
Contingent Citizens
Professional Aspiration in a South African Hospital
Elizabeth Hull(Author)
Bloomsbury Academic (Publisher)
1st Edition
Published on 18. April 2019
Book
Paperback/Softback
280 pages
978-1-350-10809-7 (ISBN)
Description
Contingent Citizens examines the ambiguous state of South Africa's public sector workers and the implications for contemporary understandings of citizenship. It takes us inside an ethnography of the professional ethic of nurses in a rural hospital in KwaZulu-Natal, shaped by a deep history of mission medicine and changing forms of new public management. Liberal democratic principles of 'transparency', 'decentralization' and 'rights', though promising freedom from control, often generate fear and insecurity instead. But despite the pressures they face, Elizabeth Hull shows that nurses draw on a range of practices from international migration to new religious movements, to assert new forms of citizenship. Focusing an anthropological lens on 'professionalism', Hull explores the major fault lines of South Africa's fragmented social landscape - class, gender, race, and religion - to make an important contribution to the study of class formation and citizenship. This prize-winning monograph will be of interest to scholars of anthropology, development studies, sociology and global public health.
Reviews / Votes
"Elizabeth Hull's prize-winning study, is a rich and empathic study of nurses' experiences in Bethesda Hospital in KZN from the 1930s to the present, and a wide-ranging account of their professionalization and politicization in years of dramatic political and social change. Careful research traces the complex relationship between the state, missions, nurses and doctors, revealing the contradictions inherent in the changing nature of professionalism, while a brilliant coda illuminates the more theoretical aspects of her study. - Shula Marks, SOAS, UKElizabeth Hull's rich and insightful ethnography of a rural hospital shows how nurses confronted apartheid's racial glass ceiling only to face a labyrinth of paperwork and patients' new rights in the democratic era. As South Africa plans a universal health system, policy makers and scholars inside and outside the country should read this pathbreaking book to recognize how health workers make projects of care through mundane routines and moral codes of professionalism. - Mark Hunter, University of Toronto, Canada
Hospitals and health care providers are often overlooked when scholars examine the forces that shape societies. Not only does Hull's book provide a broad analysis of nurses' experiences, it reminds us how crucial these actors and their spaces are in understanding the transition to post-apartheid South Africa - including significant changes in health care as well as the dynamics of a professional black middle-class. - Leslie Anne Hadfield, Brigham Young University, USA"
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
433 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-350-10809-7 (9781350108097)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
05/2020
1st Edition
Routledge
€52.49
Available for download

E-Book
05/2020
1st Edition
Routledge
€52.49
Available for download

Book
10/2017
1st Edition
Bloomsbury Academic
€170.80
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Elizabeth Hull is Lecturer in Anthropology at SOAS University of London, UK.
Content
List of Figures, Tables and MapsAcknowledgementsIntroductionAbout the book1. Geographies of Autonomy2. The Limits of Professionalism3. Autonomy and Control from Mission to State4. Accountability, Hierarchy and Care5. The Sickness of Democracy6. Aspiration beyond ProfessionalismConclusionReferences