14177

WiSe 19/20: China and Global Health: The Making and Unmaking of Barefoot Doctors (1960s-Present)

Emily Mae Graf

Information for students

Classes beginn on Wednesday, November 6th, 2019. NO MEETINGS ARE SCHEDULED on October 16th, 23rd and 30th.

Comments

The term “barefoot doctor” (chijiao yisheng) gained currency as a term and concept with Mao Zedong’s Directive in 1968, in which he insisted that medical work needed to be focused on the countryside. This involved great change for the health sector of the PRC that had previously been dominated by the strategies of the Health Ministry, which was run with the support of Soviet specialists, and which focused on fully-trained doctors in urban areas, aiming at developing higher expertise and specialization in their respective medical fields. With Mao’s Directive, doctors from urban medical establishments were increasingly “sent down” to the countryside to work in medical centers of the People’s Communes and train individuals in basic hygiene and primary medical care. Here they would offer classes for part-time health workers. The term barefoot implied that these newly-trained health workers would, ideally, also continue to work in the fields, which farmers did barefoot due to the flooded rice fields. By the early 1970s, barefoot doctors added up to over one million and the basic health care coverage in rural areas increased drastically to finally cover up to 90%. The image of the barefoot doctor thus became key in visualizing the revolution of health care not only within the PRC during the Cultural Revolution, when it circulated in form of posters, but also globally. Images of the barefoot doctor as a symbol of support for and aid to Africa, for example, were key in creating a transcultural visual rhetoric of the Revolution. While in 1978 the “barefoot doctor” concept was viewed favorably by the World Health Organization (WHO), the term and practice would lose its recognition in the PRC after the Reform and Opening Period. In class, we trace the history of the concept of rural health care in China and inquire how the image and concept of the barefoot doctor were produced. How were they received? Did they move beyond China? And to what extent did they shape how rural health care and community health workers are conceived in debates on Global Health today? close

13 Class schedule

Regular appointments

Wed, 16:00 - 18:00 13 Class schedule

Wed, 2019-11-06 16:00 - 18:00

Lecturers:
Emily Mae Graf