Resistance to dominant narratives and the construction of identity legitimacy: counterstories of Chinese migrant workers with pneumoconiosis

Abstract

This study is focused on the pneumoconiosis workers’ illness narratives in Bashan Town in Chongqing. In-depth interviews were used to gather their illness narratives, and a “counterstory” framework was adopted for the critical analysis of the resistance of these texts to the dominant discourse. The results showed that these pneumoconiosis counterstories to be legitimacy narratives that sought four types of legitimacy: medical, suffering, moral, and public. Three opposing identity relations were explored in these narratives: qualified vs unrecognized pneumoconiosis patients, bearers of great suffering vs complainers without cause and neglected within the pneumoconiosis group vs Invisible pneumoconiosis. These identity relations strengthened the pneumoconiosis workers’ confrontation with the illegitimacy of the main social narrative, and they were used in the attempt to construct a legitimized self-identity. The study also identified three narrative strategies used to resist the oppressive dominant narrative, they are revelation, refusal and contestation. Finally, the author proposed that these counterstories consisted a weapon for the weak to voice their legitimacy concerns and offered recommendations for the prevention and treatment of pneumoconiosis.

Keywords:

• pneumoconiosis
• legitimacy narrative
• counterstory
• identity construction
• resistance to dominant narratives

Notes

1 Frank (1995) identified three types of narrative theme: restitution, chaos, and quest narratives.

2 Citation of interview texts: LZY is an abbreviation of the respondent’s name, M means male (F means female), and 20150609 refers to the time of the interview, i.e., June 9, 2015.

3 See the People’s Republic of China Ministry of Health Order No. 24 “Occupational Disease Diagnosis and Identification Management Measures,” which came into operation on 1 May 2002. Although the pneumoconiosis patients in this study had already contracted the illness by 2000, the description is based on clause No. 24.

4 See news report “Experts Suggest all Pneumoconiosis Patients be in the Medical Care System.”

http://news.xinhuanet.com/gongyi/2014-03/03/c_126212125.htm

5 See the news report, “The Launch of China’s Mining Pneumoconiosis Rehabilitation Project for The Welfare of Numerous Coal Miners.” http://www.people.com.cn/GB/huanbao/1072/3016351.html

6 This study seeks to answer the question by examining the pneumoconiosis patients’ perceptions of master narratives and their experiences of them. Although gaps exist between the perception and construction of the master narrative and the real one, the author believes that it is not appropriate to talk about the influence of master narrative separate from the subjective perspective of patients with pneumoconiosis. The author suggests that future research can add the narrative perspectives of other social groups to narrow the gap in the research on this area.

7 The expression of facts in narrative is actually the reconstruction of a certain experience by individuals and is therefore subjective. Objective excerpts are still used here because they did not use vocabulary or sentences in the narrative process to express attitudes and value judgments but to tell about the matter itself.