Privatization and the New Medical Pluralism: Shifting Healthcare Landscapes in Maya Guatemala (2015) explores the contemporary terrain of healthcare in Guatemala. This anthology offers an ethnographic portrait of the effects of healthcare privatization for indigenous Maya people, who have historically endured numerous disparities in health and healthcare access. The collection of essays 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 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, and new forms of inequality in access to healthcare abound. This volume connects these themes to critical studies of global health, exposing the strictures and apertures of healthcare privatization for marginalized populations in Guatemala.
|
Contributors
|
Peter Benson, Anita Chary, Alejandra Colom, Shom Dasgupta-Tsikinas, David Flood, Rachel Hall-Clifford, Nora King, Jonathan Maupin, Carla Pezzia, Peter Rohloff, Paul Wise
|
Support
|
Publication of this book was generously supported by the Global Health Center of the Institute for Public Health as well as the Medical Scientist Training Program at Washington University in St. Louis.
|