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Paul Farmer: Structural Violence and the Embodiment of Inequality

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The Palgrave Handbook of Social Theory in Health, Illness and Medicine

Abstract

Paul Farmer is one of the most influential advocates for health equity in the world today. His analyses — rooted in both social science and medicine, owing to his training in anthropology and infectious disease — highlight the importance of the social determinants of health. His work has challenged existing orthodoxies in medicine and global health, including the belief — widely held in the 1990s — that treatment for HIV or multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis (MDRTB) was impossible in poor settings. Farmer has questioned the reliance on ‘cost-effectiveness’ as a decision-making process in healthcare delivery, arguing instead for the centrality of equity. At the same time, his work has critiqued medical anthropology, medical ethics, and related fields, including human rights, for ignoring the fundamental causes of global health inequities. Farmer’s vision of ‘geographically broad and historically deep’ analysis offers a framework for a political economy of global health equity, a way of working that respects the tremendous benefits of biomedicine, yet highlights the social ‘fault lines’ that negate its discoveries for the majority of the world’s poor.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, DePaul University, USA

    Fernando De Maio (Associate Professor)

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  1. Fernando De Maio
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Sydney, Australia

    Fran Collyer (Associate Professor) (Associate Professor)

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© 2015 Fernando De Maio

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De Maio, F. (2015). Paul Farmer: Structural Violence and the Embodiment of Inequality. In: Collyer, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Social Theory in Health, Illness and Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137355621_43

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