The Chinese Joint Family as a “White Lie”: Competing Visions of the Family in 19th-century Taiwanese Family Division Contracts

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article examines the ideological scaffolding of family division contracts (jiushu) in 19th-century Taiwan. It analyses how the island’s Han Chinese inhabitants negotiated with the traditional Chinese joint family ideal as they betrayed it through frequent family divisions (fenjia). Borrowing Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the “white lie”, this study argues that the Chinese of late-Qing Taiwan not only saw through the “white lie” about the joint family but also defended their “less-than-ideal” behaviour with reasons and arguments. However, it points out that some of the defences went beyond making excuses for the social–cultural transgression to articulating a new vision of the family that conferred legitimacy on the practice of family partition. Affirming that dissolving the joint family was prudent, natural and beneficial, this contrarian discourse challenged the hegemony of the time-honoured “big family” ideal. By advocating a realignment of ideal and reality on the question of family organisation, the new vision went a long way towards deconstructing – though not eliminating – the joint family “white lie”.