A Study Of The Efforts And Accomplishments Of The Anti-footbinding In Modern China

This dissertation, based on the archives and contemporary newspapers and journals, puts the footbinding behavior and the anti-footbinding movement in the broad historical context of modern China, investigating them from both social and intellectual perspectives.Following a chronological order, the dissertation firstly investigated the intellectual sources of the anti-footbinding movement as well as the societal perceptions of and reactions toward footbinding in the late Qing. After an analysis of the footbinding phenomena, it tries to reconstruct the process of the anti-footbinding movement, which was initiated by the civilians and then put forward by the cooperation between the government and the civil society and finally dominated by government at varied levels. The dissertation makes an examination of the actual accomplishments of the anti-footbinding movement in different phases. It emphasizes the changes in the ways of the anti-footing movement which went through the exhortation firstly and exhortation and prohibition together, and finally the prohibition and punishment.Because of the immense territory of China, the footbinding and the foot-librating varied greatly in different regions. The dissertation tries to find out the similar and same features of them. It also pays attention to the regional differences. The dissertation especially makes the careful case studies of the footbinding and the anti-footbinding in Sichuan, Yunnan and Shanxi Provinces. Meanwhile it makes a brief investigation of the footbinding and the anti-footbinding in the areas controlled by the Communist Party. By doing so, it hopes to give a picture of the situations of the footbinding and the anti-footbinding with a clear order as well as vivid highlights and developments.The efforts against the footbinding of the central and local governments revealed that the state machine played an increasing role in this movement. The state power combined the anti-footbinding with the household registration and the Bao-jia system, and presents the anti-footbinding as the violation of the criminal code. However, the civilian propaganda was not sufficient, while the government's prohibition and punishment could not be unlimited. In addition, the social policy on the actual need of the footbinding women and their alternatives were in great shortage. All these factors made up a somewhat different picture of the actual achievement of the anti-footbinding movement, which was not so optimistic as what the existing studies portrayed.