Epidemic politics in contemporary Vietnam : public health and the state

Author(s)

    • Lincoln, Martha (Medical and Cultural Anthropologist)

Bibliographic Information

Epidemic politics in contemporary Vietnam : public health and the state

Martha Lincoln

Bloomsbury Academic, 2022

  • : hb

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Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [172]-203) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

Through a tumultuous 20th-century period of revolution and foreign wars, Vietnam's public health system was praised by international observers as a "bright light in an epidemiologically dark world," standing out for its accomplishments in infectious disease control. Since the country's transition to a "market economy with socialist orientation" in the mid-1980s, however, some of these achievements have been reversed as the "renovation" of national systems for welfare and health leaves gaps in the social safety net. A series of cholera outbreaks that spread through Northern Vietnam in 2007-2010 revealed the paradoxes, contradictions, and challenges that Vietnam faces in its post-transition period. This book presents an anthropological analysis of the political, economic, and infrastructural inputs to these epidemics and suggests how the most commonly repeated accounts of disease spread misdirected public attention and suppressed awareness of risk factors in Vietnam's capital. Drawing a parallel to the experience of novel coronavirus in Asia and beyond, this book reflects on how political priorities, economic forces, and cultural struggles influence the experience and the epidemiology of infectious disease.

Table of Contents

Introduction Chapter 1: Medicine and Disease in North Vietnam: Doctoring the Body Politic Chapter 2: Water and Infrastructure in Transition Chapter 3: Risky (Small) Business: Constructing a Disease of the Market Chapter 4: Sacrificial Beasts: Disease Risk at the Species Boundary Chapter 5: Statistics as Anti-Politics: Science and Its Discontents Conclusion

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