"More-Than People's Communes" in Mao-Era China: A Story of Limitations, A Story for Self-Restraint

Jongsik Christian Yi  (Pohang University of Science and Technology)

Dates: Monday, 28/04/2025
Time: 5:30pm
Venue: F09.331. Madsen Building. Madsen Seminar Room 331
How to register: Free, no registration required

Abstract: In 1970, more than 94 million bovines and equines, along with 200 million pigs, coexisted with 820 million humans on Chinese soil. As the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was still ongoing, collectivized communities called “People’s Communes” shaped the everyday lives not only of people but also of various animals. Yet, very little has been known about how these communal animals and their diverse human protectors---Western-trained elite veterinarians, folk animal healers, animal caretakers, breeders, and animal disease prevention workers---lived. I argue because farm animals were essential for survival, human commune members developed various ways of caring for, healing, and exploiting these nonhuman members in order to navigate the revolution’s radicalism and unpredictability. By demonstrating how the communes were literally “more-than people’s communes,” I aim to deepen our understanding of the resilience of local societies in Mao-era China, as well as the critical role of scientific and medical knowledge in sustaining the living space at the grassroots level.

Bio: Jongsik Christiani Yi is an assistant professor of the history of science and social data science at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), South Korea. Born in Tokyo, Japan and raised in Seoul, South Korea, he received his bachelor's in History from Korea University and PhD in the History of Science from Harvard University. He examines how science, technology, and medicine mediate human interactions with nonhuman entities in the environments that we share. He is currently completing his first monograph, More-Than People’s Communes: Veterinary Workers and Nonhuman Animals in Mao-Era China, which is under contract with the University of Chicago Press.