Introduction: The gendered geographies of ‘bodies across borders’

Abstract

This paper introduces the articles that comprise the themed section ‘bodies across borders’ which investigates how the social and spatial dynamics of healthcare provision are being transformed by both neo-liberalization and globalization. The articles demonstrate how the central tenets of neoliberalism: the promotion of individual autonomy as realized through the instrument of consumer choice, the privatization, outsourcing and off-shoring of core competencies and service provision, the production of highly ‘flexible’ labour are at work in re-shaping access to, and delivery of, services in the domains of reproductive health, organ donation and globalized healthcare. In paying special attention to the ways in which these practices are cut across by class, gender and ethnicity, these accounts will hopefully encourage us to reject totalizing and homogeneous narratives of medical travel in favour of those that offer more nuanced understandings of the positionality of the individuals at the heart of them.

Las geografías generizadas de los ‘cuerpos a través de las fronteras’

Este trabajo introduce los artículos que comprenden la sección temática ‘Cuerpos a través de las fronteras’ que investiga cómo la dinámica social y espacial de los sistemas de salud está siendo transformada por la neoliberalización y la globalización. Los artículos demuestran cómo los principios centrales del neoliberalismo: la promoción de la autonomía individual como concretada a través del instrumento de la elección del consumidor, la privatización, la externalización y offshorización de las principales competencias y de la provisión de servicios, y la producción de trabajo altamente ‘flexible’ trabajan en reformular el acceso a (y provisión de) los servicios en los terrenos de la salud reproductiva, la donación de órganos y la atención médica globalizada. Prestando especial atención a las formas en que estas prácticas atraviesan la clase, el género y la etnicidad esperamos que estas historias nos estimulen a rechazar las narrativas totalizadoras y homogéneas de la los viajes médicos en favor de aquellas que ofrecen formas más matizadas de comprender la posicionalidad de los individuos en su centro.

“跨境身体” 的性别化地理

本文引介构成 “跨境身体” 主题章节的数篇文章，这些文章探讨新自由主义化与全球化如何同时改变了健康照护提供的社会与空间动态。这些文章展现了新自由主义的核心宗旨——意即透过消费者选择的手段，核心能力与服务提供的私有化、外包与离岸，以及生产高度“弹性”的劳动力所实现的个人自主性之提倡——如何再形塑获致生育健康、器官捐赠与全球化的健康照护领域中的服务，以及这些服务的提供。透过特别关注这些实践如何与阶级、性别和种族相互交错的方式，这些记述期望能够鼓励我们拒斥整体式与均质化的医疗旅游叙事，转而採取对于那些身处其中的个人之立场提供更为细緻理解的解释。

Keywords::

• cross border care
• medical travel
• health geography
• assisted reproduction
• geographies of care
• global health

Palabras claves::

• atención médica internacional
• viajes médicos
• geografía de la salud
• reproducción asistida
• geografías del cuidado
• salud global

关键词::

• 跨境照料；医疗旅游；健康地理；人工协助生育；照护地理；全球健康

Acknowledgements

The editors would like to express their sincere thanks to the Brocher Foundation and the School of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London for generously sponsoring the Bodies Across Borders symposium, and all the contributors who gave so much to the project.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Beth Greenhough

Dr Beth Greenhough is a lecturer in geography at Queen Mary, University of London. Her work draws on a combination of political-economic geography, cultural geography and science studies to explore the social implications of scientific innovations in the areas of health, biomedicine and the environment. She has published widely on geographies of health and the biosciences, the spaces of medical research, bioethics and environment–society relations.

Bronwyn Parry

Bronwyn Parry is an economic and cultural geographer who now holds a Professorship in Social Science, Health and Medicine at King's College London. She has written extensively on the social ethical and legal implications of new biomedical technologies, on ways of knowing the body and on systems for regulating access to, and use of new biological artefacts and inventions including archived tissues, bioinformation, gametes and stem cells. She recently completed a major public exhibition and book on brain donation for dementia (Mind Over Matter) with the artist Ania Dabrowska and is now undertaking a new Wellcome Trust funded research project on assisted reproduction in India.

Isabel Dyck

Isabel Dyck is Professor Emeritus in the School of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London. She is a feminist and health geographer in which fields she has widely published. Her research focuses primarily on women's health, the home and care, particularly in the context of international migration.

Tim Brown

Dr Tim Brown is a lecturer in geography at Queen Mary, University of London. His research interests lie primarily with issues of risk and governance as they apply to historical and contemporary (global) public health, and this is an area in which he has widely published.