Marriage Unbound: State Law, Power, and Inequality in Contemporary China

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Friday, April 5, 2024 | 6pm to 7:30pm

25 West 43rd Street, 10th Floor, Room 1000
between 5th & 6th Avenues, Manhattan

On a hot summer day, Wang Guiping attended her divorce trial at the Xiqing People’s Tribunal. Taking an unfaithful spouse to court would, Guiping thought, help her end a hopeless relationship and actualize her lawful rights upon divorce. Later that day, Guiping would find herself betrayed not only by her husband, but by the court system and her own legal counsel. Taking this case as a point of departure, Ke Li recounts decades-long research on divorce litigation in rural China in her book Marriage Unbound. Ultimately, this talk articulates a firm belief: divorce, seemingly prosaic, offers a unique window onto phenomena of great importance to sociologists, political scientists, sociolegal researchers, and China scholars.

Purchase Book: https://sup.org/books/title/?id=32710

Author Bio

Ke Li is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY. Her research focuses on law, legal professions, courts, and women’s rights in China. She is the author of, Marriage Unbound: State Law, Power, and Inequality in Contemporary China (Stanford University Press, 2022). The book has received awards from the Law and Society Association, the American Political Science Association, and the American Sociological Association, respectively.