Studies in the history of medicine and health in Mao's China after 1949 have been a burgeoning subfield of Chinese history and medical history over the past two decades. In these histories, medicine and health have been inseparable from politics in ideological commitment and operational schemes, which have been reflected in health work principles and mass movements. In current scholarship, researchers have made substantial progress in exploring empirical studies of the politics of medicine and health. However, one simple but fundamental theoretical question has long been understudied—“What constituted health in socialist China and beyond?” (223). Aiming to fill this gap, Rene Krusche's book analyzes how crucial aspects of daily life have been redefined, measured, and institutionalized and how health as concept and practice has been narrated and developed in the sociopolitical and industrial contexts of China.
The book is composed of six chapters which are divided into three parts. Part...
