Social Science Research Council

"Beyond the Economic Peasant: Embodiment and Healthcare in Rural Henan"

My dissertation research reframes "body" and "health" as anthropological topics through an ethnographic interrogation of attitudes, daily practice (at domestic, community, and county government levels), policy history, and local memory in Henan, China. My working hypothesis is: as the rural medical care system has declined, the meaning of "rural health" has changed, both for the government (which has altered the meaning of "rural") and for people living outside cities (for whom "health" has changed its significance). Taking the question of "rural health" as an entry point, I propose an anthropology of embodiment which turns to the everyday practices of embodied actors to perceive the character of lived life beyond the stereotypes of nongmin (peasants) both in anthropology and in China. The questions I want to ask are: what are people`s own understandings and practices of health, and what are their embodied experiences of healthful concerns and pursuits (in a broadened sense)? What are the spaces in which health is sought, ranging from the body to the village or township, and even to the space of the nation? Furthermore, what are people's own definitions of the "good life?" My research seeks to bring into visibility the heterogeneity of everyday life in the countryside, indicate some consequences of Chinese and global class discrimination, and engage in an ethnographic critique of the hegemonic elite discourses of "economic man."