Chronic Failures: Kidneys, Regimes of Care, and the Mexican State

Author:   Ciara Kierans
Publisher:   Rutgers University Press
ISBN:  

9780813596655


Pages:   200
Publication Date:   15 November 2019
Recommended Age:   From 18 to 99 years
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
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Chronic Failures: Kidneys, Regimes of Care, and the Mexican State


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Overview

Chronic Failures: Kidneys, Regimes of Care and the Mexican State is about Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) and the relentless search for renal care lived out in the context of poverty, inequality and uneven welfare arrangements. Based on ethnographic research conducted in the state of Jalisco, this book documents the routes uninsured Mexican patients take in order to access resource intensive biotechnical treatments, that is, different modes of dialysis and organ transplantation. It argues that these routes are normalized, bureaucratically, socially and epidemiologically, and turned into a locus for exploitation and profit. Without a coherent logic of healthcare access, negotiating regimes of renal care has catastrophic consequences for those with the least resources to expend in that effort. In carrying both the costs and the burden of care, the practices of patients without entitlement offer a critical vantage point on the interplay between the state, markets in healthcare and the sick body.

Full Product Details

Author:   Ciara Kierans
Publisher:   Rutgers University Press
Imprint:   Rutgers University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 1.40cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.004kg
ISBN:  

9780813596655


ISBN 10:   0813596653
Pages:   200
Publication Date:   15 November 2019
Recommended Age:   From 18 to 99 years
Audience:   College/higher education ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Tertiary & Higher Education
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print   Availability explained
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.

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Reviews

Kierans offers an extraordinary portrait of the challenges underlying efforts to survive kidney failure in Mexico. 'Regimes of care' extend far beyond clinical interventions, incorporating (and insisting upon) the ongoing labors of kin, including the transport challenges of ongoing dialysis treatments, the oppressive cost of immunosuppressant drugs post-transplant, the limits of universal insurance and its bureaucratic burdens, and even the necessity of having a microwave at home. This beautifully written, thought-provoking work stands out as an important contribution to social scientists' writings on the sociomedical dimensions of organ failure, healthcare disparities, and on the entanglement of suffering and hope. --Lesley A. Sharp author of The Transplant Imaginary Chronic Failures unfolds a chilling account of the pathological regimes of renal care in Jalisco, Mexico, written in taut prose that is at once theoretically incisive and full of telling ethnographic texture. Moving deftly across the specific and entangled relations of bodies, markets, and state, this book brilliantly weaves together clinical paper-work and polluted lake water, pharmaceutical tianguis and charitable billionaires, media scandals and a mysterious new form of chronic kidney failure into a compelling indictment of the mirage of biomedical salvation. Kierans lays bare how sickness itself is made into a form of consuming labor - one that more often produces hardship and harm rather than health. --Megan Crowley-Matoka author of Domesticating Organ Transplant: Familial Sacrifice and National Aspiration in Mexico


Kierans offers an extraordinary portrait of the challenges underlying efforts to survive kidney failure in Mexico. 'Regimes of care' extend far beyond clinical interventions, incorporating (and insisting upon) the ongoing labors of kin, including the transport challenges of ongoing dialysis treatments, the oppressive cost of immunosuppressant drugs post-transplant, the limits of universal insurance and its bureaucratic burdens, and even the necessity of having a microwave at home. This beautifully written, thought-provoking work stands out as an important contribution to social scientists' writings on the sociomedical dimensions of organ failure, healthcare disparities, and on the entanglement of suffering and hope. --Lesley A. Sharp author of The Transplant Imaginary Chronic Failures unfolds a chilling account of the pathological regimes of renal care in Jalisco, Mexico, written in taut prose that is at once theoretically incisive and full of telling ethnographic texture. Moving deftly across the specific and entangled relations of bodies, markets, and state, this book brilliantly weaves together clinical paper-work and polluted lake water, pharmaceutical tianguis and charitable billionaires, media scandals and a mysterious new form of chronic kidney failure into a compelling indictment of the mirage of biomedical salvation. Kierans lays bare how sickness itself is made into a form of consuming labor - one that more often produces hardship and harm rather than health. --Megan Crowley-Matoka author of Domesticating Organ Transplant: Familial Sacrifice and National Aspiration in Mexico


Author Information

CIARA KIERANS is a reader in social anthropology in the Department of Public Health and Policy at the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom. She is the coauthor of Social and Cultural Perspectives on Health, Technology and Medicine: Old Concepts, New Problems.  

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