Between Families and Institutions

“In this fascinating and moving ethnographic examination of the management of severe mental illness in contemporary China, Zhiying Ma shows not only how the lessons of psychiatric care can apply to other types of biopolitical management in China, but how these lessons apply elsewhere throughout the world. Between Families and Institutions is one of the best books I have read in a while.” - Katherine A. Mason, author of Infectious Change: Reinventing Chinese Public Health after an Epidemic

“Offering a highly sophisticated and multidimensional account of how mental illness is treated, managed, and lived, Zhiying Ma shows how the predominating logic of risk in postsocialist Chinese psychiatry and governance overrides any meaningful ethics of care, leaving family members to absorb and make up for deficiencies of institutional care and support. Within the anthropology of China, there is virtually no existing study of this kind. This outstanding book makes an important contribution to the anthropology of China as well as social science approaches to mental health.” - Teresa Kuan, author of Love’s Uncertainty: The Politics and Ethics of Child Rearing in Contemporary China

"An empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated study that will reward close reading by anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists specializing in China, as well as by scholars of disability, law and biopolitics beyond the China field." - Yidong Gong, The China Quarterly

"Zhiying Ma’s compelling and empirically rich ethnographic study ... explores [its] questions in great depth and generates valuable insights into China’s mental health governance in recent decades." - Xiaorong Gu, Journal of Urban Affairs