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Intimate Communities: Wartime Healthcare and the Birth of Modern China, 1937-1945
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.
When China’s War of Resistance against Japan began in July 1937, it sparked an immediate health crisis throughout China. In the end, China not only survived the war but emerged from the trauma with a more cohesive population. Intimate Communities argues that women who worked as military and civilian nurses, doctors, and midwives during this turbulent period built the national community, one relationship at a time. In a country with a majority illiterate, agricultural population that could not relate to urban elites’ conceptualization of nationalism, these women used their work of healing to create emotional bonds with soldiers and civilians from across the country. These bonds transcended the divides of social class, region, gender, and language.
When China’s War of Resistance against Japan began in July 1937, it sparked an immediate health crisis throughout China. In the end, China not only survived the war but emerged from the trauma with a more cohesive population. Intimate Communities argues that women who worked as military and civilian nurses, doctors, and midwives during this turbulent period built the national community, one relationship at a time. In a country with a majority illiterate, agricultural population that could not relate to urban elites’ conceptualization of nationalism, these women used their work of healing to create emotional bonds with soldiers and civilians from across the country. These bonds transcended the divides of social class, region, gender, and language.
- GenresChina
324 pages, Paperback
First published October 23, 2018
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 7, 2026
thoughts, later .
May 31, 2021
行文中没能完全遵循自己在intro中设定的agenda，更多还是在叙述女性在现代国家权力扩张中所扮演的中和软化角色。虽然提到了emotion的作用但缺乏更多的史料和具体例子。医疗史方面没能超越Rogaski的路径，政治史方面也依然关注国家权力在日常生活和身体中的渗透。不过故事讲得很好，也在尝试和欧洲史领域通过理论和新兴概念对话。结论中对20世纪性别政治的论述异常精彩，给出国共分别树立的两种不同gender ideology。似乎间接解释了为何49-78年间党国与现代化叙述脱钩。
November 2, 2019
I enjoyed reading and discussing this book with two new post-grad students. Barnes presents an engaging and well-argued thesis that women who worked as nurses in the Second World War in China were a key part of the construction of the Chinese national community. The emotional labour involved in their work fostered a sense of belonging and renewed commitment to fight in the men they cared for. I like the mixture of sources--Ba Jin's novel 'Ward Four' is important to one section, and it's rare to see social histories of China draw on literature as much or as well as this (don't ask me why). Most of the chapters are grounded in extensive archival work in Chongqing and the US, and there's also memoirs of nurses.
All good history books are mixture of solidly-evidenced argument and more speculative claims. Some of the latter puzzled me at times. Chapter one describes the failure of masculinist hygiene and health initiatives (masculinist in the sense that the people who planned and carried them out were men). "Trash piles and the citizens that made them won." Writing as someone who lives in a Northern English city with more than its fair share of litter, I wondered if trash piles really represent a victory of "resistance" against a masculinist state; rather than the result of a city and its administration falling on hard times.
Essential reading if you're into modern Chinese history or the history of health care in twentieth century global history.
All good history books are mixture of solidly-evidenced argument and more speculative claims. Some of the latter puzzled me at times. Chapter one describes the failure of masculinist hygiene and health initiatives (masculinist in the sense that the people who planned and carried them out were men). "Trash piles and the citizens that made them won." Writing as someone who lives in a Northern English city with more than its fair share of litter, I wondered if trash piles really represent a victory of "resistance" against a masculinist state; rather than the result of a city and its administration falling on hard times.
Essential reading if you're into modern Chinese history or the history of health care in twentieth century global history.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews