Public Lecture

Marriage and Divorce: 30 Years of Change in Hong Kong and Shanghai

Asia/Hong_KongMarriage and Divorce: 30 Years of Change in Hong Kong and Shanghai
    Asia/Hong_KongMarriage and Divorce: 30 Years of Change in Hong Kong and Shanghai
      Overview

      Title:

      Marriage and Divorce: 30 Years of Change in Hong Kong and Shanghai

      Speaker:

      Professor Deborah S. Davis (Professor of Sociology, Yale University)

      Date:

      February 25, 2010

      Time:

      6:00 pm (Reception starts at 5:30 pm)

      Venue:

      T6, 1/F, Meng Wah Complex, The University of Hong Kong

      Language:

      English

      Enquiry:

      Ms. Natalie Wong
      (Tel) (852) 2241-5011
      (Email) ihss@hku.hk

      Abstract

      In the past three decades residents of Shanghai and Hong Kong have experienced turbulent times and rising divorce rates. Despite the continuing differences in their legal systems, rates of divorce appear to be converging. By comparing the forces in each city that drive an ever increasing percentage of couples to separate and create new households, one sees not only how economic and cultural changes spur convergence but also where and why Hong Kong society continues to remain distinctive.

      About the Speaker

      Deborah S. Davis, Professor of Sociology at Yale University. Primary teaching interests are inequality and stratification, contemporary Chinese society, and methods of fieldwork. Davis is currently Associate Editor of The Journal of Asian Studies and in 2004 she helped launch the Yale China Health Journal. She has served as Director of Academic Programs at the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, Chair of the Department of Sociology, and Chair of the Council on East Asian Studies. Author or editor of eight books, past publications have analyzed the politics of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese family life, pension and welfare policy, consumer culture, property rights, social stratification and occupational mobility. In 2009 Stanford University Press published Creating Wealth and Poverty in Post-Socialist China, co-edited with Wang Feng. She is completing a monograph entitled A Home of Their Own, a study of the social consequences of the privatization of real estate in urban China. A graduate of Wellesley College, Davis received a Masters degree in East Asian Studies from Harvard and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Boston University. She has been on the faculty at Yale University since 1978.

      Poster