Gareth+-+2009+HASS+Proposal

//**__Medical Tourism:__**// __Nascent Practices, Emergent Industry, Healthcare Institutions.__ Newlyweds extend their honeymoon in Johannesburg, South Africa, for a day following their safari so that the bride may receive Lasik eye surgery at a lower cost than at home. A father of three is offered a referral to an Indian Hospital for routine heart surgery by a doctor in Kentucky; the doctor has read about Medical Tourism to Chennai. Until recently, Americans who traveled to India or Mexico for medical procedures did so out of desperation, to seek alternative therapies once mainstream medicine offered no hope, to access care denied them by their doctor, or because the place they traveled to was itself somehow seen to be healthier. Today, however, the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and other influential organizations discuss "medical tourism" as an acceptable supplement to conventional domestic healthcare resources. This project investigates how and why international healthcare delivery has become a normal, acceptable part of medical treatment in recent years. Medical tourism (MT) describes the practice of traveling across national boundaries for healthcare, a practice that has recently grown to a multi-billion dollar global industry. Proponents praise the globalization of healthcare as leading to the universal improvement in the quality of care by redistributing healthcare technology and promoting investment in developing countries while providing cheaper care for tourists. Contrarily, some healthcare quality advocate groups claim it damages local healthcare systems in MT destinations, undermines efforts at healthcare reform in the US, carries risks for individual patients as well as being individually dangerous. These contradictions demonstrate the need for empirical research to answer questions, which form the core of this project: 1) What cultural and structural components were active in the formation of the MT industry over the last 5-10 years? Why has the MT industry grown in some countries and not others? 2) How have technologies, cultural values, and common sense assumptions changed to open a space for MT? How have people come to accept international travel for healthcare? 3) How is MT experienced by participants (e.g. patients, healthcare providers, families), and what structural effects has the industry had on quality and access to healthcare? My research will document and analyze the institutions, people, and practices that constitute the industry of medical tourism as it has formed between communities in the US and two representative medical centers in the Philippines and India over the last decade. Chennai, India, has grown in the last five years to surpass other established destination sites as the largest single site for travel, while the industry in Manila, Philippines, has floundered despite active attempts to mimic the Indian model. Ten years ago, India and the Philippines had comparable medical industries as well as comparable histories of health travel with the US, yet despite similarities in migration flows with strong populations in the US, common English language medical traditions, and strong tourism industries, industry formation has been dramatically different. Using multi-sited ethnographic methods and discursive analysis of media representations, institutional documents, and policy/regulatory texts, I explicate the structural influences upon the formations of industry. Because of the rapid expansion of MT and its impact on the healthcare people receive, there is urgency in providing strong scholarly documentation and analysis. Study of the introduction of this new way of performing medical treatment represents needed scholarship because no one knows the actual effects on the participants. Theoretically it offers key insights into the way people experience their health, travel, and place. In this project, I will conduct a discursive analysis of the patients, industry and its representative texts, as well as a comparative ethnography of the phenomenon as it appears in the US (the single largest source of patients) and selected representative destination sites in the developing world. My research will contribute to broad areas of scholarship in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Medical Anthropology. This work will position me for continuation as a scholar in STS and Anthropology, and provide needed analysis of MT for policy formation and further study. Of particular theoretical interest is the formation of and change in “common sense” about “health”, “travel”, and “choice,” that will be documented in my study of the formation of the Medical Tourism (MT) industry. Through interviews, observation and textual analysis I examine institutional forms and personal experiences within medical tourism where common sense motivates and shapes participation. I look at the local practices and knowledge that are mobilized in industry formation in response to macro scale economic and structural forces. This project is intended to add to theory linking the micro level analysis of subjects and experience and the macro level of political economic and broad cultural change. Medical Tourism offers an example of the formation of new structures at each of these levels, as well as a mezzo level of institutions and networks. Through the examination of the new formations at each level, with particular attention to subject level language and conception and the macro level of national economy, I hopeto both describe