Overview

In 1988, a new health care system, the Sistema Único de Saúde (Unified Health Care System or SUS) was formally established in Brazil. The system was intended, among other goals, to provide universal access to health care services and to redefine health as a citizen’s right and a duty of the state. A Right to Health explores how these goals have unfolded within an urban peripheral community located on the edges of the northeastern city of Fortaleza. Focusing on the decade 1998–2008 and the impact of health care reforms on one low-income neighborhood, Jessica Jerome documents the tensions that arose between the ideals of the reforms and their entanglement with pervasive socioeconomic inequality, neoliberal economic policy, and generational tension with the community. Using ethnographic and historical research, the book traces the history of political activism in the community, showing that, since the community’s formation in the early 1930s, residents have consistently fought for health care services. In so doing, Jerome develops a multilayered portrait of urban peripheral life and suggests that the notion of health care as a right of each citizen plays a major role not only in the way in which health care is allocated, but, perhaps more importantly, in how health care is understood and experienced.

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9781477311318

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This excellent ethnography . . . will appeal to many audiences and lends itself well to undergraduate teaching. What is particularly attractive about the book is its deft handling of ethnographic evidence: it shows rather than tells. This approach is gratifying because it trusts the scholarly reader to draw suggestive connections to multiple bodies of contemporary theory rather than hammering together an ambitious theoretical armature with a few slender tacks of ethnographic detail. It is inviting to the student reader because it is a lively, funny, touching read - full of memorable, evocative description and incident - that students will readily be able to mine for social theoretical points. . . . Jerome's analysis offers keen insight into the current political situation in Brazil. * Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies * [A] compelling and timely ethnography...A Right to Health combines a detailed history of Brazilian health care with compelling illness narratives. * Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology *

This excellent ethnography ... will appeal to many audiences and lends itself well to undergraduate teaching. What is particularly attractive about the book is its deft handling of ethnographic evidence: it shows rather than tells. This approach is gratifying because it trusts the scholarly reader to draw suggestive connections to multiple bodies of contemporary theory rather than hammering together an ambitious theoretical armature with a few slender tacks of ethnographic detail. It is inviting to the student reader because it is a lively, funny, touching read - full of memorable, evocative description and incident - that students will readily be able to mine for social theoretical points... Jerome's analysis offers keen insight into the current political situation in Brazil. Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies

Author Information

Jessica Jerome is a medical anthropologist and an assistant professor in the Department of Health Sciences at DePaul University.

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