| Popis: |
Given its holistic orientation, most medical anthropology touches upon politics: how power organizes systems of healing; how social suffering—usually political in origin—manifests in bodily symptoms; how some bodies are valued and optimized while others are controlled; and how dominant systems of meaning make legitimate some illness experiences and render others unknowable and invalid. The major theoretical traditions of the field—structural functionalism; phenomenology; Foucauldian biopolitics; critical medical anthropology; feminist epistemologies; and science and technology studies—have long grappled with power and politics. Fewer medical anthropologists, however, have studied policy directly. Policy is usually taken to mean guidelines for action. Policies can be official as of a government or more informal and practical. The organization of health systems and the provision of care is guided by policy decisions and non-decisions. Some of the works collected here take the more indirect approach to studying policy by exploring how politics impact health systems and the experiences of patients and healers. But the majority of the works study policy directly, either as a process that anthropology can help to better apprehend or as a domain of action that would benefit from anthropological insights. Anthropologists have productively studied all phases of the policy process from agenda setting, to policy formation, implementation, and assessment. Since all policies are health policies in the sense that they have potential health impacts, the possibilities for studying health policies anthropologically are practically endless. However, we have narrowed the field by concentrating on the major themes and trends in the literature: health reform and the marketization of care; immigration policy and health; race, indigeneity, and decolonizing health; pharmaceutical policy; governance and global health; reproduction and women’s health; and public health policy. We have opted for a thematic rather than a theoretical organization, so readers will find a variety of theoretical orientations including applied approaches in each of the sections. |
