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Doris T. Chang >
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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/10057/2046
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| Title: | Reading Sex and Temperament in Taiwan: Margaret Mead and Postwar Taiwanese Feminism |
| Authors: | Chang, Doris T. |
| Keywords: | Taiwanese feminism
Chinese feminism
Women’s movements
Margaret Mead
Hsiu-lien Annette Lu
Lee Yuan-chen
Yang Mei-hui
Cultural relativism
Textual comparison |
| Issue Date: | 2009 |
| Publisher: | Indiana University Press |
| Citation: | Chang, Doris T. NWSA Journal, Volume 21, Number 1, Spring 2009, pp. 51-75 |
| Series/Report no.: | NWSA Journal
v.21, no.1 |
| Abstract: | This essay examines the ways in which Margaret Mead's research findings
in New Guinea were transmitted to a Chinese-speaking audience
through Yang Mei-hui's annotated Chinese summary of part 4 of Mead's
Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935). In so doing,
Yang served as a cultural intermediary who transmitted Mead's concept
of cultural relativism on gender-role formation to her Chinese-speaking
audience. Yang's annotated summary (1973) serves as a case study of
the ways in which a cultural intermediary's injections of her personal
commentaries within a specific cross-cultural context can facilitate her
audience's understanding of the arguments made in the original English
text. In this essay, I undertake a textual comparison of Yang's Chinese
annotated summary with Mead's original English text for the purpose
of evaluating Yang's effectiveness in conveying Mead's main arguments.
In the 1970s and thereafter, Taiwanese feminists applied Mead's concept
of cultural relativism of socially constructed gender to subvert the
rigid gender roles in Taiwanese society. In so doing, they contributed to
women's self-determination during the era of Taiwan's democratization. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10057/2046 |
| ISSN: | 1040-0656 |
| Appears in Collections: | Publications
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| 21.1.chang.pdf | Access to full text is restricted (embargo expires in Spring 2010) | 461Kb | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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