Measuring Up: Anthropometrics and the Chinese Body in Republican Period China

Fu, Jia-Chen

doi:10.1353/bhm.2016.0102

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Wu Jingding (1901-48), a student of Li, measured the bodies of people in Shandong, publishing a monograph on body traits within that province (Wu, 1931). Research into body measurements in Republican China also sought to enhance the Chinese physique (Fu, 2016). Writing to the director of the Academia Sinica, the leading research centre for anthropological research in China, Chiang Kai-shek demanded that the Academia undertake research to improve the quality of the Chinese physique.…”

Section: Measuring Non-han Bodies: Physical Anthropology In Republica...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In her study of body measurement in China, Jia-chen Fu observes how the bodies of the Han Chinese were measured by anthropologists and physicians in China. Fu argues that body measurement provided evidence demonstrating Chinese deficiencies; as a form of technology, it enabled Chinese scientists to justify the development and imposition of public health and dietary interventions to improve the bodies of the Chinese race and nation (Fu, 2016). In his discussion of racial anatomy in modern China, David Luesink reflects on the intertwined histories of racial anatomy and anthropometry.…”

Section: Biopolitics Of Non-han Bodies: the Configuration Of The Zhon...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…He highlights how state control and discipline was exerted through human dissection law and the biological knowledge of the population. Likewise, Jia-chen Fu has examined the intimate relationship between body measurement and public health and dietary intervention in Republican China (Fu, 2016).…”

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Measuring non-Han bodies: Anthropometry, colonialism, and biopower in China's south-western borderland in the 1930s and 1940s

Zhu

2021

History of the Human Sciences

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This article examines the biopower of non-Han bodies by considering the intersections of anthropology, racial science, and colonial regimes. During the 1930s and 1940s, when extensive anthropometric research was being undertaken on non-Han populations in the south-western borderlands of China, several anthropologists studied non-Han groups under the aegis of frontier administration. Chinese scholars sought to generate the physical characteristics of ethnic minority groups in the south-west of China, through the methodology of body measurement, in order to identify forms of social and political intervention in the management of the non-Han population in wartime. This article examines the global transmission of Western social science in China, highlighting the local reception of Western racial taxonomy. Non-Han bodies were represented as a subcategory of the Mongolian/‘Yellow’ race through anthropometric research. The body measurements of non-Han people were used to demonstrate physical similarities between the Han and various ethnic minority groups in order to evoke a unified Zhonghua minzu (Chinese ethnicity) that embraced both the Han Chinese and frontier ethnic minority groups.

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Section: Measuring Non-han Bodies: Physical Anthropology In Republica...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Biopolitics Of Non-han Bodies: the Configuration Of The Zhon...mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Measuring non-Han bodies: Anthropometry, colonialism, and biopower in China's south-western borderland in the 1930s and 1940s

Zhu

2021

History of the Human Sciences

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“…As Jia-chen Fu has demonstrated, Chinese medical researchers continued to use height (as a form of size) to negatively evaluate Chinese schoolchildren relative to those of other nations, especially Japan. 112 Among Chinese evaluations of older children: 'A normal, not deficient, Chinese body was a rare occurrence.' 113 Maura Cunningham has also shown that better baby contests frequently demonstrated the inadequacy of Chinese parents.…”

Section: A R G a R E T M I H T I L L M A Nmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring Up: Better baby contests in China, 1917–45

Tillman

2020

Mod. Asian Stud.

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This article charts the Chinese indigenization of better baby contests, from Christian health services offered by the YWCA to positive models of nourishment organized by Chinese philanthropic organizations and local and central governments. American missionaries and milk-powder companies played a large role in sponsoring the contests in China. Influenced by the rise of scientific measurement and ‘national rejuvenation’ as promoted by the New Culture Movement in 1915, Chinese organizers tended to focus on liveliness, gender equality, and statistics that pointed to the need for public reform. As in the United States of America, scientific criteria sometimes also challenged conventional notions of plump cuteness. These goals sometimes conflicted with the implicit aims of corporate sponsors. Contests thus celebrated new material conditions and public hygiene facilitated by modern industry, but was at the same time circumscribed by commercial advertisers, reticent evangelists, or other sponsors.

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Anatomy and the Reconfiguration of Life and Death in Republican China

Luesink

2017

J of Asian Stud

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This article argues that the establishment of anatomo-power in China preceded and set the foundation for biopower. Anatomo-power is disciplinary power over live bodies in the military, schools, and hospitals, but also the power of the medical profession over dead bodies to investigate pathology through dissection. At the turn of the twentieth century, Chinese conceptions of political anatomy were used to advocate anatomical knowledge, and an anatomy law in 1913 made routinized dissection possible. Chinese society began to be transformed as old taboos were broken, and thousands of new terms allowed the scientific worldview to take root among professionals and the public. Anatomical researchers addressed both microscopic pathology to cure individuals and macroscopic questions that grouped individuals into a population to be managed, or that sought data to tell new narratives about the origins and future of humanity—a new political anatomy based on the practice of human dissection.

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Measuring Up: Anthropometrics and the Chinese Body in Republican Period China

Cited by 4 publications

References 11 publications

Measuring non-Han bodies: Anthropometry, colonialism, and biopower in China's south-western borderland in the 1930s and 1940s

Measuring non-Han bodies: Anthropometry, colonialism, and biopower in China's south-western borderland in the 1930s and 1940s

Measuring Up: Better baby contests in China, 1917–45

Anatomy and the Reconfiguration of Life and Death in Republican China

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