Health Tomorrow: Interdisciplinarity and Internationality (York University)
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Eds. Robert G. Wallace and Rodrick Wallace, Neoliberal Ebola: Modeling Disease Emergence from Finance to Forest and Farm (New York: Springer, 2016)
No full textSeth Holmes, Fresh Fruit, Broken Bodies: Migrant Farmworkers in the United States (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013)
No full textDecolonizing Stigma and Diagnosis as Healing Work
Full text linkIn order to disrupt dominant understandings of health and well-being, and to confront systemic injustices that result in ongoing health inequities, stigma must be addressed from both within and beyond the realm of medical diagnosis. The individualistic nature of diagnosis, that is characteristic of Western medical approaches, often perpetuates stigma. The role of diagnosis in biomedicine, as well as the historicity of professions and disciplines in Westernized health-care, intersect with different hierarchies of power, identities, and knowledges through mechanisms that operate across local and global contexts. This paper argues that a decolonial approach to health research, practice and education offers an important lens through which to critically analyse these intersections of power, identities, and knowledges. Such an approach can help disrupt dominant understandings of health and well-being. To advance the argument, examples of decolonial thinking approaches and pedagogical methods from South Africa are provided
Who benefits from hospital birth? Perceptions of medicalised pregnancy and childbirth among Andean migrants in Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia
Full text linkThis paper uses ethnographic data on reproductive experiences of indigenous Andean migrant women in the lowland eastern Bolivian city of Santa Cruz de la Sierra as a starting point for discussion of different perspectives on the efforts of the Bolivian state to biomedicalise the processes of pregnancy and childbirth. Pregnant women and babies up to six months of age are covered by the state-funded Universal Mother-Infant Insurance (SUMI) that favours the use of biomedical facilities over the services of traditional midwives that are not covered by the insurance. Unlike in the western Andean highlands of Bolivia, most women in Santa Cruz give birth in hospitals while actively negotiating their options. They are not motivated by strictly medical factors as social or economic circumstances also come into play. Simultaneously, the increased levels of hospital deliveries in Bolivia translate into decreased levels of maternal and perinatal mortality, which in turn help Bolivian statistics to fare better from the point of view of the government and international bodies, such as the WHO. However, the restrictions on qualifying for SUMI are such that women in Santa Cruz are often forced to meet the costs of medical services themselves. I argue that the initial socio-biomedical intention of SUMI has become obscured by its political impact. Keywords: biomedicalization; traditional medicine; migration; childbirth; Santa Cruz de la Sierra; indigenous peoples
Miriam Gross, Farewell to the God of Plague: Chairman Mao’s Campaign to Deworm China (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016)
Full text linkEd. Dayna Nadine Scott, Our Chemical Selves: Gender, Toxics, and Environmental Health (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015)
No full textFragmentation and hierarchies in Argentina’s maternal health services as barriers to access, continuity and comprehensiveness of care
Full text linkThis paper aims to uncover the ways in which institutional regulations of maternal care services offered by the public health system in Argentina generate various forms of fragmentation and hierarchical organization that create barriers to access, continuity, and comprehensiveness of care. The conceptual and methodological tools of institutional ethnography are used as a guide for analysis of interviews with women and health agents from a province of the country’s Western region, as well as participant observation at regional hospitals and local health centers. The barriers identified and analyzed are related to regulations of time(s), space(s), and hierarchies among the health professions involved in service provision related to maternal health.Keywords: maternal health; institutional ethnography; institutional time; institutional space; hierarchies; pregnancy; Argentina; public healthcar