MT more fully, and offer insight to developing theoretical conversations that would have been missed by standard single level accounts. Beyond contributing to discussions of multi-scalar theory I will be well situated to participate in two theoretical fields. First is Transnationalism as the study of globalization, formation of transnational phenomena, specifically in the STS frame of the negotiation of science and medical knowledge between heterogeneous locations. The second is transnationalism as theory of contact between distinct social groups, in this case in the negotiated constitution in understandings of health and healthcare in different contexts. The study of MT will make a theoretical contribution by paying close attention to the mutual construction of language, power, and practice. In the following section I offer a brief literature review of the context and construction of medical tourism studies of (i.) //variability in medical knowledge and practice//, (ii.) social theoretical response to increasing //transnationalism//, and (iii.) Study of common sense and the regulative function of //administrative rationality// especially the idiom of //Neoliberalism//. Traditional forms of travel were based on the perception of a health value of the place itself, as in the historical travel to hay fever resorts (Mitman 2008) or the contemporary travel of those with severe tinnitus to salt mines (Singh 2004) where they may find relief. In contrast to that traditional specificity of site, the dominant formation of Medical Tourism as an industry today relies on the perception of the universality of medical practice contrary to empirical evidence (i.e. (Mol et al. 1998). In contemporary medical tourism, there is a sharp divide between health and place: place stands in for economics or cultural difference separate from the main health value, which is constructed as place-less by participants (Binkhuijsen 2006; Grace 2007; Schult 2006). In this new form, Medical Tourism has seen little substantive academic study. Of the few academic approaches to medical tourism available, all are regionally focused on India (Milica Z. Bookman and Karla R. Bookman 2007; Bose 2008; Pruthi 2006) and framed as normative accounts that either criticize neo-colonialism (Bookman and Bookman 2007) or promote business and call for its expansion (Bose 2008;). This universalizing and dislocating of phenomena from a single location has in its turn been part of a process of normalization and change in thinking about the common sense of the experience of time and space that has been observed and criticized in study of globalization and transnationalism (Lyotard 1984; Ong 1999; Harvey 1989). The deficit of academic study parallels a rising public awareness in the popular media as the industry expands and enlists more participants and nations. This lack of study and rise in popular awareness has stimulated a recent surfeit of academic accounts focused on the multiplicity and variety of understandings and practices of medicine. These studies have focused on reproductive technologies (Georges 2008; Subramanian 2007; Inhorn 1994), organ transplantation (Hogle 2003; Lock 2001; Sharp 2006), and stem cell therapies (i.e. (Song 2008) but have paid little attention to the more common forms of care including dental and mundane surgeries. While high tech and controversial treatments are drawing academic attention, they fail to capture a picture of the industry as a whole, because the procedures they focus on enlist only a small portion of the tourists/travelers, and in general do not have the same structural effect on local populations. While 1000 patients may travel to the preeminent stem cell therapy center in China (Song 2008), over 400,000 patients travel to a single hospital from outside the country annually for a variety of care (Bumrungrad Hospital Website 2008).  The formation of transnational organizations emerged as the subject of a growing body of literature regarding the formation of social movement and business sector formation across and in spite of international borders. While transnationalism has been studied in information technology and manufacturing (Harrison 1992), little comparable work has been done on medicine. MT offers a vantage point that can reveal how theories of risk (Beck 1992) and experiences of time (Lyotard 1984) are embodied in individual access to medical care. This study will advance conceptualizations of transnational phenomena (Levitt and Khagram 2007) by offering a new emphasis on political economy of health and moving away from its origin in studies of migration (Basch 1993). This is offered to supplement the growing theoretical framing of transnationalism as a broad cultural influence beyond traditional migrant communities (Basch 1993; Khagram 2008; Ong 1998a). Investigation of new transnational forms of life serves to expand the discussion of social and theoretical shifts, as key phenomenon are no longer centered in local sites, but rather between sites. Theories of transnationalism are part of an ongoing effort to understand new forms of life activities as they evolve. Recent discussions of the way these changes effects different institutions, such as citizenship (Ong 1998b), cultural imaginaries and ethnicity (Appadurai 1996), economic structures (Harvey 2007), the organ trade (Lock 2001) and others, have not yet focused on the nature of international and transnational healthcare delivery. While differences in medical practice based on locality is a topic in medical anthropology and STS (Lock 2001; Mol et al. 1998) I use the framework of transnationalism to emphasize that medical tourism is anchored in and simultaneously transcends the boundaries of one or more nation-states (Kearney 1986; Kearney 1995) and thus offers insight into the interaction of those local cultures. The addition of the STS emphasis on variability of knowledge and practice offers a lever to understand the connection of parts within a transnational network traditionally studied through the movement of people. Of particular interest in the study of transnationalism are the ways networks and groups act to organize disparate assemblages with no centralized leadership (McIntyre-Mills 2000; Morales-Gómez et al. 1999; Della Porta 2004). Healthcare and medical groups have shown a particular ability to self-organize due to their appropriation and use of the shared language and practices of scientific expertise; scientific discourse has a special ability to enable global authority (Doyal 1979; Kroll-Smith and Floyd 2000; Turshen 2007; Epstein 1996). In order to overcome local variation these communities mobilize an imaginary, an idea of what science and medicine is, referred to as scientization and biomedicalization (Nowotny, Scott, and Gibbons 2001; Clarke et al. 2003). This power and invisibility of conceptualization and imaginaries is a central subject in the academic study of “common sense.” Despite its seeming immutability, common-sense changes to reflect shifts in culture. These shifts have been the subject of a key set of theory focused on new kinds of individual experience stemming from changing basic perceptions of the world (i.e. (Giddens 1991; Habermas 1998; Jameson 1991; Lyotard 1984; Harvey 1991). In STS the relationship between taken for granted knowledge of the world and perception is studied in work on the invisibility and power of classification (Lampland and Star 2009; Bowker and Star 2000; M. Foucault 2001) and the influence of standpoint or perspective on worldview and perception (Harding 2003a; Haraway 1997). Much like the discussion of local variability in medicine mentioned above, STS scholars have shown the strong influence that local “political culture” and variations in “administrative rationality” have on public perception and policy making (Jasanoff 2007a; Jasanoff 2007b). This discussion of political common sense has recently been part of a wide academic interest in neoliberalism (Ong 2006; Harvey 2007). Neoliberalism acts as both rules for governing and the supporting common sense rationales for this governmentality, (Dean 1999; Michel Foucault 1995; Michel Foucault 1984; Campbell 2007). Since neoliberalism was first used to describe an increasingly prevalent political common sense, many definitions that are taken for granted have changed. To name a selection, scholars have looked at changes in the way we conceive of transparency, productivity, flexibility, responsibility and a rationality (Harvey 2007; Ong 2006; Barbara Prainsack and Ursula Naue 2006). Within the cultural change labeled neoliberalism, privatization by states, including privatization of health care delivery has increased. The effects of this privatization appear as a key point of overlap in the subject of theories of transnationalism and study of healthcare systems and policy because it has opened the space for non-governmental actors and networks like the medical tourism industry to exert influence (Dodier 2005; Barbara Prainsack and Ursula Naue 2006; Goldstein 1992; Petersen and Lupton 1997; Altenstetter 1991). This discussion of neoliberalism overlaps with the discussion in STS of the function of discourses of development (Escobar 1994) and the emphasis on the individual (Latour 2004; Barbara Prainsack and Ursula Naue 2006). The central importance of the individual in American discourse and policy (Altenstetter 1991; Lowy 2007) and in the specific formation of scientific knowledge and policy has been connected to discussions of the value of “flexibility” (Beck, Giddens, and Lash 1994; Martin 1995; Ong 1998a) and the rise of the concept of “choice”. I am uniquely qualified to proceed on the study of MT described above; I have been immersed in key theories of globalization and modernity, as well as feminist and critical social theory that provide insight into the formation of institutions. I have experience in semi-structured and structured interviewing from work with the New York City based life history project. The Life history project trains and organizes student volunteers to do brief general, and extended life history interviewing of lifelong NYC residents to preserve their stories as part of the history of the city. Between 1994 and 2000 I worked with the group performing brief and extended sequential interviewing. I have already conducted six semi-structured interviews with former medical tourists, and two interviews with medical doctors practicing in the US. I have completed coursework in social theory, rhetoric, and policy studies; as well as having methodological experience from seminars in advanced research methods (Spring ‘07), historiography and ethnographic research methods (Fall ‘06), and Discourse Analysis (Spring ’07). Beyond coursework, my prior work experience in medical advertising, working at a specialty production company, and working with public case workers who arranged and managed healthcare options for their clients, has provide valuable insight into the American Healthcare world. I have traveled extensively in the US and abroad, and have language skills in French and Spanish.
 * __I Overview of planned research:__**
 * i. **** STS Studies of Variability in Medicine **
 * ii. **** Transnationalism- **
 * iii. **** “Common Sense,” Administrative Rationality, & Neoliberalism **
 * __II Description of prior experience and preparation:__**


 * __III Methods & Stages of study:__**

In preparation for fieldwork extensive literary review of published materials on medical tourism, and healthcare systems will continue. Ongoing reading will continue in history and ethnography of healthcare and culture in India and the Philippines, as well as healthcare policy and the reform movements in the United States. This literature review offers a form of longitudinal frame for comparison with current experiences, and a mechanism for verification of individual interview subject perceptions. Preparatory research will be used in developing an interview instrument. At each stage to follow, interviews and observations will be used to refine and verify further sites of study and potential target individuals and groups for interview. While secondary study of the literature continues, intense data mining from published primary and media sources will offer a record of the industry in discourse and self-representation. Data sources will include, but are not limited to: published diaries and travelogues, internet community forums, newspaper and magazine articles, industry promotional material, newspapers, industry and policy documents, and internet chat rooms used for planning and promoting medical tourism. The ability of an ethnographic interview and observation to represent the experiences of participants from different standpoints will be supplemented with this discursive analysis. Through the Foucauldian concept of discourse (Foucault 1969), attention is drawn to the power of social institutions that remain invisible to participants, and remain difficult to study based on the emic perspective. In discourse, the social institution is embodied in individuals and found recorded in texts and conceptions that define meaning and experience. I link this discursive analysis to the ethnographic endeavor through the anthropological literature on imaginaries, or notional constructions as central to culture in meaning (K Fortun and M Fortun 2005; Fujimora 2003). Throughout the research period I will be harvesting regulatory, media, and industry documentation that will contribute to the textual and discursive analysis. I foresee interviews staggered between field site observations over the course of 12 months. I will conduct approximately 60 semi-structured ethnographic interviews. My primary interviewees will be patients and professionals involved in, or formerly involved in, the MT industry in the United States, Philippines, and India. I will also seek to interview members of their immediate families; local healthcare seekers who are not medical tourists, healthcare reform activists, and policy and regulatory professionals, so that I can better represent the full experience and reality of the MT phenomena. This project links macro level analysis and political economy with local cultural change and meaning through the use of ethnography (Marcus and Fisher 1995; 85) and discursive analysis (Smith 2005). This project will use ethnographic interviewing and observation to examine the transnational formation of Medical Tourism, in doing so it responds to the call to expand study of the transnational phenomena (Levitt and Khagram 2007; Basch 1993; Marcus and Fischer 1999). It represents the recent anthropological focus on conducting multi-sited research projects (Marcus 1995). This framework considers the potential of ethnographic methods to situate and understand local phenomena in broader contexts of power that render them. I will be implementing the multi-sited structure and analysis maintaining the rigorous observation of the grounded theory approach (Strauss and Corbin 1990). This approach seeks to identify important vocabularies, themes, uncertainties and examples. Expanded data analysis of textual/documentary evidence and analysis of interviews will be through coding and the use of AtlasTi, a qualitative data-analysis software package based on grounded theory (Strauss and Corbin 1990). After coding data may, as needed, be entered into SPSS statistical software to do quantitative analysis of correlations on the basis of factors designated in initial research in Part I. Follow up interviews based on incomplete data will be scheduled, and interview participants from previous stages will be asked to respond to initial conclusions, and verify transcripts of past interviews and observation.
