Death in Beijing : murder and forensic science in Republican China
- Responsibility
- Daniel Asen (Rutgers University--Newark).
- Publication
- Cambridge, United Kingdom : Cambridge University Press, 2016.
- Copyright notice
- ©2016
- Physical description
- ix, 258 pages : illustrations, map ; 24 cm.
- Series
- Science in history (Cambridge University Press)
Description
Creators/Contributors
- Author/Creator
- Asen, Daniel S., author.
Contents/Summary
- Bibliography
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 233-250) and index.
- Contents
-
- Introduction--
- 1. Suspicious deaths and city life in Republican Beijing--
- 2. On the case with the Beijing procuracy--
- 3. Disputed forensics and skeletal remains--
- 4. Publicity, professionals, and the cause of forensic reform--
- 5. Professional politics of a crime scene--
- 6. Dissection and its discontents--
- 7. Legal medicine during the Nanjing decade-- Conclusion: a history of forensic modernity-- Glossary-- Bibliography-- Index.
- (source: Nielsen Book Data)
- Summary
-
In this innovative and engaging history of homicide investigation in Republican Beijing, Daniel Asen explores the transformation of ideas about death in China in the first half of the twentieth century. In this period, those who died violently or under suspicious circumstances constituted a particularly important population of the dead, subject to new claims by police, legal and medical professionals, and a newspaper industry intent on covering urban fatality in sensational detail. Asen examines the process through which imperial China's old tradition of forensic science came to serve the needs of a changing state and society under these dramatically new circumstances. This is a story of the unexpected outcomes and contingencies of modernity, presenting new perspectives on China's transition from empire to modern nation state, competing visions of science and expertise, and the ways in which the meanings of death and dead bodies changed amid China's modern transformation.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)
Subjects
- Subject
- Murder > Investigation > China > Beijing > History > 20th century.
- Forensic sciences > China > Beijing > History > 20th century.
- Violent deaths > Social aspects > China > Beijing > History > 20th century.
- Murder victims > China > Beijing > History > 20th century.
- City and town life > China > Beijing > History > 20th century.
- Death > Social aspects > China > History > 20th century.
- Social change > China > History > 20th century.
- Beijing (China) > History > 20th century.
- China > History > Republic, 1912-1949.
Bibliographic information
- Publication date
- 2016
- Copyright date
- 2016
- Series
- Science in history
- ISBN
- 9781107126060 (hardback)
- 1107126061 (hardback)
- 9781107571600 (paperback)
- 110757160X (paperback)
- 9781107157160 (paperback)
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