Welcome - Health, Illness and the World System
SOSA 3143 Health, Illness and the World System
CREDIT HOURS: 3
Placing the political economic bases of health and illness in ethnographic context, this course is concerned with the ways that afflictions of poverty become naturalized as biomedical experiences. Core questions pursed are as follows: 1) how is relative health affected by the world market pressures in diverse global contexts? 2) how do afflictions of poverty become naturalized as biomedical experiences: 3) how do patients and communities activate alternative health infrastructures as they resist their marginalization in neo-liberal political agendas? 4) what kinds of illnesses are characteristic of capitalism and wage labour migration (e.g. HIV/AIDS; SARS)? 5) how have market pressures and profit seeking retarded the progress of scientific inquiry into modern illness? We will elucidate these questions by looking at case studies from Canada, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Spain and Brazil.
FORMAT: Lecture
PREREQUISITES: One SOSA 1000 level course or FYP