Global health and the new world order: Historical and anthropological approaches to a changing regime of governance (Social Histories of Medicine Book 36)

The phrase ‘global health’ appears ubiquitously in contemporary medical spheres, from academic research programs to websites of pharmaceutical companies. In its most visible manifestation, global health refers to strategies addressing major epidemics and endemic conditions through philanthropy, and multilateral, private-public partnerships. This book explores the origins of global health, a new regime of health intervention in countries of the global South born around 1990, examining its assemblages of knowledge, practices and policies. The volume proposes an encompassing view of the transition from international public health to global health, bringing together historians and anthropologists to analyse why new modes of “interventions on the life of others” recently appeared and how they blur the classical divides between North and South. The contributors argue that not only does the global health enterprise signal a significant departure from the postwar targets and modes of operations typical of international public health, but that new configurations of action have moved global health beyond concerns with infectious diseases and state-based programs. The book will appeal to academics, students and health professionals interested in new discussions about the transnational circulation of drugs, bugs, therapies, biomedical technologies and people in the context of the "neo-liberal turn" in development practices. What does global health stem from, when is it born, how does it relate to the contemporary world order? This book explores the origins of global health, a new regime of health intervention in countries of the global South, born around 1990. It proposes an encompassing view of the transition from international public health to global health, bringing together historians and anthropologists to explore the relationship between knowledge, practices and policies. It aims at interrogating two gaps left by historical and anthropological studies of the governance of health outside Europe and North America. The first is a temporal gap between the historiography of international public health through the 1970s and the numerous anthropological studies of global health in the present. The second originates in problems of scale. Macro-inquiries of institutions and politics, and micro-investigations of local configurations, abound. The book relies on a stronger engagement between history and anthropology, i.e. the harnessing of concepts (circulation, scale, transnationalism) crossing both of them, and on four domains of intervention: tuberculosis, mental health, medical genetics and traditional (Asian) medicines. The volume analyses how the new modes of ‘interventions on the life of others’ recently appeared, why they blur the classical divides between North and South and how they relate to the more general neoliberal turn in politics and economy. The book is meant for academics, students and health professionals interested in new discussions about the transnational circulation of drugs, bugs, therapies, biomedical technologies and people in the context of the ‘neoliberal turn’ in development practices. What does global health stem from, when is it born and how does it relate to the contemporary world order? In this book, historians and anthropologists tackle these questions by exploring the transnational circulation of drugs, bugs, therapies, biomedical technologies and people in the context of the "neo-liberal turn" in development practices. -- .