 * Stage I - ****__Review of Literatures and Development of Interview Instrument__**
 * Stage II - __Ethnographic Fieldwork and Interviews__ **
 * Stage III – __Data Analysis and Writing Period__ **

This project initiates research of sufficient richness to offer theoretical insight, professional credibility, and broader significance in its description of an understudied social phenomenon. An empirical study of Medical Tourism offers vital information for policy and healthcare practice, and offers a fertile site for theoretically contribute to ongoing debates in the social sciences. I am attempting to contribute to transnational and multi-sited methodologies with the addition of linguistic discursive mechanisms. I seek to participate in conversation on how decisions are made and how common sense forms, in particular the forms of discourse and administrative rationality, especially neoliberalism. While Western biomedicine has never been fully local, the shift in practices and discourse that have recently reframed surgery as part of recreational tourism represent a distinct shift from historical health travel. The traditional subjects of STS have been Euro/American and a growing number of scholars call for STS to diversify. Studies of medical practice are at the forefront of this new direction in STS (Anderson 2002; Harding 2006). Due to the recent formation and expansions of MT, the work will also offer data and analytic insight useful for healthcare regulation. It is my expectation that researching medical tourism will allow me to increase the quality of public policy debate surrounding these practices, as well as publicly provide improved information for decision making about healthcare choices. By bringing together these theoretical and empirical studies this work can have specific benefits for those seeking healthcare via medical tourism. More broadly, it is my intention to track the effect this new industry may have on the broader healthcare context that surrounds it in constituent sites. In this light a much broader effect may be felt by showing how the shifting arrangement of healthcare services and resources that Medical tourism engenders requires shifting in broader healthcare delivery infrastructure as well. For example, if medical tourism takes off it may provide incentive for physicians to practice in the Philippines as hoped, or it may draw those physicians already staying to work on foreign patients. At the very least, approximately 1,000,000 people annually use medical tourism as part of their healthcare plan, and better scholarship would offer vital feedback for industry and national policies to serve them and others. Professionally, the work will position me to contribute to ongoing academic discussions regarding: transnational scholarship, healthcare systems, medical institutions, scientific knowledge transfer and to continue to improve the new methodological focus in framing multi-sited phenomena. My commitment is to advance theoretical expertise in both globalization and medical studies in STS. Tangibly this research will result in publications in major journals in the fields of STS (e.g. //Social Studies of Science,// and //Science, Technology & Human Values,// or //Configurations//), Medical Anthropology (e.g. //Medical Anthropology Quarterly; Medical Anthropology//), Industry and organizational studies (e.g//. Industry and Innovation//), Development (e.g. //Perspectives on Global Development and Technology//). It will be relevant to scholars in STS, medical anthropology, globalization, healthcare studies and political science. I am applying for external funding to better develop this research, an aim at annual publication in Peer reviewed journals, as well as conference and meeting presentations that will position me as a professional scholar. Altenstetter, Christa. 