Prescriptions For Progress: Health, Hygiene, And Healing In The State Mountain Village Poverty-Alleviation Projects Of Southwest China

Abstract

In this thesis, I examine the Chinese state project of relocation and poverty alleviation in the mountain areas of Southwest China, as seen through people's lived experience in their new living spaces. From examining their perspectives of living in the new government-built houses as well as observations on their changing bodily practices and relational networks in the new villages, I aim to investigate the diverse body of discourses, processes, as well as political and economic arrangements embodied in this project in post-socialist China. I employ this approach as an attempt to shift from examining state power as a unitary force, towards an examination of the multiple processes (political/ social/ cultural/ medical) in which individuals are navigating their life through hygienic and healing practices.