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SUMMARY:Towards a Relational Understanding of Participation in Social Heal
 th Protection  - Prof Brigit Obrist\, University of Basel
DTSTART:20181029T170000Z
DTEND:20181029T180000Z
UID:TALK111478@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Victoria Jones
DESCRIPTION:We live in an age of participation. In the field of global dev
 elopment\, the biggest players have invested massively in participatory ap
 proaches\; and they now propagate participation as a crucial principle to 
 reach the Sustainable Development Goals 2015-2030. One of the priority goa
 ls on the SDG agenda is Universal Health Coverage\, defined as providing a
 ll people with access to essential health services - without financial har
 dship. In order to reach this goal\, the International Labor Office\, the 
 World Bank and the World Health Organization push social health protection
  as a key strategy. Social health protection measures include different he
 alth financing protection mechanisms\, from tax-based financing\, statutor
 y social health insurance to private health insurance\, community-based he
 alth insurance\, and various fee exemptions for health services. Politicia
 ns\, policy makers and implementers call on the public to participate in t
 hese measures. My task as a scholar is of course not to promote participat
 ion in social health protection but to critically examine it as a social p
 rocess. Many scholars of diverse disciplinary backgrounds - including anth
 ropologists - have discussed participation controversially\, pointing for 
 instance to the ambivalences\, dilemma and paradoxes of participation. I t
 ry to push our analytical understanding a step further by introducing a re
 lational or figuration-inspired perspective. In this view\, we can examine
 \, for instance\, how actors produce social health protection through part
 icipation in specific networks. We can further study how and why actors cr
 eate\, regulate\, prescribe and obstruct participation of other actors in 
 separate as well as interconnected social protection networks. My discussi
 on of these and related questions is grounded in empirical examples brough
 t forth by ethnographic field research in Tanzania. Contemporary Tanzania 
 presents a particularly interesting case for studying participation in soc
 ial health protection in this more analytical sense because of the country
 ’s long and deep normative engagement with participatory development and
  the current government’s aspiration to transform Tanzania into a middle
 -income country with Universal Health Coverage.
LOCATION:Seminar Room S1 Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambridge
  CB3 9DT
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