LOCATING FOOTBINDING - VARIATIONS ACROSS CLASS AND SPACE IN 19TH-CENTURY AND EARLY 20TH-CENTURY CHINA

In this article I look at footbinding as a social and cultural practic e embedded in the daily life conditions of women and their families. I sketch a picture of variations based primarily on regional and class differences in nineteenth and early twentieth century practices of foo tbinding and in efforts to eradicate them. The period in question is o ne of interest precisely because it is a time of transition. I look si multaneously at footbinding as a practice and as a target of criticism , defense, and transformation. This allows me to consider the ways in which it was practiced by women to represent, shape, and constrain the ir own, their daughters, 'and their families' cultural, social, econom ic, and political lives. Relying largely on missionary journals, perso nal histories, diaries, and travel writing. I examine the practice and the demise of footbinding in various social and spatial locations. Al though sources which permit a close look at embedded social practices of footbinding are scarce, it seems clear that both the practice of va rious forms of footbinding and the process of its eventual demise invo lved strategies, conflicts, and habits which differed along gender, cl ass, and geographic lines of distinction. I suggest that the variety o f forms the practice of footbinding took in lived experience of women' s social lives is not incidental to its conceptualization and meaning, but rather central to it.