Synopses & Reviews
and#147;Hershatterand#8217;s volume is devoted to bringing to life womenand#8217;s experience as it diverged from both menand#8217;s history and the national story. Her portraits, based on the lives of 72 women from four villages in Shaanxi Province, are a landmark in womenand#8217;s history and the history of China; no future account of the [Great Leap Famine] can ignore them.and#8221;and#151;James C. Scott
London Review of Books
and#147;Remarkable. . . . Hershatter has a complicated story to tell about womenand#8217;s experiences in mid-twentieth-century China.and#8221;and#151;Ms. Magazine
and#147;If you want to be reminded of how moving history can be, then read this book.and#8221;and#151;New Books In Gender Studies
and#147;The Gender of Memory is not only a story of Chinaand#8217;s past but a gift of restless questions for the present.and#8221;and#151;Ellen R. Judd China Quarterly
and#147;Hershatter offers a breathtaking interrogation of her sources and methods, rendering elegantly transparent the thought processes behind her bookand#8217;s production.and#8221;and#151;Cross Currents: East Asian History and Cultural Review
"I was swept into the world of Hershatter's TheGender of Memory. Each of these oral histories is riveting and astonishing, giving a human -- and often, heartbreaking -- dimension to history. As this book shows, history is not simply recorded facts, but what is remembered by those who were once silent." and#151;Amy Tan
and#160;
Review
andldquo;Upending familiar assumptions about the origins and consequences of the global Green Revolution, Schmalzer breaks important new ground in our understanding of modern Chinese history and the role of science in industrial agriculture. Rather than relying on misleading distinctions between modern and traditional, laboratory and field, politics and science, or even between the capitalist West and socialist East, Schmalzer convincingly draws our attention to the diversity of approaches taken in the effort to revolutionize Chinese agriculture in the 1960s and 1970s. This is a sophisticated political history from the ground up.andrdquo;
Review
andldquo;Writing with both elegance and precision, Schmalzer unveils the continuing imbrication of science and politics, not simply in the obviously hyperpolitical Maoist period, but also in the supposedly technologically driven Dengist era. She produces a nuanced, sophisticated description of agricultural scientific practices in the Peopleandrsquo;s Republic of China, one that challenges our assumptions about both Maoist agriculture and the Maoist period in general.andnbsp;Red Revolution, Green Revolutionandnbsp;is a must-read for historians of modern China and historians of socialism, as well as historians of science and agriculture.andrdquo;
Synopsis
What can we learn about the Chinese revolution by placing a doubly marginalized groupand#151;rural womenand#151;at the center of the inquiry? In this book, Gail Hershatter explores changes in the lives of seventy-two elderly women in rural Shaanxi province during the revolutionary decades of the 1950s and 1960s. Interweaving these womenand#8217;s life histories with insightful analysis, Hershatter shows how Party-state policy became local and personal, and how it affected womenand#8217;s agricultural work, domestic routines, activism, marriage, childbirth, and parentingand#151;even their notions of virtue and respectability. The women narrate their pasts from the vantage point of the present and highlight their enduring virtues, important achievements, and most deeply harbored grievances. In showing what memories can tell us about gender as an axis of power, difference, and collectivity in 1950s rural China and the present, Hershatter powerfully examines the nature of socialism and how gender figured in its creation.
Synopsis
In 1968, the director of USAID coined the term andquot;green revolutionandquot; to celebrate the new technological solutions that promised to ease hunger and so forestall the spread of more andquot;red revolutionsandquot; around the globe. Yet in China green and red revolutions proceeded side by side. In this book Sigrid Schmalzer explores Chinaand#39;s unique intersection of red and green revolutions through the experiences of scientists, peasants, state agents, and andquot;educated youth.andquot; The history of what in China was called andquot;scientific farmingandquot; offers a unique opportunity not only to explore the environmental and social consequences of modern agricultural technologies but also to develop a critique of the fundamental assumptions about science and society that undergirded the green revolution. Because its environmental and human costs have been felt as strongly in China as anywhere on the planet, Red Revolution, Green Revolution is a book with clear significance for pressing political and environmental issues China, the United States, and other nations now face
About the Author
Gail Hershatter is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is the author of many books, including Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Shanghai and Women in Chinaand#8217;s Long Twentieth Century, both from UC Press.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction
1and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Agricultural Science and the Socialist State
2and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Pu Zhelong: Making Socialist Science Work
3and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Yuan Longping: andldquo;Intellectual Peasantandrdquo;
4and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Chinese Peasants: andldquo;Experienceandrdquo; and andldquo;Backwardnessandrdquo;
5and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Seeing Like a State Agent
6and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; The Lei Feng Paradox
7and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Opportunity and Failure
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Sources
Index