"We have to think like capitalists but continue being socialists": Medicalized subjectivities, emergent capital, and socialist entrepreneurs in post-Soviet Cuba

P. Sean Brotherton

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    Abstract

    Through an engagement with historical, epistemological, and ethnographic modes of analyses, I trace how individual bodily practices- that is, practices relating to the body and its health -in contemporary Cuba provide a fertile terrain for examining the multiple pathways through which political subjectivities are created and transformed. Specifically, I highlight the ways in which these practices serve as de facto access to basic health services and supplies and actively contribute to the daily functioning of Cuba's socialist health care system. I argue that scholars must move beyond contrasting rote descriptions of socialism vis-à-vis capitalism and, rather, look to new fields of inquiry that address the coproduction and coexistence of different forms of capital and new configurations of statecraft and subjectivity in 21st-century Cuba.

    Original languageEnglish (US)
    Pages (from-to)259-274
    Number of pages16
    JournalAmerican Ethnologist
    Volume35
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    StatePublished - May 2008

    Keywords

    • Bodily practices
    • Capital
    • Cuba
    • Socialism
    • State
    • Subjectivity

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Anthropology

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