Analysis Of Ruth Rogaski's 'Tianjin, China'

Moderns forms of power and control and what hygiene “has got to do with it,” are two of the central themes in this week’s readings. Nancy Tomes’ article looks at the workings of the Progressive hygienic movement in the American mainland. Concentrating their efforts not on the filthy streets and other urban public spaces known for their risks to human health, but on the “home” front, Tomes illustrates how white-middle class women invested great parts of their time and budged to create homes free of potential health hazards. Centering her study on changing American attitudes on infectious disease around the home, she investigates how the “private side” of public health shaped influenced the dominant discourse on health. There is no doubt that
Why and how the meaning of the Chinese word weisheng changed so dramatically over the course of several decades, are some of the central questions that Rogaski addresses in her dense and meticulously researched book. She is particularly interested in what the transformation of the term weisheng can tell us about the attitudes and practices of imperial powers and the indigenous elite. Approaching the shifting meaning of the term through a case study of Tianjin that spans almost a century. Tapping into, but then choosing not to engage in the convoluted discussion as to which form of colonialism would be more pernicious, Rogaski illustrates the various phases of colonialism and “semi-colonialism” in Tianjin to show how they impacted and changed popular understandings of weisheng by applying the concept of “hpyercolony.” Over the various chapters, she deftly summarizes how various colonial influences, shaped by a competition between the various imperial forces to be (up to eight at the same time), transformed a term that once loosely described various health-promoting practices of Traditional Chinese Medicine into an umbrella term for Western-influenced public health measures that now not only meant to serve the individual, but the community at large. Rogaski’s account incorporates a great variety of experiences and indigenous understandings of this transformation and is based on a broad array of analytical and methodological approaches. However, her reluctance to elaborate more on the complex modern weisheng uses as political strategy, and its psychological appeal as an “escape” out of the prison of a race-based discourse of deficiency, could have further contributed to a nuanced