Biomedicine, Healing and Modernity in Rural Bangladesh

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Md. Faruk Shah

   Pages 1-49

3. The Public Health Care Bureaucracy: Narratives from Rural Clinics

   • Md. Faruk Shah

   Pages 51-80

4. Public Health Care Centres: Policies and Practice

   • Md. Faruk Shah

   Pages 81-123

5. Private Health Care, Quality and Corruption

   • Md. Faruk Shah

   Pages 125-165

6. Biomedicine and Modernity: The Case of the “Village Doctors”

   • Md. Faruk Shah

   Pages 167-198

7. Pharmaceutical Promotion, Quality and Governance

   • Md. Faruk Shah

   Pages 199-235

8. Gendered Politics of Modernity: Family Planning and Reproductive Health

   • Md. Faruk Shah

   Pages 237-273

9. Conclusion: Local Biomedicine, Structural Violence and Social Inequality

   • Md. Faruk Shah

   Pages 275-300

10. Back Matter

    Pages 301-323

    PDF

This book provides an ethnographic account of the ways in which biomedicine, as a part of the modernization of healthcare, has been localized and established as the culturally dominant medical system in rural Bangladesh. Dr Faruk Shah offers an anthropological critique of biomedicine in rural Bangladesh that explains how the existing social inequalities and disparities in healthcare are intensified by the practices undertaken in biomedical health centres through the healthcare bureaucracy and local gendered politics. This work of villagers’ healthcare practices leads to a fascinating analysis of the local healthcare bureaucracy, corruption, structural violence, commodification of health, pharmaceutical promotional strategies and gender discrimination in population control. Shah argues that biomedicine has already achieved cultural authority and acceptability at almost all levels of the health sector in Bangladesh. However, in this system healthcare bureaucracy is shaped by social capital, power relations and kin networks, and corruption is a central element of daily care practices.

• Localization of biomedicine
• Healthcare bureaucracy
• Political economy of biomedicine
• Corruption and healthcare
• Pharmaceutical promotion
• Gendered politics of modernity

​‘This ethnography is a unique and valuable contribution to critical medical anthropology, political economy approaches of health, the literature on social suffering and structural violence. It is also a significant contribution to the anthropology of bureaucracy.’ (Lisa Wynn, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Macquarie University, Australia)‘In this astute and ethnographically rich study of medical practice in rural Bangladesh Faruk Shah paints a vivid picture of the way biomedicine interacts with bureaucracy, political favouritism and cronyism to reproduce social inequality. The author is to be congratulated for his compelling account of the systemic nature of everyday corruption, which shows how people are simultaneously perpetrators of structural violence and victims of it—caught in webs of poverty, bribery and the predatory influence of large pharmaceutical companies. The book should be core reading for anyone seeking to understand how biomedicine really works in contemporary Bangladesh—and why the system needs improving.’ (Professor Cris Shore, Department of Anthropology, Goldsmiths University of London, UK)
‘Faruk Shah’s evocative text traces some of the myriad ways that power, politics, and culture come to shape the illness experiences of the poor and marginalized in Bangladesh. Tracing the effects of national as well as local political dynamics on Bangladeshi medical practice, it makes a new contribution to studies of biomedicine in South Asia.’ (Susanna Helen Trnka, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland, New Zealand)
‘There are very few examples of anthology of biomedicine from the Non-Western context. Taking Bangladesh as a case Faruk Shah convincingly explores the idea of plurality of biomedicine.  This book deserves to be read by anthropologists and global health practitioners alike.’ (Shahaduz Zaman, Medical Anthropologist, University of Sussex, UK)
‘In Biomedicine, Healing and Modernity in Rural Bangladesh, Faruk Shah addresses many core issues in critical medical anthropology. From the ways that medical technologies, scientific truth claims, and clinical practices that are often assumed to possess “universal” applicability become reformulated in local Bangladeshi settings, to the complex choreographies of care, corruption, and class that play out across clinical experiences, this book presents a timely and nuanced portrait of patients and medical practitioners, alike, living within the constraints of health care needs, policy failures, and structural inequalities.’ (Sienna R. Craig, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, Dartmouth College, USA)
‘Biomedicine, Healing and Modernity in Rural Bangladesh is unique for its direct assessment of the often horrifying outcomes of the interaction of medicine, corporate greed, poverty and power in South Asia. That Faruk Shah has accomplished a remarkable work of ethnographic scholarship is made clear by the information he has been able accumlate covering all aspects of rural medical practices in Bangladesh. If academia is to have any impact on the realities of human life, we will need more researchers like Faruk Shah.’ (Dr. Gregory D. Booth, Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of Auckland, New Zealand)
‘This ethnography makes a significant contribution to our understanding of biomedical health systems and their impacts on people and health related process in Bangladesh, and by extension to many other similar contexts across the global south.’ (Sita Venkateswar, Associate Professor, School of People, Environment and Planning, Massey University, New Zealand)
‘This book proffers a meticulous ethnographic insight into the nature and manifestations of corruption in healthcare system as well as a treatment of gendered aspects of modernity. There has been strikingly limited research on the subject, and the work deserves wide readership.’ (Professor Niaz Ahmed Khan, Department of Development Studies, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh)

• Department of Development Studies, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, Bangladesh

  Md. Faruk Shah

Md. Faruk Shah is Associate Professor of Development Studies at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Prior to joining this university, he served as a faculty member of Anthropology at Rajshahi University. Shah holds a PhD in anthropology from the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His research interest includes medical anthropology, health, sustainable development, social history, and ethnicity.

Policies and ethics