The clash of medical civilizations: experiencing "primary care" in a neoliberal culture.
An anthropologist describes how he found himself at the vortex of a "clash of medical civilizations:" neoliberalism and the international primary health care movement. His involvement in a $6 million social change initiative in medical education became a basis to unlock the hidden tensions, contradictions and movements within the "primary care" phenomenon. The essay is structured on five ethnographic stories, situated on a continuum from "natural" species-level primary care to "unnatural" neoliberal primary care. Food is an element of all tales. Taking the long view of history/prehistory permits us to better recognize ideological distortions in order to more capably transform medicine.
Department of Behavioral Sciences, University of Michigan-Dearborn, 4901 Evergreen Rd, 4025 CASL Building, MI 48128-1491, USA. mckennab@umd.umich.edu
Brian
B
McKenna
D000884:Anthropology, Cultural; D060432:Anthropology, Medical; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D006801:Humans; D010686:Philosophy, Medical; D058007:Physicians, Primary Care / Q000193:education*; D011056:Political Systems / Q000145:classification; D011320:Primary Health Care / Q000592:standards / Q000639:trends*; D012922:Social Change