influence on Deng Xiaoping's Reforms." In 3rd International Conference on Contemporary Education, Social Sciences and Humanities (2018): 1528-1531.
Rosenlee, Li-Hsiang. "Gender in Confucian Philosophy." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (spring 2023).
Settles, Barbara H., Xuewen Sheng, Yuan Zang, and Jia Zhao. "The one-child policy and its impact on Chinese families." International handbook of Chinese families (2012): 627-646.
Wolf, Arthur P., and Chieh-shan Huang. Marriage and adoption in China, 1845-1945. Stanford University Press, 1980.
Zhang, Chuanchuan. "Family support or social support? The role of clan culture." Journal of Population Economics 32 (2019): 529-549.
Zheng, Tiantian. "Human trafficking in China." Journal of Historical Archaeology & Anthropological Sciences 3, no. 3 (2018):171-178.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
Copyright (c) 2023 Ethan Zuo
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Copyright holder(s) granted JSR a perpetual, non-exclusive license to distriute & display this article.
