Research subject
When the Jesuits arrived in China at the end of the sixteenth century, they remarked that gender relations here were different from gender relations in their native societies. They described the perceived differences in their letters and relations published in Europe, often praising the virtuousness of Chinese women. In local communities however, Chinese gender relations represented a challenge for the Jesuit mission. Missionaries and Chinese Christians faced the question of how Christian and Chinese gender norms and practices could combine. In many cases, the introduction of Christianity led to a negotiation of gender norms between Chinese actors and missionaries. As a result, new gender norms and practices emerged from the situation of cultural exchange which took place in Chinese Christianity during the long seventeenth century.
The project aims at studying these gender norms and practices within the Chinese Christian communities established by Jesuit missionary activity, during the long seventeenth century. Following the approach of recent studies on Chinese Christianity, we treat these communities as local Christianities. Their norms were established by multi-directional processes of communication; subaltern actors played a major role in shaping their forms of piety and gender norms. Chinese Christian communities constituted spaces of cultural exchange, in which gender norms and practices that elsewhere in local communities were regarded as normal, were questioned and therefore articulated.
