Practicing Kinship

“This is an important book, based on painstaking research, which addresses important issues in the field of Chinese social and cultural history. . . . The author revisits many of the questions raised by Maurice Freedman in his pathbreaking work on Chinese lineage society in the 1950s and 1960s. . . . In some ways, Szonyi is doing here for the Fujian what David Faure, Helen Siu, and their team have done for the Pearl River delta in Guang-dong—that is, writing theoretically sophisticated local histories based on thoroughgoing command of all local sources and frequently crossing the (largely artificial) frontier between history and anthropology.”—David Ownby, University of Montreal
“Szonyi . . . .uses a wide range of sources, textual and oral, and varied research methodologies to construct a local history rich in detail and theoretical sophistication. Practicing Kinship is an important contribution not only to our understanding of the Fuzhou area but to our understanding of kinship practice and its variable, flexible nature. The book is recommended for upper-level undergraguates, graduates, and faculty alike.”—History: Reviews of New Books

Michael Szonyi is Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto. He is the translator of Family and Lineage Organization and Social Change in Ming-Qing Fujian by Zheng Zhen