Sustainability and Social Justice
The Anti-Politics of Health Reform: Household Power Relations and Child Health in Rural Senegal
Document Type
Article
Abstract
This article employs ethnographic evidence from rural Senegal to explore two dimensions of health sector reform. First, it makes the case that health reforms intersect with and exacerbate existing social, political, and economic inequalities. Current equity analysis draws attention to the ways that liberal and utilitarian frameworks for health reform fail to achieve distributive justice. The author's data suggest that horizontal power relations within households and small communities are equally important for understanding health disparities and the effects of health reform. Second, the article explores how liberal discourses of health reform, particularly calls for 'state-citizen partnerships' and 'responsiblization', promote depoliticised understandings of health. Discourses associated with health reform paradoxically highlight individual responsibility for health while masking the ways that individual health practice is constrained by structural inequalities. © 2009 Taylor & Francis.
Publication Title
Anthropology and Medicine
Publication Date
4-1-2009
Volume
16
Issue
1
First Page
61
Last Page
71
ISSN
1364-8470
DOI
10.1080/13648470802426243
Keywords
health reform, neoliberalism, Senegal
Repository Citation
Foley, Ellen, "The Anti-Politics of Health Reform: Household Power Relations and Child Health in Rural Senegal" (2009). Sustainability and Social Justice. 273.
https://commons.clarku.edu/faculty_idce/273