Abstract
An anthropologist describes how he found himself at the vortex of a “clash of medical civilizations:” neoliberalism and the international primary health care movement. His involvement in a $6 million social change initiative in medical education became a basis to unlock the hidden tensions, contradictions and movements within the “primary care” phenomenon. The essay is structured on five ethnographic stories, situated on a continuum from “natural” species-level primary care to “unnatural” neoliberal primary care. Food is an element of all tales. Taking the long view of history/prehistory permits us to better recognize ideological distortions in order to more capably transform medicine.
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McKenna, B. The Clash of Medical Civilizations: Experiencing “Primary Care” in a Neoliberal Culture. J Med Humanit 33, 255–272 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-012-9184-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10912-012-9184-6