ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Draft Animals and their Taskmasters in Mao-Era Communes

• In Event: Attuning to Multispecies Worlds: Farmed Animals, One Health, and Shifting Scientific Practices in Modern China

English Abstract

In 1970, more than 94 million bovines and equines and 200 million pigs lived alongside 820 million humans on Chinese soil. As the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution continued to unfold, collectivized communities known as “People’s Communes” shaped the everyday lives not only of people but also of various animals. This paper explores the critical role of nonhuman animals in the everyday economy of the communes, particularly during a time when machinery was scarce. I classify communal animal labor into two categories, agricultural and transportation, and offer a detailed examination of each, with particular attention to the tensions and collaborations between the nonhuman workers and human taskmasters (shiyiyuan). In doing so, I illuminate how animal labor was organized and sustained within the communal setting. I then turn to the ways in which taskmasters were not only attentive to the health of working animals but also possessed a certain degree of veterinary knowledge. In many cases, they were the first to detect abnormalities in the animals’ bodies and to administer first aid. By reconstructing the process through which taskmasters acquired basic veterinary knowledge on communal rice paddies and fields, in village streets and alleys, this paper highlights how the intricate relationships between humans and animals underpinned the functioning and resilience of the Maoist communes.

Author

• Jongsik Christian Yi, Korea Advanced Institute of Science & Technology (KAIST)