Judith Farquhar's innovative study of medicine and popular culture
in modern China reveals the thoroughly political and historical
character of pleasure. Ranging over a variety of cultural
terrains--fiction, medical texts, film and television, journalism,
and observations of clinics and urban daily life in
Beijing--"Appetites" challenges the assumption that the mundane
enjoyments of bodily life are natural and unvarying. Farquhar
analyzes modern Chinese reflections on embodied existence to show
how contemporary appetites are grounded in history.
From eating well in improving economic times to memories of the
late 1950s famine, from the flavors of traditional Chinese medicine
to modernity's private sexual passions, this book argues that
embodiment in all its forms must be invented and sustained in
public reflections about personal and national life. As much at
home in science studies and social theory as in the details of life
in Beijing, this account uses anthropology, cultural studies, and
literary criticism to read contemporary Chinese life in a
materialist and reflexive mode. For both Maoist and market reform
periods, this is a story of high culture in appetites, desire in
collective life, and politics in the body and its dispositions.
General
Imprint: |
Duke University Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Series: |
Body, Commodity, Text |
Release date: |
April 2002 |
First published: |
April 2002 |
Authors: |
Judith Farquhar
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 145 x 25mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Paperback
|
Pages: |
341 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-8223-2921-3 |
Categories: |
Books >
Social sciences >
General
|
LSN: |
0-8223-2921-2 |
Barcode: |
9780822329213 |
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