Peter J. Carroll on Prostitution and Urban Development in Republican Suzhou

RAS LECTURE

Tuesday 7^th June, 2011 at 7:00 p.m.

Tavern, Radisson Plaza Xingguo Hotel 78

兴国宾馆上海市兴国路78号

Peter J. Carroll

on

Prostitution and Urban Development in Republican Suzhou

During the late Qing and Republic, Suzhou state officials and business leaders openly exploited prostitution to foster economic development, especially along the railway station “horse-road” (malu) outside the northern city wall. City leaders correctly surmised that the “spill-over” from prostitution would support an array of other commercial activities. This practice, if not explicit policy, was not uncontroversial. Male and female reformers militated against female sex-work as a local and national shame that bespoke the noxious effects of male lust and capitalist exploitation. At the same time, some businessmen feared that the prominence of vice interfered with the expansion of licit commerce and development. In the end, many commentators agreed that prostitution and the prerogatives of male desire were inextricably linked to the fortunes of the greater urban economy.

This talk examines local debates regarding the physical, discursive, and political-economic place of prostitution within the city during the late Qing and Republic. The paper will particularly focus on the critiques of prostitution leading to its “abolition” in 1929 and later “reintroduction” under a regime of state regulation in 1935. (The initiation of state-sponsored prostitution was explicitly linked to the ineffectiveness of abolition, as well as the deleterious economic consequences of wholesale prohibition.]

Peter J. Carroll is a social and cultural historian of modern China and teaches at Northwestern University, USA. He is the author of the award-winning book Between Heaven and Modernity: Reconstructing Suzhou, 1895-1937 (Stanford UP, 2006) and is writing a book on suicide and conceptions of modern society in China, 1900-1957.

Entrance: RMB 30 (RAS members) and RMB 80 (non-members) those unable to make the donation but wishing to attend may contact us for exemption, prior to the RAS Lecture. Membership applications and membership renewals will be available at this event.

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