Marriage, Law and Gender in Revolutionary China

The review of judicial works in 1943: an independent or a centralized system? -- Inventing the "revolutionary tradition": a hybrid judicial system in the making, 1943-9 -- III. Legal practice: formalism or local flexibility under the revolutionary principle? -- Modernity and locality: between legal formalism and reality -- Legal practice in a locality: understanding local knowledge -- Between revolutionary principles and social circumstances: the case of Zhao Fanshen -- 4 A new principle in the making -- I. From "freedom" to "self-determination": terminology and statutes -- The dual meanings of the term "freedom" in twentieth-century China -- "Freedom as principle": the marriage regulations and law in southern revolutionary base areas, 1931-4 -- From "freedom" to "self-determination" through social practice -- II. "Self-determination": a new principle for marriage through legal practice -- Reconceptualizing and understanding rural women -- Changing legal practices (1): definitions and techniques -- Changing legal practices (2): detecting motives for divorce -- Changing legal practices (3): conditions of family abuse and "intolerable cohabitation"--III. The marriage regulations in revision, 1944 and 1946 -- The 1944 regulation: a provisional change -- Implementation of the 1944 regulation and its deficiency -- The 1946 regulation: making law practicable -- Conclusion -- Part III Politics and gender in construction -- 5 Newspaper reports -- I. Ma Xiwu's way of judging: pacifying the local community -- The Yan'an Way or Ma's Way: an authoritarian state or New Democracy? -- Ma's Way: responding to an agitated village community -- II. Ma Xiwu's Way: improving state relations with local communities -- Ma's Way in local context: achieving a peaceful community via mediation -- Ma's Way in practice: pushing the party-state to improve its working style