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 Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice/CUNY. Prof. Li's research examines the intersection of law and society in contemporary China. In 2022, she published the book, Marriage Unbound: State Law, Power, and Inequality. Since its publication, she has expanded into new areas of inquiry, investigating how Chinese courts integrate external expert knowledge and exploring how NGOs help citizens combat discrimination in workplaces, schools, and other public domains.