A Prosperous ‘Cancer Village’

Abstract

Money, or life? Town and Village Enterprises helped local farmers get rich quickly, but they also caused serious environmental pollution that was a threat to people’s health. Through a study of a village in northern Zhejiang, this chapter shows how, through their daily experiences, villagers established a logical relationship between industrial pollution and cancer and came to believe that the incidence of cancer was not only high, but strongly related to pollution. Facing health risks from pollution, the villagers initially engaged in resistance, but when this strategy was unsuccessful, they later switched to less active measures.