The Construction Of Space In Early China

by Lewis, Mark Edward

• ISBN13: 9780791466070
• ISBN10: 0791466078
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-11-03
• Publisher: State Univ of New York Pr

Summary

This book examines the formation of the Chinese empire through its reorganization and reinterpretation of its basic spatial units: the human body, the household, the city, the region, and the world. The central theme of the book is the way all these forms of ordered space were reshaped by the project of unification and how, at the same time, that unification was constrained and limited by the necessary survival of the units on which it was based. Consequently, as Mark Edward Lewis shows, each level of spatial organization could achieve order and meaning only within an encompassing, superior whole: the body within the household, the household within the lineage and state, the city within the region, and the region within the world empire, while each level still contained within itself the smaller units from which it was formed. The unity that was the empire's highest goal avoided collapse back into the original chaos of nondistinction only by preserving within itself the very divisions on the basis of family or region that it claimed to transcend. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Mark Edward Lewis is Kwoh-ting Li Professor of Chinese Culture at Stanford University

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction	1	(1)
Units of Spatial Order	1	(4)
The Empire and the Reconstruction of Space	5	(8)
The Human Body	13	(64)
Discovery of the Body in the Fourth Century B.C.	14	(22)
The Composite Body	36	(25)
Interfaces of the Body	61	(12)
Conclusion	73	(4)
The Household	77	(58)
Households as Political Units	78	(9)
Households as Residential Units	87	(6)
Households as Units of Larger Networks	93	(11)
The Household Divided	104	(15)
Household and Tomb	119	(11)
Conclusion	130	(5)
Cities and Capitals	135	(54)
The World of the City-States	136	(14)
Cities of the Warring States and Early Empires	150	(19)
Invention of the Imperial Capital	169	(17)
Conclusion	186	(3)
Regions and Customs	189	(56)
The Warring States Philosophical Critique of Custom	192	(10)
Custom and Region	202	(10)
Regions and the Great Families	212	(17)
Regional and Local Cults	229	(5)
Rhapsodies on Regions	234	(9)
Conclusion	243	(2)
World and Cosmos	245	(62)
Grids and Magic Squares	247	(13)
The Bright Hall and Ruler-Centered Models	260	(13)
Mirrors, Diviner's Boards, and Other Cosmic Charts	273	(11)
Mountains and World Models	284	(19)
Conclusion	303	(4)
Conclusion	307	(4)
Notes	311	(120)
Works Cited	431	(40)
Index	471