Author: Michael Szonyi File Type: pdf An innovative look at how families in Ming dynasty China negotiated military and political obligations to the state How did ordinary people in the Ming dynasty (13681644) deal with the demands of the state? In The Art of Being Governed, Michael Szonyi explores the myriad ways that families fulfilled their obligations to provide a soldier to the army. The complex strategies they developed to manage their responsibilities suggest a new interpretation of an important period in Chinas history as well as a broader theory of politics. Using previously untapped sources, including lineage genealogies and internal family documents, Szonyi examines how soldiers and their families living on Chinas southeast coast minimized the costs and maximized the benefits of meeting government demands for manpower. Families that had to provide a soldier for the army set up elaborate rules to ensure their obligation was fulfilled, and to provide incentives for the soldier not to desert his post. People in the system found ways to gain advantages for themselves and their families. For example, naval officers used the militarys protection to engage in the very piracy and smuggling they were supposed to suppress. Szonyi demonstrates through firsthand accounts how subjects of the Ming state operated in a space between defiance and compliance, and how paying attention to this middle ground can help us better understand not only Ming China but also other periods and places. Combining traditional scholarship with innovative fieldwork in the villages where descendants of Ming subjects still live, The Art of Being Governed illustrates the ways that arrangements between communities and the state hundreds of years ago have consequences and relevance for how we look at diverse cultures and societies, even today. **From the Back Cover This astute and powerful blend of micro- and macrohistory pursued over the longue duree explores how resistance infuses apparent compliance. The magnifying lens of this book focuses on conscription throughout the Ming Dynasty, but the intellectual quarry is nothing less than the illumination of the strategic maneuvering between subject and state.--James C. Scott, Yale University This is state-of-the-art Sinology a work that combines the old-school erudition needed to sift through thousands of pages of documents and decipher obscure stele, with the ability to sit down and talk to people in a remote part of China, listen to their stories, and triangulate this oral history with the written record. Szonyi gives us not only an absorbing new take on Ming military history, but also a parable for how the Chinese have dealt with the state for centuries--through negotiation.--Ian Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of *The Souls of China* In this pioneering book on military service during the Ming dynasty, Szonyi opens a window on life during imperial China, revealing a fascinating world where families creatively bent the governments rules in order to survive. This ground-up view of how the Chinese coped constitutes an enormously significant and relevant contribution to the field.--John Pomfret, author of *The Beautiful Country and the Middle Kingdom* The Art of Being Governed looks at the relationship between the military households of southeastern China and the Ming state, with an emphasis on how individuals negotiated their obligations to the government. With a brilliant use of sources, this illuminating book links the past to the present in creative ways and is one of the most sophisticated and vivid descriptions of social relations in late imperial China published in recent years.--Peter C. Perdue, Yale University This ambitious book probes the ways in which military households engaged the state. Szonyi shows how people registered in these households used their status to take advantage of differing regulatory schemes in Ming China, and how these efforts shaped social relations, politics, and culturein some cases even down to the present. Based on extensive fieldwork, primary sources, and engaging scholarship, this is a major contribution to the field.--Joe Dennis, University of WisconsinMadison About the Author Michael Szonyi is professor of Chinese history and director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. His books include Practicing Kinship Lineage and Descent in Late Imperial China and Cold War Island Quemoy on the Front Line.

Author: Steven T. Wax File Type: epub American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award Winner in the Book category Independent Publishers Winner of the Gold Medal in the AutobiographyMemoir category ForeWord Book of the Year Awards Winner of the Bronze Medal in the Social Science category The Eric Hoffer Award - Winner in the Memoir category A public defenders dedicated struggle to rescue two innocent men from the recent Kafkaesque practices of our vandalized justice system Our government can make you disappear. Those were the words Steven Wax never imagined he would hear himself say. In his twenty-nine years as a public defender, Wax had never had to warn a client that he or she might be taken away to a military brig, or worse, a black site, one of our countrys dreaded secret prisons. How had our country come to this? The disappearance of people happens in places ruled by tyrants, military juntas, fascist strongmengovernments with such contempt for the rule of law that they strip their citizens of all rights. But in America? Under the current Bush administration, not only are the civil rights of foreigners in jeopardy, but those of U.S. citizens. Wax interweaves the stories of two men that he and his team represented Brandon Mayfield, an American-born small town lawyer and family man, arrested as a suspected terrorist in the Madrid train station bombings after a fingerprint was incorrectly traced back to him by the FBI and Adel Hamad, a Sudanese hospital administrator taken from his apartment to a Pakistani prison and then flown in chains to the United States military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Kafka Comes to America reveals where and how our civil liberties have been eroded for a false security, and how each of us can make a difference. If these events could happen to Brandon Mayfield and Adel Hamad, they can happen to anyone. It could happen to us. It could happen to you.**From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. Federal public defender Wax masterfully delivers a harrowing story of the erosion of civil liberties after the September 11 terrorist attacks in a powerful testimony that reads like a thriller. Wax follows the stories of two men he represented, both victims of post-911 counterterrorism measures. The firstAmerican citizen and fellow lawyer Brandon Mayfieldwas arrested by the FBI as a suspect in the Madrid train station bombings in 2004, after the FBI claimed that a latent fingerprint found on the scene matched Mayfields. The second story revolves around Adel Hamad, a Sudanese-born hospital administrator arrested in Pakistan while doing refugee relief work. Imprisoned for six months in a fetid hell for alleged connections with al-Qaeda, Hamad was hooded and shackled and transferred to Guantanamo Bay, where he has languished for the past four years. With considerable finesse, the author narrates these two gripping stories in alternating chapters through each stage of his clients cases. Wax offers personal insight and professional outrage his is a powerful voice that deserves to reach all Americans. (June) Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. From The New Yorker Wax, the head of the Oregon Federal Public Defenders office, writes that when he volunteered to represent inmates at Guantanamo Bay he didnt know if his clients would be terrorists or innocents. At least one, Adel Hamad, a Sudanese aid worker, seems patently innocent, and Wax also represented Brandon Mayfield, a lawyer whose storyhe was falsely linked to a bombing through shoddy fingerprint evidenceillustrates the short path from depriving terrorists of their rights to depriving everyone else. In an enthralling, enraging narrative, Wax captures the damage that Guantanamo has done to Americas reputation abroad, and shows how the legal fights on behalf of detainees might restore it. When Hamad, who helped run a hospital for refugees and was known for his Ping-Pong skills, disappeared, his wife was left destitute, and their infant daughter died from a lack of medical care. Hamad spent nearly five years at Guantanamo. 2008Click here to subscribe to The New Yorker