Brandeis University doctoral candidate, Casey J. Miller, advised by Dr. Sarah Lamb and Dr. Ellen Schattschneider, will undertake research on the local social and cultural effects of a global health crisis. The research will be carried out in China, where the researcher will focus on how members of local health-promotion groups appropriate and translate international ideas and practices regarding global diseases.
The study will start with a regional network of Chinese grassroots men's health groups. Such groups are increasing in China, sometimes in collaboration with state health departments, despite restrictions on Chinese non-governmental organizations. The researcher will use a mix of ethnographic methods including: participating in and observing group activities and events, conducting semi-structured interviews, and holding focus groups with group volunteers, health department officials, and local community members. The researcher also will as analyze print and electronic media produced by and for men's groups.
This research is important because it will generate knowledge about grassroots health education and prevention activities, crucial for preventing the future spread of global pandemics. Deepening our understanding of how global and national prevention goals and policies interact with and are enacted through local and regional stakeholders may assist in the planning and implementation of more effective policies and programs both in China and elsewhere. The research also will support the education of a social scientist.
In the late 1970s, Chinese leaders instituted sweeping social and economic reforms aimed at "opening up" China to the outside world. Whether or not reforms are helping to create civil society, a term often used in the West to theorize a public space that mediates between the family and the modern state, as well as how reforms are affecting the intimate lives of individual Chinese citizens are subjects of much scholarly debate. This dissertation project offers new insights into these debates by examining the spread of grassroots gay and lesbian non-governmental organizations (NGOs) across China. Despite enduring restrictions on voluntary associations in China, as well as a legacy of social marginalization of homosexuality, grassroots gay and lesbian NGOs are playing an increasingly important role in government efforts to slow the spread of HIV and are also actively working to increase awareness and acceptance of homosexuality as well as to develop a more inclusive, participatory, and democratic society. The principal objectives of this project are to examine the effects of a growing Chinese grassroots gay and lesbian social movement on the lives of individual Chinese gays and lesbians as well as to consider how social and economic reforms and the global AIDS crisis may be creating new opportunities for civic engagement and political participation in China. To achieve these objectives the Co-PI completed over 16 months of fieldwork, including 13 months of daily, in-depth ethnographic research with and among the leaders and volunteers of two grassroots gay and lesbian NGOs located in one northwestern Chinese city. This dissertation project contributes to several important and ongoing discussions in anthropology and Chinese studies, including the growing literatures on the cross-cultural and comparative study of gay and lesbian experiences and practices of gender, sexuality, intimacy, and kinship; civil society, state-society relations, and NGOs; and local and global efforts towards effective and culturally informed HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment practices.
