Book Reviews by Meghna Roy
Sociology of Health and Illness, 2022
Rothman introduces the idea that biomedicine works like an empire which infiltrates all areas of ... more Rothman introduces the idea that biomedicine works like an empire which infiltrates all areas of individual life. Conceptualising biomedicine as a global power, the author explains why despite the good it does, it works against our best interests. In this timely contribution, she demonstrates this argument through the case of the COVID-19 pandemic during which people turned to the 'Biomedical Empire' even though it had no cure to offer. She contends that a pandemic is a moment when we are made to rethink our taken for granted ideas about the world-what health care means and whether biomedicine can provide it. We are citizens of this Empire from birth to death and in between. Instead of the passive role that social constructionism grants to biomedicine (p. 22), Rothman's framework suggests that the Biomedical Empire actively shapes social processes. Rothman traces the history of public health and how it eventually came to fail us. Health, which initially meant access to basic conditions of existence such as clean air, water and food was traded for access to medicine. Since World War II, instead of improving these conditions, the public health project has been using philanthrocapitalism to keep workers in the third world fit for work. In the process, it deployed 'magic bullet' developmentalist solutions such as vaccine distribution. It imposed the necessity for hospitals and the entire paraphernalia of biomedicine while eliminating care from the process. Under patriarchy and capitalism, care is devalued, and thus care giving has become a low-paid job. Rothman imagines ways of bringing health and care back into health care by imagining powers other than biomedicine. She reads biomedicine as a global economic, governmental and religious power. Global capitalism has a vital role in making life by offering sought-after materials that are perceived to contribute to better health, thus making a disease-free world financially unimaginable. Rothman demonstrates how answering existential questions, faith, superstition and the language of miracles-earlier considered to be the domain of religion-have now come to characterise biomedicine. Although she rightly states that increased patient autonomy in medicine is akin to self-interpreting the Bible rather than giving up on faith altogether, the author makes scepticism towards individual physicians seem like universal health-seeking behaviour. However, traits such as-looking up medical literature and choosing doctors through informal networks-mentioned
Anthropology Book Forum, 2021
Book Review: EDS. EILEEN P. ANDERSON-FYE and ALEXANDRA BREWIS, 2017, Fat Planet: Obesity, Culture... more Book Review: EDS. EILEEN P. ANDERSON-FYE and ALEXANDRA BREWIS, 2017, Fat Planet: Obesity, Culture, and Symbolic Body Capital, Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 272 pp., ISBN 978-0-82635-800-4
Papers by Meghna Roy
Economic and Political Weekly, 2022
That COVID-19 has been diffi cult on gender minorities has been well-documented. Through a combin... more That COVID-19 has been diffi cult on gender minorities has been well-documented. Through a combination of abandonment by the state, reluctance towards women's health beyond their reproductive capacity, and an epistemological gap at the heart of modern medicine, it is ensured that the effects of vaccines on women's menstrual cycles remain ignored.
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Book Reviews by Meghna Roy
Papers by Meghna Roy