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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 ****************************************************************** To post to H-ASIA simply send your message to: <H-ASIA@h-net.msu.edu> For holidays or short absences send post to: <listserv@h-net.msu.edu> with message: SET H-ASIA NOMAIL Upon return, send post with message SET H-ASIA MAIL H-ASIA WEB HOMEPAGE URL: http://h-net.msu.edu/~asia/
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