New Perspectives in SE Asian Studies

Health and Power in Northern Thailand

Bo Kyeong Seo

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780299326937
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

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.

Table of contents

• CONTENTS
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Others’ Unpleasant Feet
• 1. The Government of Care
• 2. Patient Waiting
• 3. Careful Inscription
• 4. Premature Life and Death
• 5. Vulnerability and Nurturance at Home
• 6. Spirits and the Circuitry of Care
• Conclusion: An Affirmative Politics of Care
• NOTES
• REFERENCES
• INDEX