Productive Encounters: Kinship, Gender, and Family Laws in East Asia

Abstract

Recent decades have brought tremendous change to families, and the laws governing families, across East Asia. From new household forms — including divorcees, single parents, adults living alone or with chosen kin, samesex couples, and transnational marriages — to shifting ideologies of how families should be organized and kinship ties recognized, families have been at the center of substantial social and political change across the region. This special issue examines the intersections and tensions between how families are lived on the ground and the family laws and institutional mechanisms that create the scaffolding for recognizable kinship relationships. The articles use the rubric of “productive encounters” to understand these ongoing engagements of law and family as they unfold over a period of colonial and postcolonial reforms and transitions from authoritarian to democratic governance. The authors ask how laws and administrative regulations take shape through