Revolutionary Medicine

by Brotherton, P. Sean

• ISBN13: 9780822352051
• ISBN10: 0822352052
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-03-21
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

Revolutionary Medicineis a richly textured examination of the ways that Cuba's public health care system has changed during the past two decades and of the meaning of those changes for ordinary Cubans. Until the Soviet bloc collapsed in 1989, socialist Cuba encouraged citizens to view access to health care as a human right and the state's responsibility to provide it as a moral imperative. Since the loss of Soviet subsidies and the tightening of the U.S. economic embargo, Cuba's government has found it hard to provide the high-quality universal medical care that was so central to the revolutionary socialist project. In Revolutionary Medicine, P. Sean Brotherton deftly integrates theory and history with ethnographic research in Havana, including interviews with family physicians, public health officials, research scientists, and citizens seeking medical care. He describes how the deterioration of health and social welfare programs has led Cubans to seek health care through informal arrangements, as well as state-sponsored programs. Their creative, resourceful pursuit of health and well-being provides insight into how they navigate, adapt to, and pragmatically cope with the rapid social, economic, and political changes in post-Soviet Cuba.

Author Biography

P. Sean Brotherton is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Yale University.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
List of Tables	p. xi
Prologue	p. xiii
Preface: An Ethnography of Contradictions	p. xv
Acknowledgments	p. xxv
Introduction: Bodies in States of Crisis	p. 1
Biopolitics in the Special Period	p. 13
The Biopolitics of Health	p. 15
Expanding Therapeutic Itineraries	p. 35
Socialist Govern Mentality, Public Health, and Risk	p. 55
Medicalized Subjectivities	p. 57
Curing the Social Ills of Society	p. 84
Preventive Strategies and Productive Bodies	p. 111
We Have to Think Like Capitalists but Continue Being Socialists	p. 145
Turismo y Salud, S A.: The Rise of Socialist Entrepreneurs	p. 147
My Doctor Keeps the Lights On	p. 169
Conclusion: Bodies Entangled in History	p. 182
Coda	p. 191
Notes	p. 193
Bibliography	p. 219
Index	p. 245
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