Read more
Privatization and the New Medical Pluralism is the first collection of its kind to explore the contemporary terrain of healthcare in Guatemala through reflective ethnography. This volume offers a nuanced portrait of the effects of healthcare privatization for indigenous Maya people, who have historically endured numerous disparities in health and healthcare access. The collection provides an updated understanding of medical pluralism, which concerns not only the tensions and exchanges between ethnomedicine and biomedicine that have historically shaped Maya people's experiences of health, but also the multiple competing biomedical institutions that have emerged in a highly privatized, market-driven environment of care. The contributors examine the macro-structural and micro-level implications of the proliferation of non-governmental organizations, private fee-for-service clinics, and new pharmaceuticals against the backdrop of a deteriorating public health system. In this environment, health seekers encounter new challenges and opportunities, relationships between the public, private, and civil sectors transform, and new forms of inequality in access to healthcare abound. This volume connects these themes to critical studies of global and public health, exposing the strictures and apertures of healthcare privatization for marginalized populations in Guatemala.
List of contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction Peter Rohloff & Anita Chary
Part One: The Public-Private Interface
Chapter 1 Strategic Alliances: The Shifting Motivations for NGO Collaboration with Government Programs
Jonathan Maupin
Chapter 2 ¿Mi Familia Pobrezä: Conditional Cash Transfers and Maternal-Child Health in Rural Guatemala
Shom Dasgupta-Tsinikas and Paul Wise
Chapter 3 Forced Motherhood in Guatemala: An Analysis of the Thousand Days Initiative
Alejandra Colom
Part Two: Commoditizing Care
Chapter 4 ¿This Disease Is for Those Who Can Afford It¿: Diabetes in Indigenous Maya Communities
David Flood and Peter Rohloff
Chapter 5 Capitalizing on Care: Marketplace Quasi-pharmaceuticals in the Guatemalan Health-seeking Landscape
Rachel Hall-Clifford
Part Three: Navigating Novel Resources
Chapter 6 Engaging Mental Healthcare in a Disengaged System
Carla Pezzia
Chapter 7 Hysterectomies and Healer Shopping: Cervical Cancer and Therapeutic Anarchy in Guatemala
Anita Chary
Chapter 8 Leveraging Resources in Contemporary Maya Midwifery
Nora King, Anita Chary, and Peter Rohloff
Chapter 9 Conclusion: A Bad Conscience of Justice!
Peter Benson
References
Contributors
Index
About the author
Anita Chary is an MD/PhD candidate in anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis.
Peter Rohloff is an instructor in medicine at Harvard University, an internist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and a pediatrician at Children's Hospital Boston.
Summary
Privatization and the New Medical Pluralism provides ethnographic accounts of the effects of healthcare privatization for indigenous Maya people in Guatemala. This volume will greatly interest scholars in anthropology, global health, and public policy by offering insight into the challenges, opportunities, and inequalities the Maya people face.
