Abstract:


This talk addresses the shift from home confinement of the insane to public institutionalization in the early twentieth century. Using police records from the Beijing Municipal Asylum, the talk will show how local families took advantage of government social services as a strategic means by which to unburden themselves of the financial and emotional demands of madness. In so doing, these families also pushed the boundaries of what behaviors could be considered “mad.” By the middle of the Republican period, families had begun to invoke the charge of madness not simply for the violent and criminally insane, but also for those who merely disrupted the normal patterns of life.