Revolutionizing the Family: Politics, Love, and Divorce in Urban and Rural China, 1949–1968. By Neil J. Diamant. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. 458p. $55.00.
Abstract
<jats:p>This is a thoroughly revisionist study, in the best sense of the
word. Starting from the conviction that a close look at
marriage and divorce in China can open "a wide window onto
what might be called the `interface' between state and
society" (p. 14), Diamant sets out to capture a better sense of
the quality of "everyday interactions between citizen and
state" (p. 15). He uses these observations to shed light on
larger questions about the degree to which citizens in differ-
ent social strata may have regarded the state as legitimate or
illegitimate, as well as the extent to which state interventions
designed to alter power relations in both rural and urban
society were effective.</jats:p>
