A Historical Institutionalist Reexamination of the Natural Foot and Natural Breast Movements

This study analyzes the Natural Foot and Natural Breast movements that occurred successively in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China by adopting historical institutionalism. It conceptualizes two “gendered social institutions (GSI)” that existed in Chinese society before and after the Natural Foot Movement: The old GSI motivated women to engage in foot-binding through offering positive feedback within marriage and family, while the new GSI justified male's actions of creating new forms of governmentality and enhancing the state's infrastructural power by eliminating women’s harmful body practices. The new GSI failed to provide women with a clear path to earn positive feedback, so it was resisted by some women who had a strong path dependence on the old GSI through the regressive practice of breast-binding.