From: "Andrew Field" <shanghaidrew@GMAIL.COM>
To: <H-ASIA@H-NET.MSU.EDU>
Sent: Thursday, March 31, 2011 5:36 AM
Subject: H-ASIA: Norma Diamond, 1933-2011
H-ASIA
Mar 31 2011
Norma Diamond, 1933-2011
*****************************
From: Susan Blum <sblum@nd.edu>
Dear Colleagues,
It is with sadness that I announce that Norma Diamond, Professor
Emerita, Anthropology, of the University of Michigan, has died.
Originally from New York, Norma was living in retirement in
Gainesville, Florida, but her heart remained in her adopted home town
of Ann Arbor, where her ashes will be placed.
I'm sure many of you knew Professor Diamond's sparkling and insight-
filled work on Chinese women, economy, minorities, and religion. She
leaves many students in the field of China studies to carry on her
legacy of courageous truth-telling.
In 2005 a panel at the American Anthropological Association was
devoted to Norma's work. Titled "Gender, Power, and Ethnicity in
China: Papers in Honor of Norma Diamond," the panel featured several
former students who presented work inspired by Norma's example.
Norma was a broadly trained social scientist and Sinologist who read
extremely broadly and wrote extremely cogently. She earned her BA at
the University of Wisconsin, her PhD was from Cornell University, and
she taught at the University of Michigan for more than thirty years,
where she was a pioneer in women's studies, as well as Asian studies.
She wrote a single-authored monograph, K'un Shen: A Taiwan Village and
many seminal articles such as "The Status of Women in Taiwan: One Step
Forward, Two Steps Back," "Collectivization, Kinship, and the Status
of Women in Rural China," Women Under Kuomintang Rule: Variations on
the Feminine Mystique," "Model Villages and Village Realities,"
"Taitou Revisited: State Policies and Social Change," "Rural
Collectivization and Decollectivization in China—A Review Article,"
"The Miao and Poison: Interactions on China's Frontier" (winner of
the Murdock Prize), "Defining the Miao: Ming, Qing, and Contemporary
Views," and "Christianity and the Hua Miao: Writing and Power." Her
book reviews were models of clarity and sometimes wry forcefulness.
Norma never shied away from honest criticism, even of her own earlier
positions. She followed the news of contemporary China with love and
often disappointment; her hopes had been high for this other homeland
of hers. A fierce believer in equality and justice, she found all too
much inequality and injustice.
Her voice will never be imitated. But it will be missed.
* * *
A Partial Bibliography:
Diamond, Norma. 1969. K'un Shen: A Taiwan Village. Case Studies in
Cultural Anthropology. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
__________ . 1973. "The Status of Women in Taiwan: One Step Forward,
Two Steps Back." In Marilyn B. Young, ed. Women in China: Studies in
Social Change and Feminism. Pp. 211-242. Ann Arbor: Center for
Chinese Studies, University of Michigan.
__________ . 1975a. "Collectivization, Kinship, and the Status of
Women in Rural China." Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars. Vol. 7
no. 1: 25-35. Also published in Rayna R. Reiter, ed., Toward an
Anthropology of Women. Pp. 372-395. New York: Monthly Review Press.
__________ . 1975b. "Women Under Kuomintang Rule: Variations on the
Feminine Mystique." Modern China vol. 1, no. 1 (January): 3-45.
__________ . 1983. "Model Villages and Village Realities." Modern
China vol. 9, no. 2 (April): 163-181.
__________ . 1984. "Taitou Revisited: State Policies and Social
Change." International Journal of Sociology Vol. 14, no. 4 (Winter):
77-100.
__________ . 1985. "Rural Collectivization and Decollectivization in
China—A Review Article." Journal of Asian Studies vol. XLIV, no. 4:
785-792.
__________ . 1988. "The Miao and Poison: Interactions on China's
Frontier." Ethnology. Vol. XXVII No. 1 (January): 1-25.
__________ . 1991. "Security and Alienation in Contemporary China."
Reviews in Anthropology. Vol. 17, pp. 123-130.
__________ . 1995. "Defining the Miao: Ming, Qing, and Contemporary
Views." In Cultural Encounters on China's Ethnic Frontiers, ed. by
Stevan Harrell. Pp. 92-116. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
__________ . 1996. "Christianity and the Hua Miao: Writing and
Power." In Christianity in China: From the Eighteenth Century to the
Present, ed. by Daniel H. Bays. Pp. 138-157. Stanford: Stanford
University Press.
**************
Susan Blum
Professor, Department of Anthropology
Fellow, Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies
614 Flanner Hall
The University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
USA
574-631-3762
sblum@nd.edu
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