Contagious Divides

Epidemics and Race in San Francisco's Chinatown
1. Auflage 2001
ISBN: 978-0-520-22629-6
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 400 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 154 mm x 229 mm, Gewicht: 644 g

Reihe: American Crossroads

Contagious Divides charts the dynamic transformation of representations of Chinese immigrants from medical menace in the nineteenth century to model citizen in the mid-twentieth century. Examining the cultural politics of public health and Chinese immigration in San Francisco, this book looks at the history of racial formation in the U.S. by focusing on the development of public health bureaucracies.

Nayan Shah notes how the production of Chinese difference and white, heterosexual norms in public health policy affected social lives, politics, and cultural expression. Public health authorities depicted Chinese immigrants as filthy and diseased, as the carriers of such incurable afflictions as smallpox, syphilis, and bubonic plague. This resulted in the vociferous enforcement of sanitary regulations on the Chinese community. But the authorities did more than demon-ize the Chinese; they also marshaled civic resources that promoted sewer construction, vaccination programs, and public health management.

Shah shows how Chinese Americans responded to health regulations and allegations with persuasive political speeches, lawsuits, boycotts, violent protests, and poems. Chinese American activists drew upon public health strategies in their advocacy for health services and public housing. Adroitly employing discourses of race and health, these activists argued that Chinese Americans were worthy and deserving of sharing in the resources of American society.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Shah, Nayan

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde
• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Präventivmedizin, Gesundheitsförderung, Medizinisches Screening
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziologie von Migranten und Minderheiten
• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Gesundheitssystem, Gesundheitswesen
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Regionalwissenschaften, Regionalstudien
• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizin, Gesundheitswesen Public Health, Gesundheitsmanagement, Gesundheitsökonomie, Gesundheitspolitik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

CONTENTS
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Public Health, Race, and Citizenship
1. Public Health and the Mapping of Chinatown
2. Regulating Bodies and Space
3. Perversity, Contamination, and the Dangers of Queer Domesticity
4. White Women, Hygiene and the Struggle for Respectable Domesticity
5. Plague and Managing the Commercial City
6. White Labor and the American Standard of Living
7. Making Medical Borders at Angel Island
8. Healthy Spaces, Healthy Conduct
9. Reforming Chinatown
Conclusion: Norms as a Way of Life
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Nayan Shah is Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity and History at the University of Southern California and the author of Stranger Intimacy: Contesting Race, Sexuality and the Law in the North American West (UC Press).