《技术与性别:晚期帝制中国的权力经纬》是一部别开生面的物质文化史，也是一部视角独特的妇女史。《技术与性别:晚期帝制中国的权力经纬》反对以西方的“科学”标准评估中国传统社会的科技成就，然后得出“中国为什么未能产生现代化”的若干答案。它力主将科技看做是表达与塑造中国文化、社会形态的有力的物质形式，并采取这样一种视角考察了宋代至清代中国传统社会中的“女性技术”，从家庭空间到生活、女性的纺织生产、女性生育与保健等三个方面，分析了科技如何强有力地传播和塑造了中国传统文化中的性别规则与女性角色。然而，与我们对于传统女性的传统认识不同，作者认为，妇女并非父权、夫、权的被动牺牲品，而是中国传统文化形态与社会秩序的积极有力的参与者。

本书作者从性别、技术、历史的角度，重新对帝制中国的大转型这一宏阔主题进行了细微的探索，独具慧眼，分析透彻，给人启发。书中提供了关于晚期帝制中国的个案研究，它包含了众多的理论背景、思路梳理，有分析方法的引入，也有极为开阔宏大的视野。

What can the history of technology contribute to our understanding of late imperial China? Most stories about technology in pre-modern China follow a well-worn plot: in about 1400 after an early ferment of creativity that made it the most technologically sophisticated civilisation in the world, China entered an era of technical lethargy and decline. But how are we to reconcile this tale, which portrays China in the Ming and Qing dynasties as a dying giant that had outgrown its own strength, with the wealth of counterevidence affirming that the country remained rich, vigorous and powerful at least until the end of the eighteenth century? Does this seeming contradiction mean that the stagnation story is simply wrong, or perhaps that technology was irrelevant to how imperial society worked? Or does it imply that historians of technology should ask better questions about what technology was, what it did and what it meant in pre-modern societies like late imperial China? In this book, Francesca Bray explores subjects such as technology and ethics, technology and gendered subjectivities (both female and male), and technology and statecraft to illuminate how material settings and practices shaped topographies of everyday experience and ideologies of government, techniques of the self and technologies of the subject. Examining technologies ranging from ploughing and weaving to drawing pictures, building a house, prescribing medicine or composing a text, this book offers a rich insight into the interplay between the micro- and macro-politics of everyday life and the workings of governmentality in late imperial China, showing that gender principles were woven into the very fabric of empire, from cosmology and ideologies of rule to the material foundations of the state and the everyday practices of the domestic sphere. This authoritative text will be welcomed by students and scholars of Chinese history, as well as those working on global history and the histories of gender, technology and agriculture. Furthermore, it will be of great use to those interested in social and cultural anthropology and material culture.