The Female Inheritance Movement in Hong Kong
Current Anthropology Volume 46, Number 3, June 2005 ᭧ 2005 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved 0011-3204/2005/4603-0002$10.00 tice and Getting Even (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), and Urban Danger (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981). She is currently completing a book on international hu- The Female man rights and localization processes. rachel e. stern is a Ph.D. student in the Political Science Inheritance Movement Department at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Na- tional Science Foundation Graduate Fellow. Her previous publications include articles in Asian Survey and the China En- in Hong Kong vironment Series. Her current research deals with environmental activism in China. The present paper was submitted 28 x 03 and accepted 4 viii 04. Theorizing the Local/Global In the spring of 1994, everyone in Hong Kong was talking Interface1 about female inheritance. Women in the New Territories were subject to Chinese customary law and, under Brit- ish colonialism, still unable to inherit land. That year, a group of rural indigenous women joined forces with by Sally Engle Merry and Hong Kong women’s groups to demand legal change. In the plaza in front of the Legislative Council building, Rachel E. Stern amid shining office buildings, the indigenous women, dressed in the oversized hats of farm women, sang folk laments with new lyrics about injustice and inequality. Demonstrators from women’s groups made speeches Human rights concepts dominate discussions about social justice about gender equality and, at times, tore paper chains at the global level, but how much local communities have from their necks to symbolize liberation from Chinese adopted this language and what it means to them are far less customary law (Chan 1995:4).
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