In understanding the moral realm of health systems and their implications, we as ethnographers witness a compelling struggle between immediate, local, and personal continuities and a global force that which tries to shape and tween them. This global force that continually attempts to reformat and formulate local histories and inherent traditions (separated often times geographically and elsewhere culturally) through the medicalization of illness and disability, are met with a reciprocal opposition from the subjected individuals. It is a rigid political paradox which puts us at ends with creating a system of health care for the betterment of all of humanity but also one that which is ultra-sensitive to local/personal continuities. And within the highly charged political arena of “universal” health care, it often calls for inquiry into the national and international context which it is pl

It is true that we all exist in a world with gross inequities and inequalities. While the economically privileged societies benefit most from material wealth, availability of information, and accessibility to health care, those less economically privileged of other parts of the world have suffered setbacks in all these areas. This has left them in unfortunate positions in which tuberculosis runs rampant, malaria still kills millions, and the rate of death at birth is disproportionately higher than of neighboring areas.

It had begun at its inception that the rights of patients are what was (and still is) essentially at stake in the application of health systems designed to create the condition for the betterment of the majority, under the auspices of a path of least resistance. With their enormous clout, empowered political bodies have imposed health systems and restrictive laws for a variety of reasons—curbing the spread of disease, declaring moral judgements, or to benefit/protect corporate pharmaceutical companies, to name a few. And through the methodologies of government and health officials, the self is represented as a scientific body, claiming a certain level of biological deterministic ideology, where a certain class of beings, deemed biologically equivalent, is wholl

Some topics in this essay:
Border Abortions”, , Patricia Maginnis, Roe Wade’s, health systems, kleinman pg, health care, kaufert pg 288, kleinman pg 70, medical technology, understanding health, global force, economically privileged, pg 70, pg 288, breast cancer,