1991. //Comparative Health Policy and the New Right: From Rhetoric to Reality//. New York: St. Martin's Press. Anderson, W. 2002. Postcolonial Technoscience. //SOCIAL STUDIES OF SCIENCE// 32: 643-658. Anon. Liberal Benefits, Conservative Spending | Physicians for a National Health Program. http://www.pnhp.org/publications/liberal_benefits_conservative_spending.php?page=all. Anon. In Building Genetic Medicine, Shobita Parthasarathy shows how, even in an era of. Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. //Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization//. Univ of MN Press. Barbara Prainsack, and Ursula Naue. 2006. Relocating health governance: personalized medicine in times of `global genes'. August 7. http://www.futuremedicine.com/doi/abs/10.2217/17410541.3.3.349. Basch, Linda. 1993. //Nations Unbound: Transnational Projects, Postcolonial Predicaments, and Deterritorialized Nation-States//. 1st ed. Routledge, November 1. Beck, Ulrich, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash. 1994. //Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order//. 1st ed. Stanford University Press, October 1. Binkhuijsen, Charuda. 2006. //Medical Tourism Bangkok.// Breda: NHTV Breda Univ. of Applied Sciences. Bookman, Milica Z., & Karla R. Bookman. 2007. //Medical Tourism in Developing Countries//. Palgrave Macmillan. Bose, Jayshree. 2008. //Medical Tourism: Perspectives and Specific Country Experiences: Featuring an Interview with Dr. Prathap C. Reddy//. 1st ed. Hyderabad India: Icfai University Press. Bowker, Geoffrey C., and Susan Leigh Star. 2000. //Sorting Things Out: Classification and Its Consequences//. The MIT Press, August 28. Bumrungrad Hospital Website. 2008. Bumrungrad International Hospital | World-class Bangkok Hospital in Thailand for Medical Tourism. http://www.bumrungrad.com/. Campbell, Nancy D. 2007. //Discovering Addiction: The Science and Politics of Substance Abuse Research//. University of Michigan Press, November 3. Clarke, Adele E., Laura Mamo, Jennifer R. Fishman, Janet K. Shim, and Jennifer Ruth Fosket Fosket. 2003. Biomedicalization: Technoscientific Transformations Of Health, Illness And U.S. Biomedicine. //American Sociological Review// 68, no. 2 (April): 161-194. doi:Article. Corbin, Juliet, and Anselm C. Strauss. 2007. //Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory//. 3rd ed. Sage Publications, Inc, November 28. Dean, Mitchell M. 1999. //Governmentality : Power and Rule in Modern Society//. 1st ed. Sage. Della Porta, Donatella. 2004. //Transnational Protest and Global Activism//. MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Dodier, Nicolas. 2005. Transnational Medicine in Public Arenas: Aids Treatments in the South. //Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry// 29, no. 3: 285-307. doi:10.1007/s11013-005-9169-2. Doyal, Lesley. 1979. //The Political Economy of Health//. London: Pluto Press. Epstein, Steven. 1996. //Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge//. Univ. Cal Press. Escobar, Arturo. 1994. //Encountering Development//. Princeton University Press, November 14. Fortun, K, and M Fortun. 2005. Scientific Imaginaries and Ethical Plateaus in Contemporary U.S. Toxicology. //AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST// 107: 43-54. Foucault, M. 2001. //Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences//. 1st ed. Routledge. Foucault, Michel. 1984. //The Foucault Reader//. Pantheon, November 12. ---. 1995. //Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison//. Vintage, April 25. Fujimura, Joan. 2003. Scientific Imaginaries?? In //Genetic nature/culture anthropology and science beyond the two-culture divide//. Georges, Eugenia. 2008. //Bodies of Knowledge: The Medicalization of Reproduction in Greece//. Vanderbilt University Press, December 29. Giddens, Anthony. 1991. //Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age//.Stanford Univ. Press Goldstein, Michael S. 1992. //The Health Movement: Promoting Fitness in America//. Twayne Publishers. Grace, Maggi. 2007. //State of the Heart: A Medical Tourist's True Story of Lifesaving Surgery in India//. Oakland CA: New Harbinger Publications. Habermas, Jurgen. 