Transformations of health care systems

Transformations of health care systems under the multi-dimensional situations of human value.

This study focused into the anthropological image on dynamic changes of modern health care systems under the multi-dimensional situations of human value evoked political and economical globalization. The chief aim of this study is to describe the dynamic and creative cultural process in which people appropriate the exogenous medical system to indigenous health care system, ethnomedicine.

We examined Michael Foucault's concept of "govermentality" of the modern state which controls both individual body of subject by "health care" in a broad sense, he termed "anatomo-politique," and collective body of human population through statistics or public health policy, then he termed "bio-politique." We concluded that Foucault's model could be applied in not only Western Europe society but also other non-western developing countries.

We used many historical and ethnographical documents on socio-cultural transformation of modern medicine. Under the strong pressure of economic globalization the individual body and the human's life have been drastically changed during the half-century. Especially the postcolonial developing countries introduced the modern western systems and received strong popular resistances. Then many allotypic forms of western medical system have emerged from the dynamic interaction between modern and indigenous medical systems. Health care system can be one of applicable examples for the socio-cultural cum historical analysis of the actuality of human value.