Bodies of Difference: Experiences of Disability and Institutional Advocacy in the Making of Modern China - Tapa dura

"Bodies of Difference is a breath of fresh air in this tremendously important arena of medical anthropology. Kohrman writes very clearly and with grace, and the scholarship is evident on every page." - Linda S. Mitteness, University of California, San Francisco "Korhman reveals to us with a keen ethnographic eye and a clear prose style the emergent world of disabilities in China. His analysis of this biobureaucracy and of the stakes of bodies and lives is illuminating." - Paul Rabinow, author of Anthropos Today"

Bodies of Difference chronicles the compelling story of disability's emergence as an area of significant sociopolitical activity in contemporary China. Keenly attentive to how bodies are embedded in discourse, history, and personal exigency, Matthew Kohrman details ways that disability became a fount for the production of institutions and identities across the Chinese landscape during the final decades of the twentieth century. He looks closely at the creation of the China Disabled Persons' Federation and the lives of numerous individuals, among them Deng Pufang, son of China's Communist leader Deng Xiaoping.