Feet and Fabrication: Footbinding and Early Twentieth-Century Rural Women's Labor in Shaanxi Author(s): Laurel Bossen, Wang Xurui, Melissa J. Brown and Hill Gates Source: Modern China, Vol. 37, No. 4 (July 2011), pp. 347-383 Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23053328 Accessed: 23-03-2017 19:58 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms Sage Publications, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Modern China This content downloaded from 128.95.232.208 on Thu, 23 Mar 2017 19:58:10 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Articles Modern China 37(4) 347-383 Feet and Fabrication: © 2011 SAGE Publications Reprints and permission: http://www. sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Footbinding and Early DOI: 10.1177/0097700411403265 Twentieth-Century http://mcx.sagepub.com (DSAGE Rural Women's Labor in Shaanxi Laurel Bossen1, Wang Xurui2, Melissa J. Brown3, and Hill Gates3 Abstract The early twentieth-century transformations of rural Chinese women's work have received relatively little direct attention. By contrast, the former custom of footbinding continues to fascinate and is often used to illustrate or contest theories about Chinese women's status.