Landscapes of Care - (Studies in Social Medicine) by Thurka Sangaramoorthy (Hardcover)

About the Book

"This insightful work on rural health in the United States examines the ways immigrants, mainly from Latin America and the Caribbean, navigate the health care system in the United States. Since 1990, immigration to the United States has risen sharply, and rural areas have seen the highest increases. Thurka Sangaramoorthy reveals that that the corporatization of health care delivery and immigration policies are deeply connected in rural America. Drawing from fieldwork that centers on Maryland's sparsely populated Eastern Shore, Sangaramoorthy shows how longstanding issues of precarity among rural health systems along with the exclusionary logics of immigration have mutually fashioned a 'landscape of care' in which shared conditions of physical suffering and emotional anxiety among immigrants and rural residents generate powerful forms of regional vitality and social inclusion"--

Book Synopsis

This insightful work on rural health in the United States examines the ways immigrants, mainly from Latin America and the Caribbean, navigate the health care system in the United States. Since 1990, immigration to the United States has risen sharply, and rural areas have seen the highest increases. Thurka Sangaramoorthy reveals that that the corporatization of health care delivery and immigration policies are deeply connected in rural America. Drawing from fieldwork that centers on Maryland's sparsely populated Eastern Shore, Sangaramoorthy shows how longstanding issues of precarity among rural health systems along with the exclusionary logics of immigration have mutually fashioned a "landscape of care" in which shared conditions of physical suffering and emotional anxiety among immigrants and rural residents generate powerful forms of regional vitality and social inclusion. Sangaramoorthy connects the Eastern Shore and its immigrant populations to many other places around the world that are struggling with the challenges of global migration, rural precarity, and health governance. Her extensive ethnographic and policy research shows the personal stories behind health inequity data and helps to give readers a human entry point into the enormous challenges of immigration and rural health.

Review Quotes

"An important addition to the literatures of food studies and agricultural labor. By drawing on agricultural nature of care, it promises to be a useful text for scholars of medicine and food studies for years to come."--Gastronomica

"Sangaramoorthy aptly integrates concerns for pressing material disparities with diverse theorizations of precarity, infrastructure, and temporality . . . [leaving] the reader with an impression of a robustly evinced yet meticulously concise work. We recommend this book for health policy scholars and practitioners for its ethnographic contextualization of how the development of policies have shaped rural health disparities. Moreover, it will serve as an excellent addition to reading lists of courses in rural and migrant health for students of medicine and the social sciences."--Bulletin of History and Medicine

"Landscapes of Care is a timely and highly relevant ethnography that is well-suited for courses in medical anthropology, migration, rural studies, and public health. . . . [A] powerful--and much needed--ethnography of rural health and healthcare, and its relevance extends well beyond 'the land that time forgot.'"--Medical Anthropology Quarterly

"[Sangaramoorthy] weaves observations and stories of immigrant workers and their health providers with interdisciplinary literature that makes clear that this treatise has applicability beyond the Eastern shore. . . . Recommended."--CHOICE