Revolutionary medicine : health and the body in post-Soviet Cuba / P. Sean Brotherton.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Brotherton, Pierre Sean, 1972-

Series:

Experimental futures

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Medical policy--Cuba.

Medical policy.

Human body--Political aspects--Cuba.

Human body.

Medical care--Cuba.

Medical care.

Biopolitics--Cuba.

Biopolitics.

Human body--Political aspects.

Cuba.

Physical Description:

xxvii, 256 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Durham [N.C.] : Duke University Press, 2012.

Summary:

Revolutionary Medicine is a richly textured examination of the ways that Cuba's public health care system has changed during die 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 states 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. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction

Bodies in states of crisis

Biopolitics in the "special period"

The biopolitics of health

Expanding therapeutic itineraries

Socialist governmentality, public health, and risk

Medicalized subjectivities

Curing the ills of society

Preventative strategies and productive bodies

We have to think like capitalists but continue being socialists

Turismo y salud, S.A. : the rise of social entrepreneurs

My doctor keeps the lights on

Bodies entangled in history.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780822351948

0822351943

9780822352051

0822352052

OCLC:

746489166