Mr David Primrose1
1University Of Sydney, Australia
Biography:
David Primrose is Lecturer in Health Policy and Planning at the Leeder Centre for Health Policy, Economics and Data, University of Sydney. His research centres on exploring themes in the political economy of health. These include governance of food and health in global capitalism; the neo liberalisation of public health; ideology critique of post-political modalities of health governance; far right and populist approaches to health politics; and critically engaging with mainstream economic theories of health. He recently co-edited the Routledge Handbook on the Political Economy of Health and Healthcare.
Abstract:
The Global Coronavirus Crisis (GCC) pandemic divulged a paradox within contemporary global health governance. Following relative political dormancy, the pandemic prompted renewed debate on the limitations of the extant governance system and concomitant need for transformative change. Yet, this welcome conversation remained largely circumscribed within a narrow political economic spectrum: retaining global capitalism and neoliberalism as the political horizon, rather than questioning their contribution to the GCC. This reflects the entrenched post-political orientation infusing global health governance: evacuating from contestation the structural antagonisms that undermine health, in favour of designing techno-managerial measures that treat the symptoms of such processes within the extant system.
This paper favours a more emancipatory formulation, which recognises and challenges global capitalism and neoliberalism as emasculating health. The potential efficacy of governance to effect transformative change here rests less on promoting alternative universal projects grounded in an a priori positive essence (e.g. health as a ‘human right’) or promoting universality within the prevailing system (e.g. ‘health for all’). Rather, it hinges on the principle of 'negative universality': forging a shared political orientation amongst diverse groups grounded in their common, yet variegated, experiences of the antagonistic dimensions of global capitalism and neoliberalism (i.e. their negative). That is, via particular experiences of multiple, seemingly unrelated global health issues, praxis centres on contesting the universal political economic logic systematically excluding particular populations and eroding socio-ecological determinants of health. The paper concludes by reflecting on how this negative universalism may inform novel institutional forms of transnational health governance.