Fighting for Health
Medicine in Cold War Southeast Asia
Published on 29. February 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
328 pages
978-981-325-256-1 (ISBN)
Description
An overlooked history of Southeast Asia's varied healthcare regimes during the Cold War.
For far too long, Southeast Asia has been treated as a static backdrop for the exploits and discoveries of Western biomedical doctors. Yet, Southeast Asians have been vital to the significant developments in the prevention and treatment of diseases that have taken place in the region and beyond. Many of the institutions and people that shaped subsequent responses to outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics first began their work in Southeast Asia during the Cold War. The diversity of approaches to health and medicine during that era also reminds us of the possibilities, and limits, of human intervention in the face of political, social, economic, and microbial realities. The people and places of Southeast Asia have provided clinical trials for different health regimes. Fighting for Health highlights new perspectives and methods that have evolved from research presented at regional conferences, including the History of Medicine in Southeast Asia (HOMSEA) series. These insights serve to challenge dominant models of the medical humanities.
For far too long, Southeast Asia has been treated as a static backdrop for the exploits and discoveries of Western biomedical doctors. Yet, Southeast Asians have been vital to the significant developments in the prevention and treatment of diseases that have taken place in the region and beyond. Many of the institutions and people that shaped subsequent responses to outbreaks, epidemics, and pandemics first began their work in Southeast Asia during the Cold War. The diversity of approaches to health and medicine during that era also reminds us of the possibilities, and limits, of human intervention in the face of political, social, economic, and microbial realities. The people and places of Southeast Asia have provided clinical trials for different health regimes. Fighting for Health highlights new perspectives and methods that have evolved from research presented at regional conferences, including the History of Medicine in Southeast Asia (HOMSEA) series. These insights serve to challenge dominant models of the medical humanities.
Reviews / Votes
"This is a wide-ranging, compelling, and skillfully edited collection at the cutting edge of new, transnational approaches to health in Southeast Asia. The chapters here show how central health has been to nation-building in Southeast Asia - and how crucial Southeast Asia has been to the politics of global health." - Sunil Amrith, Yale University"Fighting for Health does much more than offer the first history of medicine in Cold War Southeast Asia. As demonstrated by a fine collection of essays, the region provided a "clinical trial for a plurality of health regimes" that not only built on shortages and violence but on South-South medical solidarities and inter-Asia scientific networks. Health regimes we need to learn from to rethink global health." - Laurence Monnais, Universite de Montreal, Canada
"With its diversity of peoples, varied ecologies, multiple colonial regimes and nation-states, and heterogeneous health practices, Southeast Asia constitutes a crucial site for comparative history of medicine. In our pandemic era, Fighting for Health thus offers fresh insight into the historical complexities of disease emergence and outbreak endings. Everyone interested in health and disease in our fraught times has much to learn from these compelling stories." - Warwick Anderson, University of Sydney (author of Colonial Pathologies).
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Singapore
Singapore
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Illustrations
12 halftones, 2 maps, 4 tables
Dimensions
Height: 226 mm
Width: 150 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
484 gr
ISBN-13
978-981-325-256-1 (9789813252561)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Thompson C. Michele Thompson | Sweet Kathryn Sweet | Aso Michitake Aso
Fighting for Health
Medicine in Cold War Southeast Asia
E-Book
04/2024
National University of Singapore Press
€52.99
Available for download
Persons
Michele Thompson holds an MA in East Asian History and a PhD in Southeast Asian History. Her research and publications focus on the History of Medicine and the Environment of Southeast Asia.
Kathryn Sweet is a social historian of Laos whose research has focused on health, development and cultural issues of the twentieth century.
Michitake Aso is a global environmental historian whose research has focused on Vietnamese and French agriculture, medicine, and health in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Kathryn Sweet is a social historian of Laos whose research has focused on health, development and cultural issues of the twentieth century.
Michitake Aso is a global environmental historian whose research has focused on Vietnamese and French agriculture, medicine, and health in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Content
List of Tables
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: Health, Agriculture and Animism in the 'Development' of Portuguese Timor, 1945- 1975
Chapter 2: Tool of Domination and Act of Benevolence: Medicine and Healthcare during the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960
Chapter 3: Health Sector Contestation in Cold War Laos, 1950-1975
Chapter 4: More Eastern than Traditional: The Making of ?ong y in the Republic of Vietnam during the Cold War
Chapter 5: Building a "socialist health system": Soviet assistance in malaria control in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam during the Cold War
Chapter 6: Mobilising Applied Medical Knowledge for Indonesia: Soekarnoist Science and Asian-African Solidarity, 1950s
Chapter 7: The Cholera Pandemic, Chinese Diaspora, and the Cold War Politics in Southeast Asia and China during the 1960s
Chapter 8: Managing Wartime Conditions: South Korean Developmental Ambitions, Public Health, and Emerging Forms of Overseas Medical Outreach, 1964-1973
Glossary
Bibliography
Contributors
Index
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1: Health, Agriculture and Animism in the 'Development' of Portuguese Timor, 1945- 1975
Chapter 2: Tool of Domination and Act of Benevolence: Medicine and Healthcare during the Malayan Emergency, 1948-1960
Chapter 3: Health Sector Contestation in Cold War Laos, 1950-1975
Chapter 4: More Eastern than Traditional: The Making of ?ong y in the Republic of Vietnam during the Cold War
Chapter 5: Building a "socialist health system": Soviet assistance in malaria control in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam during the Cold War
Chapter 6: Mobilising Applied Medical Knowledge for Indonesia: Soekarnoist Science and Asian-African Solidarity, 1950s
Chapter 7: The Cholera Pandemic, Chinese Diaspora, and the Cold War Politics in Southeast Asia and China during the 1960s
Chapter 8: Managing Wartime Conditions: South Korean Developmental Ambitions, Public Health, and Emerging Forms of Overseas Medical Outreach, 1964-1973
Glossary
Bibliography
Contributors
Index