(Source: Harvard University Press)
Harvard
University Press has just published a new book on the popularisation of laws in
the early years of communist rule in China.
ABOUT THE BOOK
The
popularization of basic legal knowledge is an important and contested technique
of state governance in China today. Its roots reach back to the early years of
Chinese Communist Party rule. Legal Lessons tells the story of how the
party-state attempted to mobilize ordinary citizens to learn laws during the
early years of the Mao period (1949–1976) and in the decade after Mao’s death.
Examining case
studies such as the dissemination of the 1950 Marriage Law and successive
constitutions since 1954 in Beijing and Shanghai, Jennifer Altehenger traces
the dissemination of legal knowledge at different levels of state and society.
Archival records, internal publications, periodicals, advice manuals, memoirs,
and colorful propaganda materials reveal how official attempts to determine and
promote “correct” understanding of written laws intersected with people’s
interpretations and practical experiences. They also show how diverse
groups—including party-state leadership, legal experts, publishers, writers,
artists, and local officials, along with ordinary people—helped to define the
meaning of laws in China’s socialist society. Placing mass legal education and
law propaganda at the center of analysis, Legal Lessons offers a new
perspective on the sociocultural and political history of law in socialist
China.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jennifer
Altehenger is Lecturer in Contemporary Chinese History in the Department of
History at King’s College London.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
List of
Illustrations*
Abbreviations
Introduction
I. Preparations:
1949–1954
1. No Legalese,
Please: Why the Dissemination of Laws Became a Problem
2. Paper Trials:
How the Publishing Field Adapted to Law Propaganda
II. Practices:
1950–1962
3. What Is a
Basic Spirit? The Marriage Law and the Model Legal Education Campaign
4. Getting
People to Abide by Law: The Constitution Draft Discussion and Its Aftermath
III. Revivals:
1970–1989
5.
Constitutional Dilemmas: Reworking Law Propaganda for a New Socialist Era
6. A New Type of
Five-Year Plan: Institutionalizing “Common Legal Knowledge”
Conclusion
Notes
Chinese
Character List
Archival Files
Bibliography
Index
More information
with the
publisher
