The accommodation of insanity in Canton, China: 1857--1935

The aim of this dissertation is to study the transfer of social technology across societies and cultures. The research focuses on the provision of social resources, and specifically, how Chinese society procured and allocated care for persons with severe mental illness (SMI). The development and dissemination of such knowledge is important because of its relevance to social work practice and the field of social welfare.; In the late nineteenth century, American medical missionaries established China's first insane asylum in the southern port city of Canton— the John G. Kerr Refuge for the Insane. This Western social institution was built during a time of intense anti-Western sentiment and deep suspicion over motives and practices—the Chinese had mixed feelings about things foreign. In addition, for well over 4000 years the Chinese preferred keeping “insane relatives” within the extended household system rather than segregating them into built institutions. The change in practice raises several questions of interest to social welfare: Why the welfare shift from family to market and why at Canton in 1898? How did contextual factors promote and/or inhibit the transfer of the Western insane asylum? And, what social welfare conditions were necessary for the missionaries to successfully transfer an institutional approach to SMI?; Two theories are examined to explain the accommodation of insanity in China—social technology transfer and a shifting welfare mix. Each theory provides a robust explanation of why China shifted its social location of the insane. The research was based on a case study of the Kerr Refuge—along with intensive field research in Guangzhou, China—in order to examine the causal links making the shift possible. The research concludes that urbanization, population density, housing conditions, the rise of a municipal elite interested in philanthropy and social actors, sufficiently explains the accommodation of the Kerr Refuge at Canton.