Political Stakes of Cancer Series – Episode 4: Fighting Cancer with Qigong: An Ethnography of Patient Activism in China

Podcast with Chen Ying, Lecturer, National University of Singapore, in discussion with Fabien Provost, social anthropologist, French Research Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS).

In her ethnographic study among Qigong patient groups near Shanghai (China), Chen Ying describes the emergence of an activist movement whose objective is to cure cancer through the practice of Guo Lin Qigong (“group anti-cancer method”). While entering the field, although she was expecting to find mostly informal groups, Ying quickly discovered a highly organized organization counting no less than 20,000 members. In this conversation, Ying delves into the historical context of birth the movement, and into her experiences as a participant observer within this group, shedding light on the challenges of integration into a community whose values were shaped by the danwei system and socialist medicine: for most of her interlocutors, cancer represents not only a medical condition, but also a profound existential crisis amidst sweeping economic transformations, revealing the intricate interplay between illness, activism, and shifting social paradigms.

This podcast is part of a series edited by Thandeka Cochrane, Fabien Provost, and Shagufta Bhangu, and produced by Rory O’Connor, https://linktr.ee/roryoconnor_music.