Socializing Medicine : Health Humanities and East Asian Media

In Socializing Medicine, Pao-chen Tang, Yuqian Yan, and Ling Zhang explore medicine, health, and East Asian media. They reveal how mass media has controlled health from the early 20th century to now. The book adopts anti-colonial and anti-capitalist perspectives, challenging dominant health narratives for equitable healthcare.

An analysis of the use of mass media as a tool to control healthcare.

Socializing Medicine explores the intersections of medicine, health, and East Asian media. Interweaving archival research, audiovisual analyses, and theoretical insights from the emerging field of Health Humanities, the contributors reveal the multifaceted ways in which mass media—including photography, film, television, and live streaming—has been deployed as a tool for controlling medicine and health, privileging those with power and authority since the early twentieth century. Adopting anti-colonial and anti-capitalist perspectives, the contributors in this volume challenge the dominant mediations of health against the backdrop of imperialism, Cold War geopolitical tensions, and neoliberal capitalism. Collectively, they advocate for alternative understandings of medical culture through media productions that envision accessible and equitable healthcare practices.