Global Asia Journal
Document Type
Article
Abstract
This article examines the formation and operation of lower class women’s
social network in the ghettoized courtyard neighborhood in early
twentieth-century Beijing. Drawing evidence from criminal case files, it
argues that courtyard tenements provided a gendered urban space within
which women formed, extended, and maintained a flexible and dynamic
web of durable relationships. Motivated largely by individual
circumstances and objectives, this neighborhood network remained
personalized, individualized, and “ego-centered” The network did not
come into existence for any type of political movements; nor did it entail
wider female solidarity. But the physical geography of the courtyard
tenements and the development of these neighborhood networks offered
lower class women some immediate protections and buffers when they
were under emotional, domestic or economic crisis. This article argues that
these interpersonal relationships forged within a complex urban space was
an important resource for women to rise themselves out of the intense state
control and economic turmoil in the tumultuous decades of reform and
revolution.
Recommended Citation
Ma, Zhao, "Runaway Wives and their Matchmakers: Lower Class Women Networks in Beijing's Courtyard Tenements, 1928-1949" (2008). Global Asia Journal. 5.
https://digitalcommons.pace.edu/global_asia_journal/5
Comments
Occasional Paper No. 5