Eliciting Care: Health and Power in Northern Thailand (New Perspectives in SE Asian Studies)

In 2001, Thailand introduced universal health care reforms that have become some of the most celebrated in the world, providing almost its entire population with health protection coverage. However, this remarkable implementation of health policy is not without its weaknesses. Drawing on two years of fieldwork at a district hospital in northern Thailand, Bo Kyeong Seo examines how people in marginal and dependent social positions negotiate the process of obtaining care. Using the broader concept of elicitation, Seo analyzes the social encounters and forces that shape caregivers. These dynamics challenge dichotomies of subjugation and resistance, consent and coercion, and dependence and autonomy. The intimate and moving stories at the core of Eliciting Care from patients and providers draw attention to a broader, critically important phenomenon at the hospital level. Seo's poignant ethnography engages with feminist theory on the ethics of care, and in so doing, makes a significant contribution to emerging work in the field of health policy and politics. CONTENTS 8 List of Illustrations 10 Acknowledgments 12 Introduction: Others’ Unpleasant Feet 22 1. The Government of Care 42 2. Patient Waiting 58 3. Careful Inscription 77 4. Premature Life and Death 97 5. Vulnerability and Nurturance at Home 113 6. Spirits and the Circuitry of Care 137 Conclusion: An Affirmative Politics of Care 159 NOTES 168 REFERENCES 182 INDEX 200