Luke Messac, No More to Spend
Neglect and the Construction of Scarcity in Malawi's History of Health Care
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12210544 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Thandeka Cochrane (0000-0002-9271-5390, King's College London, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 34 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 340-342 |
| Publication date | 2020-12-14 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Social History of Medicine (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0951-631X • E-ISSN: 1477-4666 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1093/shm/hkaa118 |
| OpenAlex | W3113674784 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
Luke Messac’s excellent book takes up a key question that should be asked far more frequently in global health. What makes it so easy for us to accept, and take as inevitable, the health inequalities of the world? Why do we so easily resign ourselves to accepting that certain peoples, in this case the majority of Malawians, should suffer, often enormously, and possibly die from, curable injuries, illnesses and diseases? The central thesis of Messac’s book is to challenge the reification and normative acceptance of the narrative of ‘inevitable scarcity’ that underpins the majority of global and public health relations with and in the global south. With his book, Messac sets out to show us that dramatic health inequalities and ‘inevitable scarcity’ are not the unavoidable, necessary condition of globalised late capitalism that they are so often made out to be. Rather, they are a political choice, one that has
Capitalism · Development economics · Economics · Health care · Inequality · Market economy · Narrative · Neglect · Normative · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Public health · Reification (Marxism · Scarcity · Sociology · History of Science and Medicine · Medicine · Nursing · Law · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.25 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2022 - 2022 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |