Scholars of material culture have argued that the current phase of study should be on the materiality of things rather than their sociality. This paper contends that the study of the sociality of things is far from over. The paper focuses on the case of the Chinese qipao and examines the relationship between stylistic changes of the qipao and gender politics in contemporary China. Through the study of the social life of the qipao, the author argues that the materiality and the sociality of things are closely intertwined, and that the material features of things, such as the qipao, gain their meanings in certain social settings. The author builds on Finnane's three-phase framework, and points out that the features of the qipao from the Republican era to the People 's Republic not only provide insights to the complexity of the gender ideologies and politics in those periods, their meanings are also circumscribed by specific social and historical contexts. This paper also challenges the simplistic view that equates certain styles of the qipao with the ruling ideology of the time.
展开▼
