AAA - Call for Papers - The Borders of Patienthood and the Crossings of Responsibility in the Neoliberal Context

[Mercedes Douglass]

*Call For Papers for the 2012 AAA Annual Meeting in San Francisco: Borders
and Crossings*

* *

*The Borders of Patienthood and the Crossings of Responsibility in the Neoliberal Context*


*Biomedicine
*Neoliberalism
*Discourse
*Interaction
*Patient-Healer relationship
*Medical technology

 
In this panel, we explore the intersections of neoliberal social and economic policies in the U.S. and abroad with notions of patienthood, medical knowledge, and responsibility in the biomedical system. In focusing on intersections, we call attention to a contradiction. Harvey (2005) argues that neoliberalism, now widespread in the United States and abroad, “seeks to bring all human actions into the domains of the market” (2005:3) and transfer responsibility from the state to civil society. In practice, however, states and institutions have taken up neoliberal reforms and solutions in different ways and to varying degrees (Harvey 2005:13). Thus, analyses that subsume all discourse and action under the rubric of a reified reaganite neoliberalism, overlook competing forms of neoliberalism (Kipnis 2007) and neglect the localized ways that actors take up, negotiate, and challenge neoliberal discourse (Briggs & Mantini-Briggs 2003). Viewing healthcare in light of issues of governance is a valuable exercise as conceptions of responsible citizenship carryover into various aspects of social life, solving some problems while creating others. In the U.S., for example the healthcare market is characterized by a variety of private institutions producing medical technology, third party payers, liable health care providers, and patients as consumers, all of whom claim some degree of authority over decision making at the same time that they shunt it off to others. Thus, there is a veritable tug-of-war between responsible agents in health care interactions. As a result of this push-and-pull of agents, patients’ troubles-talk (Wilce 1998) becomes entangled in a confluence of voices. In this panel, we seek to understand what it means to be a patient in an age of neoliberal governance by illuminating a) the multiple ways that neoliberal subjects discursively construct and negotiate the role of patient, b) the structural contradictions in the healthcare system that prevent us from assuming the feasibility of any “pure” neoliberal approach to healthcare governance, and c) the impact of emerging medical technologies (i.e. robotics and electronic health records) on the doctor-patient relationship and the patient’s role in healthcare. Panel abstracts on a variety of contexts, including but not limited to prenatal care, patient-caretaker interactions, physical therapy, and clinical visits are welcome and encouraged. 

Contact: 

Mercedes Douglass
mcd68 at nau.edu

or 

Hunter Peden
jhp39 at nau.edu