Keeping the Nation's House ─ Domestic Management and the Making of Modern China

Keeping the Nation’s House unsettles the assumption
that home economics training lies far from the seats of power by
revealing how elite Chinese women helped to build modern China one
family at a time. Trained between the 1920s and the early 1950s, home
economists did not believe that a clear line separated the private
(nei) from the public (wai). They believed that the
home economics courses taught in centres of higher learning would
transform the most fundamental of political spaces – the
home – by teaching women to nurture ideal families and
manage projects of social reform for a strong, modern China. Although
their discipline came undone after 1949, it created a legacy of
gendered professionalism and reinforced the idea that leaders should
shape domestic rituals of the people.

By focusing on the vision and aspirations of the women who shaped a
discipline, this book offers a gendered perspective on the past and
reveals how women intellectuals dealt with the transition from the
Nationalist to the Communist era.