Capitalism: the antihealth in times of war and peace

1
Capitalism the anti-health in times of war and
peace

• Jessie Samowitz
• Senior Perspective
• Fajardo-Acosta

2
My anthropological approach critical-
interpretive

• Critical
• Looking at social, economic, political,
  ecological and biological causes of suffering in
  addition to biomedicine
• Interpretive
• Asks about culturally derived frameworks of
  meaning
• Avoids depersonalization of subject/patient

3
An example of social suffering

• Philip Bourgois compares his ethnographies of war
  torn El Salvador and crack dealers in Harlem
• Concludes
• third world poverty is everywhere
• USA policy and aid contributed to suffering in El
  Salvador
• Harlem apartheid is a result of the structures of
  the dominant culture of neoliberalism

4
War is USA cultures root metaphor

• Values rugged individualism, cowboys who kill,
  freedom to not care, combat
• This results in a culture of isolationism and
  short term interests
• Combative language of capitalism pervades even in
  health care

5
On localized culture of terror in Third World
poverty in Harlem USA

• it turns the social suffering of US-style
  neoliberal capitalism into public secret and
  allows symbolic violence to prevail blaming the
  poor and getting the poor to blame themselves for
  their poverty Bourgois 2001

6
A different kind of poverty

• Being desensitized hurts the privileged
• INFOTAINMENT
• Profits off of suffering
• Desensitizes
• Distorts reality
• Extends the reach of capitalism
• Values are constructed by capitalism

7
A wall between the rich and the poor is being
built, so that poverty does not annoy the
powerful and the poor are obliged to die in the
silence of history. Paul Farmer
8
POWAQQATSI life in transformation

• MOVIE CLIP TO Re-SENSITIZE and work against the
  culture of capitalism with art
• Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, Philip Glass
• overall focus is on natives of the Third World --
  the emerging, land-based cultures of Asia, India,
  Africa, the Middle East and South America -- and
  how they express themselves through work and
  traditions finished 1988
• Form more information on this QATSI (life)
  trilogy http//www.koyaanisqatsi.org/index.php