Date: Rescheduled from 17 September 2018 to 11 October 2018
Time: 4:00pm
Venue: Room 4.36, 4/F Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

Medical Violence: Assaults on Medical Workers in Urban Chinese Hospitals by Dr Priscilla Song (Centre for the Humanities and Medicine, HKU)

Abstract:
This talk investigates the cultural logics shaping acts of violent protest against mainland Chinese medical professionals. Called yinao (醫鬧), this form of workplace violence refers to dissatisfied patients, their family members, and even hired gangs in medical settings (醫) "stirring up trouble" (鬧) by verbally abusing, physically assaulting, and even outright killing physicians, nurses, and other hospital workers. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in critical care settings in Beijing, Shanghai, Henan, and Yunnan, I argue that acts of protest in urban Chinese hospitals operate as an embodied technology of care that materializes and moralizes social relationships in contexts of medical failure.

About the Speaker:
Dr Priscilla Song is Assistant Professor in the Centre for the Humanities and Medicine in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Hong Kong. She is a medical anthropologist working at the nexus of global health, science and technology studies, and China studies.