Filial piety : practice and discourse in contemporary East Asia / edited by Charlotte Ikels.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [267]-289) and index.

Ritualistic coresidence and the weakening of filial practice in rural China / Danyu Wang -- Filial daughters, filial sons : comparisons from rural north China / Eric T. Miller -- Meat rotation and filial piety / Jun Jing -- "Living alone" and the rural elderly : strategy and agency in post-Mao rural China / Hong Zhang -- Serving the ancestors, serving the state : filial piety and death ritual in contemporary Guangzhou / Charlotte Ikels -- Filial obligations in Chinese families : paradoxes of modernization / Martin King Whyte -- The transformation of filial piety in contemporary South Korea / Roger L. Janelli and Dawnhee Yim -- Filial piety in contemporary urban southeast Korea : practices and discourses / Clark Sorensen and Sung-Chul Kim -- Culture, power, and the discourse of filial piety in Japan : the disempowerment of youth and its social consequences / Akiko Hashimoto -- Curse of the successor : filial piety vs. marriage among rural Japanese / John W. Traphagan -- Alone in the family : great-grandparenthood in urban Japan / Brenda Robb Jenike.

Annotation How has rapid industrial development and the aging of the population affected the expression of filial piety in East Asia? Eleven experienced fieldworkers take a fresh look at an old idea, analyzing contemporary behavior, not norms, among both rural and urban families in China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. Each chapter presents rich ethnographic data on how filial piety shapes the decisions and daily lives of adult children and their elderly parents. The authors' ability to speak the local languages and their long-term, direct contact with the villagers and city dwellers they studied lend an immediacy and authenticity lacking in more abstract treatments of the topic. This book is an ideal text for social science and humanities courses on East Asia because it focuses on shared cultural practices while analyzing the ways these practices vary with local circumstances of history, economics, social organization, and demography and with personal circumstances of income, gender, and family configuration.