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The Commodification of Health Care in Kerala, South India: Science, Consumerism and Markets
In India, alongside Information Technology, health care has become a leading sector in the country‘s development as a ̳knowledge economy‘ (World Bank 2005). One of the major achievements and beacons of economic reform is the growth of some of the most technologically advanced hospitals in the world...
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| Format: | Printed Book |
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University of Sussex
2010
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| Online Access: | http://10.26.1.76/ks/004625.pdf |
| Summary: | In India, alongside Information Technology, health care has become a leading
sector in the country‘s development as a ̳knowledge economy‘ (World Bank
2005). One of the major achievements and beacons of economic reform is the
growth of some of the most technologically advanced hospitals in the world. This
thesis examines the social processes shaping the expansion of the private health
care system in the state of Kerala, South India, where large corporate hospitals
and ̳super-speciality‘ medicine have spread throughout urban and many rural
areas.
It explores the intersections between the local and the global, as the
health system becomes the major driver of industrial development, unevenly
linking the local health care system to the global marketplace for technologies,
health care professionals and patients. It examines the three faces of the health
care system in Kerala - as a knowledge industry and route to social mobility for
the middle classes, in particular doctors and nurses; secondly, as a consumer
economy, as people prioritise spending on health care and shop for treatment in
the urban marketplace; and finally as a moral economy, as people develop high
levels of dependency on doctors, hospitals and technologies in the hope of
receiving good health care.
The ethnography is set in Malabar, Northern Kerala, where the expansion of
private health care has been financed by remittances from migration to the
Arabian Gulf countries.
The thesis examines the influence of migration and
economic reforms on local ecologies of health and health care; the impact of the
globalisation of trade in health services in the developing world; the relationship
between the private health care system and the middle classes in South Asia; and
the role of markets in the delivery of health services. Based on 18 months of
participant observation across the urban and rural health care market with local
communities of doctors and patients, it examines how doctors and patients adjust
to a changing ecology and economy of health care. |
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| Item Description: | Thesis Submitted for Doctor of Philosophy in Social Anthropology |