Who is the ‘Common’ in the ‘Common Good?’: The Floating Population and the Bifurcation of Service and Governance in Chinese Public Health after SARS

DATE: Monday, 3 June 2019
TIME: 4:00-5:30pm
VENUE: RRST 4.36

seminar posterAbstract

Dr. Katherine Mason (Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Brown University) will discuss how the outbreak of SARS in 2003 reimagined public health in southeastern China as a professional, biomedical and technological enterprise. She recounts how young, highly-trained scientists replaced bureaucratic government inspectors who had dominated the field for decades, rapidly transforming local public health institutions in the process. The talk is based on her book, Infectious Change: Reinventing Chinese Public Health after an Epidemic (Stanford University Press 2016).

SPEAKER BIO:

Katherine A. Mason is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Brown University. Her research addresses issues in population health, bioethics, China studies, reproductive health, mental health, and global health. Her first book, Infectious Change: Reinventing Chinese Public Health after an Epidemic, was published by Stanford University Press in 2016. She received her PhD in Social Anthropology from Harvard University in 2011.