Research Catalog

Title

Imperfect conceptions : medical knowledge, birth defects, and eugenics in China / Frank Dikötter.

Author

Dikötter, Frank.

Publication

New York : Columbia University Press, ©1998.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

ix, 226 pages : illustrations; 23 cm

Summary

"In 1995 the People's Republic of China passed a controversial Eugenics Law, which after a torrent of international criticism, was euphemistically renamed the Maternal and Infant Health Law. Aimed at "the implementation of premarital medical checkups" to ensure that neither partner has any hereditary, venereal, reproductive, or mental disorders, the ordinance implies that those deemed "unsuitable for reproduction" should undergo sterilization or abortion or remain celibate in order to prevent "inferior births.""--BOOK JACKET. "Drawing on cultural, social, economic, and political approaches, Dikotter goes beyond a simple authoritarian model to provide a more complex view of eugenic policy, showing how a variety of voices including those of popular journalists, social reformers, medical writers, sex educators, university professors, and politicians all disseminate information that supports rather than questions the state's program."--BOOK JACKET. "Imperfect Conceptions reveals how Chinese cultural currents - fear and fascination with the deviant and the urge to draw clear boundaries between the normal and the abnormal - have combined with medical discourse to form a program of eugenics that is viewed with alarm by the rest of the world."--Jacket.

Subject

• China Zusammenstellung
• Abnormalities, Human > China > Public opinion
• Abnormalities, Human > Etiology > Public opinion
• Eugenics > China
• Public opinion > China
• Eugenics
• Eugenics
• Abnormalities > ethnology
• Abnormalities > prevention & control
• Public Opinion
• Abnormalities, Human > Etiology > Public opinion
• Abnormalities, Human > Public opinion
• Public opinion
• Erbkrankheit
• Eugenik
• Missbildung
• Öffentliche Meinung
• Abnormalities, Human > China > Public opinion
• Eugenics > China
• Public opinion > China
• China

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 187-217) and index.

Contents

1. Introduction -- 2. 'Imperfect Conceptions': Medical Theories and Birth Defects in Late Imperial China. Elite Medical Theories in Late Imperial China. Medical Discourse and the Consolidation of the Lineage under the Qing. The Regulation of Desire: Sex, Blood and Semen. The Dangers of Excess: Marital Harmony and Cosmological Consonance. The Torments of Imagination: Maternal Imprints and Ghostly Foetuses. Epilogue: Lineage, 'Race' and Reproduction during the late Qing -- 3. 'Defective Genes': The Regulation of Reproduction in Republican China. The Medicalisation and Public Display of Monsters. Nationalism, Degeneration and Soft Inheritance. 'The Intermediate Sex': Embryology, Hermaphroditism and Gender Distinctions. Teratology, Recapitulation and Heredity. Conception, Imagination and Natural Retribution. The Improvement of the Race: The Spread of Eugenic Discourse -- 4. 'Inferior Births': Eugenics in the People's Republic of China. Air, Water and Food: The Foetus and the Environment. Blood, Genes and DNA: The Inheritance of Social Deviance. 'Superior Births': The Science of Foetal Education. Liminal Figures: The Medical Semiology of Monsters. Eugenic Laws and Reproductive Health. Social and Ethical Implications of Population Policies -- 5. Conclusion.

ISBN

• 0231113706
• 9780231113700

LCCN

98015584

OCLC

• ocm38909337
• 38909337
• SCSB-537712

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library