Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T02:43:22.588Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Bamboo Steamers and Red Flags: Building Discipline and Collegiality among China's Traditional Rural Midwives in the 1950s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2017

Xiaoping Fang
Xiaoping Fang*
Affiliation:
School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University. Email: [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper explores how the new Communist government developed a political consciousness of discipline and collegiality among traditional rural midwives in Chinese villages during the 1950s. It argues that selected traditional rural midwives were taught to observe discipline by attending meetings and studying, and to develop collegiality with peers through criticism and self-criticism of their birth attendance techniques and personal characters in short training courses from 1951 onwards. A legitimized midwife identity gradually formed in rural communities, but with it came conflicts and rivalry. By keeping these midwives under institutional surveillance and creating a dynamic and constant moulding process, the new government intended to foster professional and political discipline and collegiality within the group based on a normativized notion of selflessness performed within a changing series of indoctrination schemes that demonstrated continuity and complementarity and which I have described as common, preliminary, institutionalized, and dynamic schemes. This article examines how the state attempted to retrain marginalized and derided midwives with appropriate class backgrounds in order to incorporate them into the modern medical world, then still dominated by doctors and nurses with suspect class backgrounds. Ironically, in creating “socialist new people” to intervene in traditional rural birthing practices and introducing fee-for-service professionalism, the CCP accidentally created a degree of petit-capitalist thinking among women whose traditional mode of work may have been more selfless, thus complicating the process of indoctrinating selfless dedication.

摘要

本文旨在探讨 1950 年代新的共产党政府如何塑造中国乡村传统接生婆的纪律观念和同事关系。本文指出, 自 1951 年开始政府陆续挑选接生婆参加短期改造。通过参加会议和学习, 这些接生婆们被教导如何遵守纪律; 通过对接生技术和个人品格的批评和自我批评, 她们开始学习形成同事关系。接生婆们的合法身份随后在乡村社区逐渐形成, 但也导致了她们之间的冲突和竞争。通过建立一系列展现延续性和互补性, 包括常态的、初级的、制度化的、以及功态化的灌输机制, 政府将这些接生婆置于制度性的监控以及动态和持续的塑造机制之中, 从而试图培育这个群体在职业和政治上的以无私为核心的纪律观念和同事关系。本文同时指出, 共产党政府改造了阶级背景清白, 但长期以来被排挤和嘲讽的乡村接生婆群体, 并将她们纳入一个新的现代医疗体系之中, 而这个体系在很大程度上仍然被阶级背景可疑的医生和护士们所主宰。具有讽刺意义的是, 共产党一方面改造了乡村传统生育实践, 另一方面引入了接生收费的职业规则, 它在某种程度上使得这些原本无私的乡村妇女们行为形成了小资产阶级思想, 从而使得灌输接生婆无私观念的过程复杂化。

