Barefoot doctors and the provision of rural health care

Abstract

This paper reaches beyond a nostalgic view of barefoot doctors and calls into question the orthodox interpretations that dominate present scholarship on public health and the provision of rural health in China. It retrieves Western medicine in rural China from potential historical oblivion through the perspective of the social history of medicine. It places barefoot doctors in the context of the history of debates concerning how the legitimacy of Chinese medicine has been challenged by Western medicine since the early twentieth century. Ultimately, it offers a carefully contextualized critique of conventional views on the role of barefoot doctors, their legacy, and their impact, both in rural areas and in China as a whole, while making theoretical contributions to the Chinese social historiography of medicine.