Race, Disease, and Public Violence: Smallpox and the (Un)Making of Calgary's Chinatown, 1892
2011; Oxford University Press; Volume: 25; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/shm/hkr111
ISSN1477-4666
Autores Tópico(s)Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
ResumoThis paper examines the impact that ideas about race, gender and disease had on the social ordering and settlement of southern Alberta by focusing on a smallpox outbreak, which originated in Calgary during the summer of 1892. The first person to contract the disease was believed to be a Chinese laundry worker. When town authorities discovered the man's illness he was immediately placed under quarantine and the laundry was burned down. Municipal authorities used racialised ideas about health and cleanliness to discursively create sites of meaning, delineating strict spatial boundaries between the Chinese and non-Chinese community. Discourses produced during this period reveal how the language of public health and contagion were used to create sites of belonging and meaning in southern Alberta at a time when western Canadian society was struggling to define its identity within both the Prairie West and Canada more broadly.
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