Global Health Policy, Local Realities: The Fallacy of the Level Playing Field
  • 2000/338 pages
  • Directions in Applied Anthropology: Adaptations and Innovations

Global Health Policy, Local Realities:

The Fallacy of the Level Playing Field

Linda M. Whiteford and Lenore Manderson, editors
Hardcover: $59.95
ISBN: 978-1-55587-874-0
International health planners often design programs based on the assumption that recipient nations share the same "level playing field" with regard to conceptions of health, illness, and at-risk populations. This volume challenges that perception, analyzing the outcomes of humanitarian projects that fail to recognize local ethnic and national identities, as well as the tensions between international health agencies' mandates and powerful centralized government agendas. Case studies are drawn from Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Linda M. Whiteford is professor of anthropology at the University of South Florida. She is widely published on social aspects of health and illness. Lenore Manderson is professor women's health at the University of Melbourne. She is author of Sickness and the State: Health and Illness in Colonial Malaya, 1870-1940 and coeditor (with Pranee Rice) of Maternity and Reproductive Health in Asian Societies.