Burton Pasternak – författare

Using data from the Taiwan household registers established by Japanese colonial authorities from 1906 to 1946, Pasternak explores the sources and demographic consequences of variations in marriage and family life and questions long-held assumptions about the nature of Chinese society.

We know the Chinese as villagers who carefully tend small plots of land using family labor, marry young, want many sons, and live in extended families—"the Chinese Way." Now for the first time we find Han Chinese "cowboys" who raise dairy cows and herd sheep on the Inner Mongolian grasslands. This book, based on surveys and intensive interviews, compares family lives, the economy, and gender relations among Chinese herders and farmers. The authors find that livestock have brought new wealth and opportunities that change the Chinese farming-based way of life, and they explore how privatization has altered the distribution of wealth. Although Han and Mongols still have their own cultures, those who herd livestock share a common way of life distinct from farmers that are nearby.

This book is about Han Chinese who dared to cross over the Great Wall of China, to make a life for themselves on the northern frontier. It compares family lives, the economy, and gender relations among Chinese herders and farmers of Inner Mongolia.

Following the formation of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1977 and the beginning of a Sino-American scholarly exchange program in October 1978, a small number of foreigners has been able to conduct fieldwork in China after a hiatus of over thirty years. Welcomed though these new opportunities were by potential U.S. field researchers, the initial stage of enthusiasm was shortly overshadowed by both the difficulties foreign researchers faced in China and the imposition, in early 1981, of a temporary moratorium on long-term fieldwork by outsiders. Sober without being pessimistic, realistic without being discouraging, the contributors to this book describe the context in which fieldwork in China became possible, the constraints under which foreign fieldworkers have labored, and the potential rewards of field research to both Chinese and U.S. scholars. They also assess the relative value of fieldwork in China versus fieldwork at its gate, Hong Kong. The book includes substantive reports by U.S. and Chinese scholars (among them Fei Xiaotong, China's preeminent social anthropologist) as well as concrete advice to those contemplating field research in China.