Few would disagree that Kam Louie is the most prominent scholar of Chinese masculinities. Here he has collected some of the best minds working on this issue, representing several disciplines including anthropology, cultural studies, film studies, history and literature. As he points out, until the turn of the millennium, gender studies was more or less synonymous with women's studies and, to the degree that masculinity was addressed at all, it was almost always framed in the West (p. 1). This book examines an array of culturally bound expressions of masculinity in China and is therefore a very welcome addition to this quickly growing field. The volume features 12 chapters and an introduction. It explores a rich range of topics, including class, corruption, familial roles and obligations, mercantilism, nationalism, as well as polygyny and other sexual practices. It also contains an impressive selection of works addressing visual culture. This includes cinema, pictorial autobiographies, sartorial choices, television dramas and theatre. Male identities in the context of China's changing political economy, wen/wu (civil/martial) dichotomies, and the tensions between historical continuity and modern-day developments are also particularly central to the volume.
Studies of masculinity frequently centre around sexual orientation and practices. These are of course important topics and no volume on gender would be complete without them. Yet, several of the chapters also delve into other issues and serve as an important reminder that the construction of masculinity has countless intersecting influences, with an array of different roles in public and private life. Xuan Li and William Jankowiak's chapter on Chinese fatherhood is but one example of this approach in this volume. In this chapter, the authors remind us that fatherhood is a profound reflection of, and shaper of, masculine identities. As do many of the chapters, they build on Kam Louie's ground-breaking book Theorising Chinese Masculinity (Cambridge University Press, 1994) on wen, which connotes images of the genteel Confucian scholar, and wu, which exemplifies a more rugged or martial form of masculinities. Li and Jankowiak suggest that in the contemporary era wen and wu are not bifurcated roles that men must choose between. Unlike the Confucian inspired emphasis on masculine authoritarian hierarchies embedded in filial piety, today both father and mother must “take on a wide range of other roles including the child's teacher, playmate, counselor, and friend” (p. 189). To add to this rich analysis, they also address the state's role in defining, and redefining, gender bound parental roles (p. 193) and the ways in which the father's educational level seems to influence expectations in this sphere (p. 197).
One of the strengths of the volume is that each chapter is so rich in insights that one can anticipate several ways in which future scholarship might build on this work. Harriet Zurndorfer's passing suggestion that years of fighting in the Sino-Japanese War and the civil war transformed martial masculinity into a less stigmatized category (p. 25) is an excellent, and fascinating, example. This could in turn become part of a new discussion that juxtaposes this point with the communist centring of working class men, who held a very different set of gendered expressions than the elite who are so often the focus of academic work. Cultural Revolution era Soviet inspired depictions of iron men and the “Iron Girls,” as well as contemporary globalized images of masculinity that have been ushered in by Hollywood and other forms of popular culture, would also be an important part of this conversation.
To return to Li and Jankowiak's chapter, the authors suggest that rather than wen and wu being discrete identities, men perform wu identities when in public and wen when they are at home (pp. 187–88). Yet much of this is also dependent on context. Beijing, as the nation's capital holds a very central place in English-language scholarship on China but it is emblematic of a very distinctive northern Chinese culture that celebrates rugged masculinities far more than the rest of the nation. The historical hyper masculinity of the north as opposed to more feminine coded ideals of manhood that were, and are, found in the south is a point that would create a nice dialogue with both of the chapters that I mention here, as well as a range of other studies on Chinese masculinity.
These are only a few examples of the vibrant intellectual achievements of this volume. Changing Chinese Masculinities is an extremely important contribution to a fairly fledgling field that is quickly developing into one of the most interesting areas of study in China. It provides the reader with an unusually diverse, sophisticated and fascinating selection of works that consistently reminds us of historical precedents while providing insights on the ever changing contemporary moment. I predict that this will quickly become be a foundational text in this field and required reading for anyone who wants to better understand Chinese masculinities or, indeed, China studies or gender issues as a whole.
