Beyond China's drug century: Yunnan's first therapeutic community and narratives of drug treatment and mental health care

Transcultural Psychiatry
Sandra Teresa Hyde

Abstract

China is experiencing rapid cultural change and new forms of sociability that are accompanied by social problems and novel humanitarian interventions that have been formulated to address those problems. The pressure related to the rapid transformation of the countryside into mid-level cities has led to recreational drug-use as a means of escape. These illegal drugs have greased the wheels of what I call an affective biopolitics that has influenced Chinese citizens. Carlos Rojas argues that development in China results from the effects of discrete protocols, or practices that stem from tensions between capital and labor, governmentality and biopolitics, and nationalism and globalization. To tease out the particulars of Rojas' protocols and practices, in this article, I first review two historical periods: 1) the rise and fall of opium consumption in the early 19th century, and 2) the 21st-century psychology boom. I use these two literature reviews to set the stage to discuss my ethnographic study of Sunlight, China's first residential therapeutic community for drug users in Yunnan Province. Sunlight's residents and founders provide a unique window into local everyday drug use at a particular time in China's economic boom, from 2...Continue Reading

References

Sep 1, 2004·The Psychiatric Quarterly·Stuart Whiteley
Aug 11, 2007·The International Journal on Drug Policy·Sheena G Sullivan, Zunyou Wu
Jun 10, 2009·The International Journal on Drug Policy·Sarah Larney, Kate Dolan
Oct 13, 2011·World Psychiatry : Official Journal of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA)·Jin LiuXin Yu
Mar 2, 2012·The International Journal on Drug Policy·Kumi SmithNing Wang
Jan 21, 2015·Addiction·Shuiyuan XiaoWei Hao
Mar 27, 2015·Medical Anthropology Quarterly·Angela Garcia

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Sunlight
Sunlight TC

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