Melissa Macauley is Assistant Professor of History at Northwestern University
Asserting that litigation in late imperial China was a form of documentary warfare, this book offers a social analysis of the men who composed legal documents for commoners and elites alike. Litigation masters—a broad category of legal facilitators ranging from professional plaintmasters to simple but literate men to whom people turned for assistance—emerge in this study as central players in many of the most scandalous cases in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century China. These cases reveal the power of scandal to shape entire categories of law in the popular and official imaginations.
The author characterizes litigation masters as entrepreneurs of power, intermediaries who typically emerge in the process of limited state expansion to provide links between local interests and the infrastructure of the state. These powermongers routinely acted in the interests of the local elite and the male lineage. But cases preserved in criminal archives also reveal a clientele surprisingly composed of the subordinate actors in legal disputes—widows fighting in-laws and other men, debtors contesting creditors, younger brothers disputing older ones, and common people charging the rich. Challenging earlier scholarship claiming that the Chinese legal system simply maintained the hegemony of elites and the patriarchal order, this study shows how the legal tools of domination were often transformed into weapons of social resistance and revenge.
The book also examines the manifold ways in which legal practice, Confucian ideology, and popular entertainments like opera and storytelling coalesced into Chinese legal culture. Popular traditions in particular did not simply reflect legal culture but actively influenced it, shaping common presumptions about law that transcended differences of class and region. Exploring Chinese legal culture in the structural contexts of commercialization, changes in property transactions, and ineradicable litigation backlogs, the author explains why litigation was condemned by all classes of Chinese men and women even as all classes litigated.
發表於2024-12-22
Social Power and Legal Culture 2024 pdf epub mobi 電子書 下載
Litigation masters emerged as historical actors in the southern Song, and became a significant social problem in the late Ming, the so-called second commercial revolution. They provided the personal links between local arenas and the infrastructure of that ...
評分http://www.dfdaily.com/html/1170/2012/12/9/907499.shtml 所在的位置:首頁>上海書評>正文 文章正文 復製鏈接 | 郵件推薦 | 打印 | 收藏 | RSS | 單頁閱讀 | 評論(0)條 轉帖: 轉發到新浪微博轉發到騰訊微博 轉帖到開心網 轉帖到人人網 Qzone一鍵分享 訟師:無賴還是鬥士...
評分http://www.dfdaily.com/html/1170/2012/12/9/907499.shtml 所在的位置:首頁>上海書評>正文 文章正文 復製鏈接 | 郵件推薦 | 打印 | 收藏 | RSS | 單頁閱讀 | 評論(0)條 轉帖: 轉發到新浪微博轉發到騰訊微博 轉帖到開心網 轉帖到人人網 Qzone一鍵分享 訟師:無賴還是鬥士...
評分http://www.dfdaily.com/html/1170/2012/12/9/907499.shtml 所在的位置:首頁>上海書評>正文 文章正文 復製鏈接 | 郵件推薦 | 打印 | 收藏 | RSS | 單頁閱讀 | 評論(0)條 轉帖: 轉發到新浪微博轉發到騰訊微博 轉帖到開心網 轉帖到人人網 Qzone一鍵分享 訟師:無賴還是鬥士...
評分http://www.dfdaily.com/html/1170/2012/12/9/907499.shtml 所在的位置:首頁>上海書評>正文 文章正文 復製鏈接 | 郵件推薦 | 打印 | 收藏 | RSS | 單頁閱讀 | 評論(0)條 轉帖: 轉發到新浪微博轉發到騰訊微博 轉帖到開心網 轉帖到人人網 Qzone一鍵分享 訟師:無賴還是鬥士...
圖書標籤: 法律史與法律文化 論文 論政 社會史 清 海外中國研究 法律史 法
之前早有預警說這本書很雜糅, 事實上寫得不錯. 把litigation masters這個題目從empirical 和rhetorical 的角度寫,快寫窮盡瞭, 後來者很難望其項背. 但是, 時間綫時常跨到民國,共和國, 各種理論層齣不窮, 地理上可以侃到英國,美國,甚至希臘...讓人心髒有點受不瞭.
評分1.野心太大,起碼可以裂成兩本書。一本可以是社會史寫法,重點放在social power上,討論訟師作為一種litigant broker如何身處state與society之間;另一本可以是新文化史寫法,重點放在legal culture上,討論不同的discourse如何構建齣瞭"訟師"這一形象。2. 口味太雜,差不多一章一個味道,有James Scott, E.P. Thompson, Philip Huang, 以及作為底料的Foucault和Bourdieu。3.關於訟師的empirical分析還是值四星以上的。
評分翻過
評分之前早有預警說這本書很雜糅, 事實上寫得不錯. 把litigation masters這個題目從empirical 和rhetorical 的角度寫,快寫窮盡瞭, 後來者很難望其項背. 但是, 時間綫時常跨到民國,共和國, 各種理論層齣不窮, 地理上可以侃到英國,美國,甚至希臘...讓人心髒有點受不瞭.
評分1.野心太大,起碼可以裂成兩本書。一本可以是社會史寫法,重點放在social power上,討論訟師作為一種litigant broker如何身處state與society之間;另一本可以是新文化史寫法,重點放在legal culture上,討論不同的discourse如何構建齣瞭"訟師"這一形象。2. 口味太雜,差不多一章一個味道,有James Scott, E.P. Thompson, Philip Huang, 以及作為底料的Foucault和Bourdieu。3.關於訟師的empirical分析還是值四星以上的。
Social Power and Legal Culture 2024 pdf epub mobi 電子書 下載