Habituating Individuality: The Framing of Tuberculosis and Its Material Solutions in Republican China

In their endeavor to solve China’s tuberculosis crisis, public health advocates in the 1930s framed tuberculosis as a disease of the Chinese family. Instead of being considered as a social disease, tuberculosis drew people’s attention to the graphic details of personal health habits and the allegedly pathogenic structure of the Chinese family. Focusing on so-called unhygienic habits and on the selective acceptance, abandonment, or innovation of household utensils (such as the traditional sleeping platform, the individual cup, and the hygienic table), the author traces the process by which tuberculosis contributed to the making of the modern Chinese body by way of habituating individuality.