• Francesca Bray's Technology and Gender proves, like the bodies of her subjects, to be a wonderful thing to think with.

• My first problem with this book regards the asymmetry and non-integrity of the three parts. At the theoretical level, Bray gives justification to the reason why she deals with a set of different technologies rather than one technology: because it was the integration of different technical systems that shaped the gender experience of Chinese women in late imperial China. However, I do not think she established convincing and explicit connections among the three technical systems on the level of historical content.

• The use of contemporary Chinese terms to explain contemporary Chinese happenings and understandings prevents Bray from the types of asymmetry or anachronism that were present in both our previous two readings.

• Perhaps another way to think about this is to suggest that much of the history of technology does not distinuguish between innovation and technology, but rather conflates the two and then focuses on the first.

• I notice that the quantity of the Chinese primary sources is quite limited. ... I believe that working with more primary sources would enrich the studies of part 1 and part 3, which might lead to more dynamic, interactive pictures of Chinese women's histories within the household.

• Bray uses the vehicle of women in Chinese society well, to bring her points home about their significant influences in regards to child-birth and rearing, various industries and pinancial/ritual matters.

• Francesca Bray's Technology and Gender introduces the concept of gynotechnics, "a technical system that produces ideas about women, and therefore about a gender system and about hierarchical relations in general" (p.4).

• My main concern as I read Technology and Gender was to try to figure out whether Bray was pushed to a macroscopic interpretation by her evidence, or whether she started at the macro level and read her materials from that perspective.

• In general, I am a bit uncomfortable with her refuting the extreme that women were merely "producers of sons" to the other general extreme that women had so much sway in Chinese, without significant primary sources of evidence.

• Bray claims that her work is unique in two main respects: (1) it focuses on women, a previously neglected aspect of Chinese labor and cultural history, and (2) it focuses on 'everyday' technologies - routine activities that produce objects with human meanings.

• I found the illustrations relevant and not there merely to pad the book (which is something I couldn't say for the Malone book), and the footnotes seemed to provide useful pointers to further research, instead of qualifying or redirecting points made in the text.

• I think Bray is at pains to explain large-scale social change, especially the socioeconomic change that is so prominent in part 2 of her book. How did it pass, for instance, that a secular, merchant-based economy became such a threat in the first place? What role did gynotechnics have in such changes?

• Particularly interesting in this study were the methods the author used. Her definition of "technology" however is quite unique. In this study, a technology is not necessarily based on an object. Rather, the center of attention is the person, either as creator or as receiver.

• Can one really tell the story of 800 years of gender relations in a country as big as China?

• One is not born a woman, one becomes one.

• At last, one of our authors touched upon indoor plumbing. In a sense, Bray is a visionary. Should this have been reflected in the title of her book?

• Bray's definition of technology certainly stumped me at first. I admit to a certain gizmo construct when I think of technology history- history of the steam engine, history of the electric toothbrush... when I think "technology" I think of a tangible, useful artifact, preferably with shiny moving parts, that has helped propel us ever forward in our quest to evolve. Bray has subverted the gizmo paradigm, and I think her book is stronger for it, although I would be a tad more hesitant than she to add feng-shui and infanticide to my list of what counts as technology. If Bray's "technology" is not gizmo based, what is Bray talking about when she talks about technology?

• Each product that the women in this history make- home, cloth, more family members, simultaneously manufactures culturally specific chinese women. By participating in these home-oriented technologies, Chinese (biological) women were becoming and affirming their social identity as Women.

• Is there consensus on how footnotes should be used? Is it fair to argue that while the information is important and I would like to read it, this approach interrupts the flow of the text (and concentration!)?

• Bray certainly wants to dispel popularist bound feet and rented womb (276) images, yet it could be inappropriate to dispel the notion that women were truly oppressed in this period of China's history, and that technology could be seen as playing a role in this.

• It is out of question that her book is a great synthesis that interconnects everyday material practices, gender ideologies, and statecraft, but it also raises many questions as it covers such broad topics about such a broad country for such a long time period.

• Related to the first question, and to some extent, as its consequences, the experience of women in different regions and classes are often obscured in Brays sweeping synthesis.

• The part that interests me most is where she shows the various ways that class hierarchies often cut across and complicated gender hierarchies.

• The main lesson that I learned from this book is that in writing histories about other cutlures it can be misleading and unjust if we look at other cultures using "our" value systems.

• ...one thing that was missing was how the elite and the peasant women themselves looked at their roles in the fabric of Chinese society. What were their feelings about producing textile, bearing and rearing children and their postion and rank in their homes. Were there any diffrence in how the peasant and the elite woman viewed these gynotechnics?

• Ultimately, I found this a very careful and useful work. If everyone liked this book as much as I did, we're in for a very boring, congenial class discussion.

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