Keywords

rural midwivesdisciplinecollegialityconsciousnessidentityrural China接生婆纪律观念同事关系意识身份
Type
Articles
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 230 , June 2017 , pp. 420 - 443
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © SOAS University of London 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Changbei qu fuyou baojian zhan (Changbei District Maternal and Child Health Care Station). February 1955. “Eryuefen gongzuo huibao” (Report on work in February). Lin'an City Archives, Zhejiang (hereafter, LAA).Google Scholar
Changhua xian Changxi qu fuyou baojian zhan. (Changxi District Maternal and Child Health Care Station). June 1957. “Fuyou baojian gongzuo zongjie” (Summary of maternal and child health care work). LAA.Google Scholar
Changhua xian fuyou baojian zhan (Changhua County Maternal and Child Health Care Station). February 1953. “1952 nian nongcun tuixing xinfa jiesheng gongzuo qingkuang de baogao” (Report on the promotion of new delivery methods in rural areas in 1952). LAA.Google Scholar
Changhua xian fuyou baojian zhan. April 1954. “Yiersan yuefen fuyou weisheng gongzuo zongjie” (Summary of maternal and child health care work in January–March). LAA.Google Scholar
Changhua xian fuyou baojian zhan. July 1957. “Guanyu fubao gongzuo jihua” (Maternal and child health care work plan). LAA.Google Scholar
Changhua xian fuyou baojian zhan. January 1958. “Guanyu xiaodu zhan gongzuo de zongjie” (Summary of sterilization station work). LAA.Google Scholar
Changhua xian fuyou baojian zu (Changhua County Maternal and Child Health Care Group). October 1958. “Jiji kaizhan fuyou weisheng baojian gongzuo, wei gongnongye shengchan dayuejin fuwu” (Actively conduct maternal and child health care work and serve the Great Leap Forward of agricultural production). LAA.Google Scholar
Changhua xian renmin yiyuan (Changhua County People's Hospital). January 1959. “Guanyu 1958 nian fuyou baojian gongzuo de zongjie” (Summary of maternal and child health care station work in 1958). LAA.Google Scholar
Changhua xian renmin yiyuan. September 1959. “Guanyu jinnianlai fuyou baojian gongzuo de huibao” (Report concerning maternal and child health work over the past few years). LAA.Google Scholar
Changhua xian weisheng ke (Health Bureau of Changhua County). November 1954. “Xinfa jiesheng jingyan” (Experience of new delivery). LAA.Google Scholar
Changhua xian weisheng ke. December 1957. “Mofan jieshengyuan shiji” (Deeds of model midwives). LAA.Google Scholar
Cheng, Yinghong. 2009. Creating the New Man: From Enlightenment Ideals to Socialist Realities. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Dirlik, Arif. 1975. “The ideological foundations of the New Life movement: a study in counterrevolution.” Journal of Asian Studies 34(4), 945–980.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dittmer, Lowell. 1973. “The structural evolution of criticism and self-criticism.” The China Quarterly 56, 708–729.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dutton, Michael. 2005. Policing Chinese Politics: A History. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Fang, Xiaoping. 2012. Barefoot Doctors and Western Medicine in China. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1979. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Furth, Charlotte. 1999. A Flourishing Yin: Gender in China's Medical History, 960–1665. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gao, Hua. 2012. Geming niandai (Revolutionary Era) . Guangzhou: Guangdong sheng chuban jituan.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Joshua. 1998. “Scissors, surveys, and psycho-prophylactics: prenatal health care campaigns and state building in China, 1949–1954.” Journal of Historical Sociology 11(2), 153–184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hang xian fuyou baojian suo (Maternal and Child Health Care Clinic of Hang County). October 1954. “1954 nian diyici jieshengyuan daibiao dahui zongjie” (Summary of the first midwife representative meeting in 1954). Yuhang District Archives, Zhejiang (hereafter, YHA).Google Scholar
Hang xian fuyou baojian suo. December 1954. “Shangsi qu jieshengyuan xiaozu hongqi jingsai zongjie” (Summary of the Red Flag contest in Shangsi district). YHA.Google Scholar
Hang xian renmin weiyuanhui weisheng ke (Public Health Department of the People's Commission of Hang County). September 1956. “Guanli jieshengyuan gongzuo zongjie” (Summary of midwife management work). YHA.Google Scholar
Hang xian renmin zhengfu weishengyuan (Hospital of Hang County People's Government). 1952. “Gaizao jiuchanpo gongzuo zongjie” (Summary of old-style midwife re-education). YHA.Google Scholar
