Lineages in Jinhua

Culture as repertoire:• Genealogy/Origin legends• Collective sacrifice• Ancestral halls• Corporate Property• Education• Litigation• Self-regulation

• A Chinese genealogy is “a set of claims to origin and relationships, a charter, a map of dispersion, a framework for wide-ranging social organization, a blueprint for action. It is a political statement” – Maurice Freedman

Interpreting the repertoire

• “feudal exploitation”

• Neo-Confucian philosophy in practice

• Trickledown

• Response to material conditions in central and south China

• Elite strategy for dominance

The Life Cycle

• The Ariès hypothesis

Meanings of childhood in late imperial China

• Social

• Biophysical

• Aesthetic