Recovering Histories: Life and Labor after Heroin in Reform-Era China

by Nicholas Bartlett

Heroin first reached Gejiu, a Chinese city in southern Yunnan known as Tin Capital, in the 1980s. Widespread use of the drug, which for a short period became “easier to buy than vegetables,” coincided with radical changes in the local economy caused by the marketization of the mining industry. More than two decades later, both the heroin epidemic and the mining boom are often discussed as recent history. Middle-aged long-term heroin users, however, complain that they feel stuck in an earlier moment of the country’s rapid reforms, navigating a world that no longer resembles either the tightly knit Maoist work units of their childhood or the disorienting but opportunity-filled chaos of their early careers. Overcoming addiction in Gejiu has become inseparable from broader attempts to reimagine laboring lives in a rapidly shifting social world. Drawing on more than eighteen months of fieldwork, Nicholas Bartlett explores how individuals’ varying experiences of recovery highlight shared challenges of inhabiting China’s contested present. 

Genres: History

221 pages, Paperback

Published October 20, 2020

Reviews

[Yisu Z. · Rating 3 out of 5]

写个旧的海洛因使用者如何回归社会的医学民族志。毒品的特性和历史的潮流结合在一起，作者谈的是各种时间性，沉淀下的历史和个体忘我的沉醉。很特别的题材，写得比较机械一点。