César Abadía-Barrero’s Health in Ruins: The Capitalist Destruction of Medical Care at a Colombian Maternity Hospital is one of several forthcoming Duke University Press titles that we have recently indexed at Southwest Humanities. This excellent and thoroughly researched study critically examines how neoliberal market reforms in Colombia have impacted health care in the country, particularly with regard to El Materno, one of Colombia’s most historic and well-known maternity hospitals. “Using team-based and collaborative ethnography to analyze the social life of neoliberal health policy, Abadía-Barrero details the everyday dynamics around teaching, learning, and working in health care before, during, and after privatization. He argues that health care privatization is not only about defunding public hospitals; it also ruins rich traditions of medical care by denying or destroying ways of practicing medicine that challenge Western medicine.” For more information about this book, which will be available for purchase in November 2022, please take a look at the publisher’s website here.
SOUTHWEST HUMANITIES 