China and the cholera pandemic : restructuring society under Mao / Xiaoping Fang.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Part 1: Global pandemic and mobility -- The origins of the epidemic: migrants and refugees in Cold War Asia -- Mobile people, mobile disease -- Part 2: Contagion, social divisions, and borders -- Social divisions, epidemiology, and disease distribution -- Quarantine and isolation: the rise of multiple borders -- Part 3: Pandemic emergency, data, and social structure -- Comprehensive inoculation, rural rhythms, and compiling registers -- Stool samples, archiving patients, and statistical politics -- "No. 2 disease": a national secret.

"Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward campaign organized millions of Chinese peasants into communes in a misguided attempt to rapidly collectivize agriculture with disastrous effects. Catastrophic famine lingered as the global cholera pandemic of the early 1960s spread rampantly through the infected waters of southeastern coastal China. Confronted with a political crisis and the seventh global cholera pandemic in recorded history, the communist government committed to social restructuring in order to affirm its legitimacy and prevent transmission of the disease. Focusing on the Wenzhou Prefecture in Zhejiang Province, the area most seriously stricken by cholera at the time, Xiaoping Fang demonstrates how China's pandemic was far more than a health incident; it became a significant social and political influence during a dramatic transition for the People's Republic. China and the Cholera Pandemic reveals how disease control and prevention, executed through the government's large-scale, clandestine anticholera campaign, were integral components of its restructuring initiatives, aimed at restoring social order. The subsequent rise of an emergency disciplinary health state furthered these aims through quarantine and isolation, which profoundly impacted the social epidemiology of the region, dividing Chinese society and reinforcing hierarchies according to place, gender, and socioeconomic status"-- Provided by publisher

Print version record.

eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - Worldwide