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Article: UNDERSTANDING ANCIENT CHINESE SOCIETY: APPROACHES TO REN [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] AND MIN [CHINESE CHARACTERS NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII].(bibliography included)
- Article from:
- The Journal of the American Oriental Society
- Article date:
- July 1, 2000
- Author:
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The study of ancient Chinese society is fraught with problems and issues and generally hampered by a lack of awareness that many basic terms are in fact still imperfectly understood. The meanings of key designations for social groups have therefore seldom been questioned, leaving them either in the state of "naturally evident" assumptions or of received knowledge hallowed by Chinese and sinological tradition. Although the importance of kinship and clan structures is generally stressed, scholars have not paid much attention to relating the textual evidence on social entities to the corresponding lexical material. This applies particularly to ren and min. Close reading of ...