Journal article
Of farming chemicals and cancer deaths: the politics of health in contemporary rural China
- Abstract:
- Where do Chinese villagers lay the blame when they develop cancer? The focus falls on the state when the supposed cause is water pollution; on the family context when it is hard work; and on the market when farm chemicals contaminate food. These different cancer aetiologies define the contours of a biological citizenship which does not only operate in relation to the state or premised on 'scientific' or biomedical evidence, but also on the basis of competing parameters of wellbeing and welfare drawing on personal and social experiences of work and eating. With data from fieldwork in rural Sichuan, this article illustrates that disputes about cancer causality and attitudes towards farm chemicals are also ways to voice villagers' ambivalent attitudes towards modernisation, consumerism, and development as contending forms of morality.
- Publication status:
- Published
- Peer review status:
- Peer reviewed
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- Publisher copy:
- 10.1111/j.1469-8676.2008.00057.x
Authors
- Publisher:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Journal:
- Social Anthropology More from this journal
- Volume:
- 17
- Issue:
- 1
- Pages:
- 56-73
- Publication date:
- 2009-02-01
- DOI:
- EISSN:
-
1469-8676
- ISSN:
-
0964-0282
- Language:
-
English
- Keywords:
- Subjects:
- UUID:
-
uuid:ec60848f-ac5e-4353-8f1b-b113b3def8c6
- Local pid:
-
ora:3127
- Deposit date:
-
2009-12-04
- ARK identifier:
Terms of use
- Copyright holder:
- European Association of Social Anthropologists
- Copyright date:
- 2009
- Notes:
- The full-text of this article is not available in ORA, but you may be able to access the article via the publisher copy link on this record page. N.B. Dr Lora-Wainwright is now based at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford.
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