Title Fighting for Breath : Living Morally and Dying of Cancer in a Chinese Village / Anna Lora-Wainwright

Published Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, [2013] ©2013

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Description 1 online resource (xv, 323 pages) : illustrations Contents Cancer and contending forms of morality -- The evolving local moral world of Langzhong -- Water, hard work, and farm chemicals : the moral economy of cancer -- Gendered hardship, emotions, and the ambiguity of blame -- Xiguan, consumption, and shifting cancer etiologies -- Performing closeness, negotiating family relations, and the cost of cancer -- Perceived efficacy, social identities, and the rejection of cancer surgery -- Family relations and contested religious moralities Summary Numerous reports of "cancer villages" have appeared in the past decade in both Chinese and Western media, highlighting the downside of China's economic development. Less generally known is how people experience and understand cancer in areas where there is no agreement on its cause. Who or what do they blame? How do they cope with its onset? This ethnography offers a bottom-up account of how rural families strive to make sense of cancer and care for sufferers. It addresses crucial areas of concern such as health, development, morality, and social change in an effort to understand what is at stake in the contemporary Chinese countryside. Encounters with cancer are instances in which social and moral fault lines may become visible. The author combines powerful narratives and critical engagement with an array of scholarly debates in sociocultural and medical anthropology and in the anthropology of China. The result is a moving exploration of the social inequities endemic to post-1949 China and the enduring rural-urban divide that continues to challenge social justice in the People's Republic. In-depth case studies present villagers' "fight for breath" as both a physical and social struggle to reclaim a moral life, ensure family and neighborly support, and critique the state for its uneven welfare provision. The author depicts their suffering as lived experience, but also as embedded in domestic economies and in the commodification of care that has placed the burden on families and individuals. This book is aimed at students, teachers, and researchers in Chinese studies, sociocultural and medical anthropology, human geography, development studies, and the social study of medicine Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes In English Print version record Subject Cancer -- Patients -- Care -- Moral and ethical aspects -- China -- Langzhong Shi Cancer -- Social aspects -- China -- Langzhong Shi Social history. Neoplasms -- epidemiology Family Relations -- ethnology Patient Care -- ethics Social Conditions social history. POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Public Policy -- Social Security. POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Public Policy -- Social Services & Welfare. SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Human Geography. Social history Cancer -- Social aspects SUBJECT China Subject China -- Langzhong Shi Form Electronic book ISBN 9780824837976 0824837975 0824836820 9780824836825 082487109X 9780824871093 9780824867737 0824867734

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