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Fighting for Breath: Living Morally and Dying of Cancer in a Chinese Village . ANNA LORA-WAINWRIGHT . Honolulu, HI : University of Hawai'i Press , 2013. xv + 323 pp. $52.00. ISBN 978-0-8248-3682-5
Book Reviews
Reports of cancer villages have been available for a decade. However, this anthropological study takes us into an analysis of the culture of a cancer village and the feelings of those dying there. The study village, Baoma (500 residents) in Langzhong County, eastern Sichuan was the author's home in 2004-05 and she made annual return visits up to roughly 2012. Giving us this thorough picture through a family in a particular village provides in-depth insight into how a village adapts culturally to a new grim reality.
The theoretical introduction sticks well to the issue at hand - describing concepts relevant to how people react culturally to cancer in a typical Chinese village. The author is looking for an understanding of how guilt for the disease is assigned, the cultural understanding of the causes for cancer, and how the ethics of payment for care play out. She uses the term "moral economy" to describe the way in which relatives and the patient react in the face of a somewhat corrupt health care system that demands more money for services than rural people are able to pay.
Attention is paid to local history and the idea of moral order. We are told the perception in the village is that local leaders are more corrupt than higher-level leaders. This concept...