Publication Date
4-2019
Document Type
Article
Keywords
Guatemala, Health equity, Epidemiology
Abstract
The relationship between public health practice and the fulfilment of the right to health is often assumed to be synergistic. With the goal of understanding how exactly this relationship happens, I studied the everyday practice of epidemiology in Guatemala, seeking to understand how it shapes and is shaped by the notion of health as a human right. Here I present findings from my ethnographic investigation of the Guatemalan Centro Nacional de Epidemiología (National Epidemiology Center), created in 2004 with the explicit mission of contributing to fulfilling the right to health for the inhabitants of Guatemala. While the relationship between epidemiological practice and the right to health is influenced by the specific configuration of local and transnational flows (bureaucratic, economic, ideological, political, scientific, social, and symbolic), epidemiologists also play an important mediating role. There are four intermediate social mechanisms that shape the relevance of epidemiological practice to fulfilling the right to health in Guatemala. Given how the country’s economic and social inequalities translate into enormous health inequities, an epidemiological practice committed to the right to health should aspire to transform, rather than reproduce, the social hierarchies underlying such inequalities. The mechanisms I identified shape how epidemiological practice contributes to the reproduction or transformation of such hierarchies. These mechanisms shape what I call ‘neocolonial epidemiology’, and include: institutional chaos, disciplinary conformism, global health international relations, and social relations at the national level.
Copyright Statement / License for Reuse
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Rights Holder
Alejandro Cerón
Provenance
Received from author
File Format
application/pdf
Language
English (eng)
Extent
24 pgs
File Size
378 KB
Publication Statement
This article was originally published under a CC BY 4.0 license as:
Cerón, A. (2019). Neocolonial epidemiology: Public health practice and the right to health in Guatemala. Medicine Anthropology Theory, 6(1), 30-54. DOI: 10.17157/mat.6.1.647
Publication Title
Medicine Anthropology Theory
Volume
6
Issue
978336000
First Page
30
Last Page
54
ISSN
2405-691X
Recommended Citation
Cerón, A. (2019). Neocolonial epidemiology: Public health practice and the right to health in Guatemala. Medicine Anthropology Theory, 6(1), 30-54. DOI: 10.17157/mat.6.1.647
DOI Link
ttps://doi.org/10.17157/mat.6.1.647
Included in
Inequality and Stratification Commons, Medicine and Health Commons, Social and Cultural Anthropology Commons