Abstract
China is not only a nation-state: it is also home to one of the world’s oldest and largest continuous cultures. For much of its history, the subcontinent was relatively little disturbed by outside influences and so developed a distinctive cultural life. This chapter examines characteristics of social dynamics and typical daily-life attitudes, discusses the arts and intellectual life and concludes with an analysis of religion.
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Recommended Reading
For background on Confucianism, Dawson (1981) is both concise and accessible. Thompson (1979) is an introduction to Chinese religion and Sommer (1995) is an anthology of sources on the same subject. Fairbank (1992) and Needham (1978) provide extensive information on the development of China and Chinese culture through the centuries. Lin (1936) looks at both people and country while Spence (1992) is a series of essays on both history and culture. Two volumes dealing respectively with rural and urban life in communist China are Parish and Whyte (1978) and Whyte and Parish (1984). Focusing upon the inhabitants of one particular village, Chan et al. (1992) provides a view of changes over a twenty-year period up until the mid-1980s. Issues of identity are explored in Bond (1991), Tu (1994) and Hsu (1955). Popular culture in China, including the way in which this is affected by increasing exposure to non-Chinese influences, is the subject of Wu and Murphy (1994). Hunter and Chan (1993) deal with Christianity under the communist government.
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© 1999 Alan Hunter and John Sexton
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Hunter, A., Sexton, J. (1999). Chinese Culture. In: Contemporary China. Contemporary States and Societies. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27441-3_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-27441-3_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-71003-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-27441-3
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