Overview

Previous studies of the practice of footbinding in imperial China have theorized that it expressed ethnic identity or that it served an economic function. By analyzing the popularity of footbinding in different places and times, Footbinding as Fashion investigates the claim that early Qing (1644-1911) attempts by Manchu rulers to ban footbinding made it a symbol of anti-Manchu sentiment and Han identity and led to the spread of the practice throughout all levels of society. Detailed case studies of Taiwan, Hebei, and Liaoning provinces exploit rich bodies of previously neglected ethnographic reports, economic surveys, and rare censuses of footbinding to challenge the significance of sedentary female labor and ethnic rivalries as factors leading to the hegemony of the footbinding fashion. The study concludes that, independently of identity politics and economic factors, variations in local status hierarchies and elite culture coupled with status competition and fear of ridicule for not binding girls' feet best explain how a culturally arbitrary fashion such as footbinding could attain hegemonic status.

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Reviews

It's a comprehensive and convincing look at footbinding as a whole that will serve as an invaluable resource for further research on the practice, especially in Taiwan. * Taipei Times *

It's a comprehensive and convincing look at footbinding as a whole that will serve as an invaluable resource for further research on the practice, especially in Taiwan. --Taipei Times

[A]n excellent book and contributes greatly to the literature on footbinding. It is comprehensive in its scope and innovative in its methodology and style of analysis. Above all, it is creative and convincing in its approaches and conclusions and in contributing to theoretical understandings of this custom. * Asian Ethnology * Shepherd provides insight in his book as he draws from historical records from diverse areas and times in China and Taiwan to illuminate the practice...It is now difficult to getfirsthand data about the practice from footbound women. Shepherd, however, has produced a highly detailed, historical account of footbinding in China. * Journal of Anthropological Research * In his meticulously researched and elegantly argued book Footbinding as Fashion, John Shepherd has made a major contribution by introducing a new body of evidence, the 1905 and 1915 censuses conducted by the Japanese colonial government in Taiwan. * Journal of Asian Studies * It's a comprehensive and convincing look at footbinding as a whole that will serve as an invaluable resource for further research on the practice, especially in Taiwan. * Taipei Times *

In his meticulously researched and elegantly argued book Footbinding as Fashion, John Shepherd has made a major contribution by introducing a new body of evidence, the 1905 and 1915 censuses conducted by the Japanese colonial government in Taiwan. * Journal of Asian Studies * It's a comprehensive and convincing look at footbinding as a whole that will serve as an invaluable resource for further research on the practice, especially in Taiwan. * Taipei Times *

Author Information

John Robert Shepherd is associate professor of anthropology at the University of Virginia. He is the author of Marriage and Mandatory Abortion among the 17th-Century Siraya and Statecraft and Political Economy on the Taiwan Frontier, 1600–1800.

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