Abstract:

Health education constitutes one of China's current administrative public health service programs and serves as a critical component of grassroots health governance. It encompasses professionally defined health knowledge and the manner in which individuals apply their understanding of health, thereby transcends purely administrative domain. The true significance of health education lies in its role within the specific governance process. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in two counties, this paper attempts to construct a framework for comprehending the logic of "governance of life," taking the health education program as a central thread. The prevalence of chronic diseases in aging rural areas is escalating. Against this backdrop, knowledge of preventive medicine provides a set of knowledge that defines healthy lifestyle. If healthy living is viewed as a private matter, health knowledge can only assist individuals in their efforts to solve their own problems, and government intervention may be perceived as a form of social control. Nevertheless, this paper demonstrates that, in the operation of China's grassroots governance, health knowledge is not accurately imparted to individuals, but rather travels in a contextualized and embedded manner to affect the daily lives of rural residents as an integrated community. Through the health education program, actors within and outside the government system and the medical profession work jointly to create a public governance sphere for addressing healthy living issues. This sphere is constituted by both formal institutions and informal social networks (Guanxi), which are mutually reinforcing and basically inseparable. This paper argues that, in the era of chronic diseases, the instinctive pursuit of personal health has emerged as a potent force for social integration. It reflects a shared vision of an orderly social life while simultaneously serving as a reference to governmentality, enabling state involvement in local everyday life.

Key words: health governance, rural health care, acquaintance society, embedded knowledge, state-peasant relations