The "bad" and the "sick": medicalizing deviance in China

Abstract

Conrad and Schneider’s now classical work on the historical transformation of definitions of deviance from ‘badness’ to ‘sickness’ is relevant for the situation in China today, although with some modifications. The weakly founded medical/psychiatric profession and the strong political/ideological discourse in China leads to a strange combination of medicalization and moralization, even criminalization. The ‘sick’ are often equated with the ‘bad,’ and ‘sickness’ is seen as a secondary sign of ‘badness.’ The pan-moralist tradition of ancient China seems to be closely combined with the Communist era’s strong belief in political-ideological correctness, and its strong belief in social engineering. My previous research on crime and deviance in China in the 1980s and 1990s seems to be confirmed by today’s discourse, although there are new moral panics and new forms of medical-moralistic definitions of deviance in contemporary China. Still, the categories of deviance are very much socially constructed entities closely related to the moral-political order of present day China. In this paper, I will use three cases to underline my argument. First, the type of deviance I call ‘majority deviance,’ related to the case of the prejudice and dangers associated with the only-child. My second example has to do with what I term the ‘wayward girl’ and the moral panics concerning so-called zaolian – or ‘premature love’ among young girls. The third example is the new panic surrounding ‘internet addiction disorder’ or IAD. While the ‘disco’ and the ‘dance hall’ were the sites of disorder in the 1980s and 90s, the wangba – or ‘internet bar’ – is now seen as the most dangerous site of crime and deviance.