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SARA L. FRIEDMANPh.D., Cornell University, 2000 |
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SARA L. FRIEDMANPh.D., Cornell University, 2000 |
My research focuses on the relationship between political processes and social and cultural change. I am particularly interested in how different state apparatuses in twentieth-century China have sought to effect cultural transformations through intervening in gender relations, marriage, labor, and bodily adornment. For my dissertation I focused on one county in the southeastern Chinese province of Fujian where local cultural practices have come under attack from both the pre-socialist and socialist regimes. I examined how ethnic hierarchies and concepts of socialist civilization have informed definitions of acceptable cultural practice, and asked what such definitions have meant for different generations of women and men living in this area.
In my work I seek to integrate ethnographic and historical research methods. I have begun a related project that compares cultural reforms and state-building processes in both early and late twentieth-century China. This research examines how governments strive to mold citizens through state-sponsored reform campaigns and how such efforts are part of larger concerns with state legitimacy and national identity. I pay particular attention to the effects of such reformist visions on marginalized groups within society, such as women and rural residents.
In addition to courses in sociocultural anthropology, I also teach classes in Women's Studies and East Asian studies.
Culture, Power, and the State; Gender and Labor Politics in East Asia; The Politics of Marriage; Feminist Research Methods
Friedman, Sara L.
2000 Spoken Pleasures and Dangerous Desires: Sexuality, Marriage, and the State in Rural Southeastern China. East Asia, special issue on East Asian Sexualities, Louisa Schein, ed.
2002 Civilizing the Masses: The Productive Power of Cultural Reform Efforts in Late Republican-Era Fujian. In Defining Modernity? Guomindang Rhetorics of a New China, 1920-1970. Terry Bodenhorn, ed. Ann Arbor:University of Michigan Press.
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