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� understandings of laws intersected with people’s interpretations of written laws and with their experiences of laws in practice. 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.

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" understandings of laws intersected with people's interpretations of written laws and with their experiences of laws in practice. 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.

The growth of markets and consumerism in China’s post-Mao era of political and economic reform is a story familiar to many. By contrast, the Mao period (1949–1976)—rightly framed as a time of scarcity—initially appears to have had little material culture to speak of. Yet people attributed great meaning to materials and objects often precisely because they were rare and difficult to obtain. This first volume devoted to the material history of the period explores the paradox of material culture under Chinese Communist Party rule and illustrates how central materiality was to individual and collective desire, social and economic construction of the country, and projections of an imminent socialist utopia within reach of every man and woman, if only they worked hard enough. Bringing together scholars of Chinese art, cinema, culture, performance, and more, this volume shares groundbreaking research on the objects and practices of everyday life in Mao’s China, from bamboo and bricks to dance and film. With engaging narratives and probing analysis, the contributors make a place for China’s experience in the history of global material culture and the study of socialist modernity.

The growth of markets and consumerism in China’s post-Mao era of political and economic reform is a story familiar to many. By contrast, the Mao period (1949–1976)—rightly framed as a time of scarcity—initially appears to have had little material culture to speak of. Yet people attributed great meaning to materials and objects often precisely because they were rare and difficult to obtain. This first volume devoted to the material history of the period explores the paradox of material culture under Chinese Communist Party rule and illustrates how central materiality was to individual and collective desire, social and economic construction of the country, and projections of an imminent socialist utopia within reach of every man and woman, if only they worked hard enough. Bringing together scholars of Chinese art, cinema, culture, performance, and more, this volume shares groundbreaking research on the objects and practices of everyday life in Mao’s China, from bamboo and bricks to dance and film. With engaging narratives and probing analysis, the contributors make a place for China’s experience in the history of global material culture and the study of socialist modernity.