Disability in Contemporary China
Citizenship, Identity and Culture

The first comprehensive exploration of disability and citizenship in Chinese society and culture from 1949 to the present day.

Sarah Dauncey (Author)

9781107544369, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 27 October 2022

245 pages, 4 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.3 cm, 0.362 kg

'This is a timely and hugely significant work. Dauncey's wide-ranging and sophisticated analysis of the place of disability in Chinese culture does much to move the field of critical disability studies beyond its familiar 'Global North' focus and provides a significant contribution to our understanding of the cultural, ideological and historical construction of the 'para-citizen' in Chinese society. Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the place of non-normative identity in China today.' Hannah Thompson, Royal Holloway, University of London

Sarah Dauncey offers the first comprehensive exploration of disability and citizenship in Chinese society and culture from 1949 to the present. Through the analysis of a wide variety of Chinese sources, from film and documentary to literature and life writing, media and state documents, she sheds important new light on the ways in which disability and disabled identities have been represented and negotiated over this time. She exposes the standards against which disabled people have been held as the Chinese state has grappled with expectations of what makes the 'ideal' Chinese citizen. From this, she proposes an exciting new theoretical framework for understanding disabled citizenship in different societies – 'para-citizenship'. A far more dynamic relationship of identity and belonging than previously imagined, her new reading synthesises the often troubling contradictions of citizenship for disabled people – the perils of bodily and mental difference and the potential for personal and group empowerment.

Preface
List of abbreviations
Introduction. Understanding disability and citizenship in China
1. Where did all the disabled people go? Cultural invisibility before 1976
2. Backstage to centre stage: new heroes in the age of reform
3. Entertainment or education? Disability and the cinematic imagination
4. A narrative prosthesis? Disability and the literary imagination
5. Blind, but not in the dark: realism sheds new light on visual impairment
6. Private lives for public consumption: writing our disabled life stories
conclusion: the perils and possibilities of para-citizenship
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Social discrimination & inequality [JFFJ], Society & culture: general [JF], Asian history [HBJF]