Hershatter, Gail. 2007. Women in China's Long Twentieth Century. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hershatter, Gail. 2011. The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China's Collective Past. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hwang, Jinlin. 2001. Lishi, shenti, guojia: jindai Zhongguo de shengti xingcheng (1895–1937) (History, Body, Nation: Formation of the Modern Chinese Body) . Taipei: Lianjing chuban gongsi.Google Scholar
Johnson, Tina Phillips, and Wu, Yi-Li. 2014. “Maternal and child health in nineteenth- to twenty-first-century China.” In Andrews, Bridie and Bullock, Mary Brown (eds.), Medical Transitions in Twentieth-Century China. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 51–68.Google Scholar
Lei, Sean Hsiang-Lin. 2014. Neither Donkey Nor Horse: Medicine in the Struggle over China's Modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lin'an xian weishengzhi bianzhuan weiyuanhui (Editorial Board of Lin'an County Health Gazetteer). 1992. Lin'an xian weishengzhi (Lin'an County Health Gazetteer) . Lin'an: Lin'an xian weishengju.Google Scholar
Liu, Wennan. 2013. “Redefining the moral and legal roles of the state in everyday life: the New Life movement in China in the mid-1930s.” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 2(2), 335–365.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lynteris, Christos. 2012. The Spirit of Selflessness in Maoist China: Socialist Medicine and the New Man. Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Manning, Kimberley. 2005. “Marxist maternalism, memory, and the mobilization of women during the Great Leap Forward.” China Review 5(1), 83–110.Google Scholar
Manning, Kimberley. 2006. “Making a great leap forward? The politics of women's liberation in Maoist China.” Gender & History 18(3), 574–593.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manning, Kimberley. 2010. “Embodied activisms: the case of the Mu Guiying brigade.” The China Quarterly 204, 850–869.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rozman, Gilbert. 1981. “Knowledge and education.” In Rozman, Gilbert (ed.), The Modernization of China. New York: Macmillan, 183–202.Google Scholar
Smith, Aminda M. 2013. Thought Reform and China's Dangerous Classes: Reeducation, Resistance, and the People. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Wang, Xiaoxuan. 2015. “The dilemma of implementation: the state and religion in the People's Republic of China, 1949–1990.” In Brown, Jeremy and Johnson, Matthew D. (eds.), Maoism at the Grassroots: Everyday Life in China's Era of High Socialism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 259–278.Google Scholar
Wu, Yi-Li. 2010. Reproducing Women: Medicine, Metaphor, and Childbirth in Late Imperial China. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Xindeng xian renmin zhengfu weishengyuan (Hospital of Xindeng County People's Government). April 1952. “Diyici jieshengyuan huiyi zongjie” (Summary of the first midwife meeting). Fuyang City Archives, Zhejiang (hereafter, FYA).Google Scholar
Xindeng xian renmin zhengfu weishengyuan. December 1953. “Dierci zhengdun jieshengyuan zuzhi zongjie” (Summary of the second readjustment of midwife organizations). FYA.Google Scholar
Xindeng xian renmin zhengfu weishengyuan. December 1954. “1954 nian weisheng gongzuo zongjie” (Summary of health work in 1954). FYA.Google Scholar
Yang, Nianqun. 2004. “The establishment of modern health demonstration zones and the regulation of life and death in early Republican Beijing.” East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 22, 96–121.Google Scholar
Yao, Ping. 2005. “Childbirth and maternal mortality in Tang China.” Chinese Historical Review 12(2), 263–286.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yuqian xian fuyou baojian zhan (Yuqian Maternal and Child Health Care Station). March 1953. “Zhengdun jieshengyuan gongzuo zongjie” (Summary of midwife readjustment). LAA.Google Scholar
Yuqian xian fuyou baojian zhan. December 1957. “Jiesheng gongzuo zongjie” (Summary of natal work). LAA.Google Scholar
Yuqian xian weishengyuan (Yuqian County Hospital). May 1951. “Jiuchanpo dengjibiao” (Registration form for old-style midwives). LAA.Google Scholar
Yuqian xian weishengyuan. October 1951. “Tujieshengpo dierqi peixunban zongjie” (Summary of the second training session of old-style midwives). LAA.Google Scholar
Yuqian xian weishengyuan. September 1952. “Disan disi liangqi jieshengyuan xunlianban zongjie” (Summaries of the third and fourth midwife training sessions). LAA.Google Scholar
Yuqian xian weishengyuan. October 1952. “Tuchanpo xunlianban zongjie” (Summary of folk midwife training session). LAA.Google Scholar
Zhejiang sheng renmin zhengfu weishengting (Health Department of Zhejiang Province People's Government). August 1952. “Minzhu funü lianhehui banli bennian chunji jiushi jieshengpo xunlian gongzuo” (The Democratic Women's Association in charge of spring training session of old-style midwives). Zhejiang Provincial Archives.Google Scholar