Where Health Comes From: Clinicians, Government, and “The People”

• In Event: Unpacking Expertise - II: Authority, Politics, & the State

Abstract

Where There Is No Doctor is the most widely used community health text in the world. Written in the 1970’s, it traveled with health social movements and has been translated into over 80 languages. Based on the way actors adapt, excerpt, and use the book, I analyze how different groups position themselves vis-a-vis one other, and in relation to larger debates about where health comes from and resulting discourses around access to health care, government responsibility, and the right to health. Drawing on data related to the translation and adaptation of this text in Hindi, Tamil, Kannada and English for use in India, I analyze the tension between providing individual medical treatment and changing the social, political, and economic conditions that create health and illness as an ongoing challenge that permeates debates on the best ways to address health inequities. Specifically, I explore this tension through the ways in which translators, editors, and users of Where There Is No Doctor perceive the book as technical, political, or a combination of both that can be taken apart and repurposed. I argue that Where There Is No Doctor travels as a non-human actant, as interpreted by Situational Analysis, and is constructed as a boundary object by those who interpret the book as technical and/or political and adapt and use it accordingly. Finally, I argue that the travels of Where There Is No Doctor are constructed by and demonstrate the dialectic relationship between technical and political responses to health inequities.

Author

• Lillian Walkover, Drexel University