1998. Beyond the nation state? //Peace Review// 10, no. 2 (June): 235. doi:Article. Haraway, Donna J. 1997. //Modest Witness@Second Millenium. FemaleMan Meets OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience//. 1st ed. Routledge, January 15. Harding, Sandra. 2003a. //The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies//. 1st ed. Routledge, October 28. ---. 2003b. //The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader: Intellectual and Political Controversies//. Routledge. Harvey, David. 1991. //The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change//. Wiley-Blackwell, October. ---. 2007. //A Brief History of Neoliberalism//. Oxford University Press, USA, January 18. Hogle, Linda. 2003. Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death (review). //Technology and Culture// 44, no. 2 (May 1): 433-435. Inhorn, Marcia C. 1994. //Quest for Conception: Gender, Infertility, and Egyptian Medical Traditions//. University of Pennsylvania Press, September 19. Jameson, Fredric. 1991. //Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism//. Duke University Press. Jasanoff, Sheila. 2007a. //Designs on Nature: Science and Democracy in Europe and the United States//. Princeton University Press, January 2. ---. 2007b. //States of Knowledge: The Co-production of Science and Social Order//. 1st ed. Taylor & Francis. Khagram, Sanjeev. 2008. //The Transnational Studies Reader: Intersections and Innovations//. NY: Routledge Kroll-Smith, J. Stephen, and H. Hugh Floyd. 2000. //Bodies in Protest: Environmental Illness and the Struggle Over Medical Knowledge//. NYU Press, June 1. Lampland, Martha, and Susan Leigh Star. 2009. //Standards and their stories : how quantifying, classifying, and formalizing practices shape everyday life//. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Latour, Bruno. 2004. //Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy//. Harvard Univ. Press. Levitt, Peggy, and Sanjeev Khagram. 2007. //The Transnational Studies Reader: Interdisciplinary Intersections and Innovations//. 1st ed. Routledge. Lock, Margaret. 2001. //Twice Dead: Organ Transplants and the Reinvention of Death//. 1st ed. UCal Press. Lowy, Ilana. 2007. The Social History of Medicine: Beyond the Local. //Soc Hist Med// 20, no. 3: 465-481 Lyotard, Jean-Francois. 1984. //The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge//. Univ. of Minn. Marcus, George. 1995. Ethnography In Of the World System: The Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography. //Annual review of anthropology.// 24: 95. Marcus, George E., and Michael M. J. Fischer. 1999. //Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences//. 2nd ed. University Of Chicago Press, May 1. Martin, Emily. 1995. //Flexible Bodies//. 1st ed. Beacon Press, October 30. McIntyre-Mills, Janet. 2000. //Global Citizenship and Social Movements: Creating Transcultural Webs of Meaning for the New Millennium//. Amsterdam: Harwood Acad. Publ. Mitman, Gregg. 2008. //Breathing Space: How Allergies Shape Our Lives and Landscapes//. Yale Univ. Press Mol, Annemarie, Marc Berg, Marc Berg, Stefan Hirschauer, Nicolas Dodier, Vicky Singleton, et al. 1998. //Differences in Medicine: Unraveling Practices, Techniques, and Bodies//. Duke University Press. Morales-Gómez, Daniel, and International Development Research Centre (Canada). 1999. T//ransnational Social Policies: The New Development Challenges of Globalization.// Ottawa ;London: International Development Research Centre ;;Earthscan. Nowotny, Helga, Peter Scott, and Michael Gibbons. 2001. R//e-Thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty.// Polity, April 6. Ong, Aihwa. 1998a. F//lexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality.// Duke University Press. ---. 2006. N//eoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty.// New title. Duke University Press. Petersen, Alan, and Deborah Lupton. 1997. T//he New Public Health: Health and Self in the Age of Risk.// 1st ed. Sage Publications Ltd, February 10. Pruthi, Raj. 2006. M//edical Tourism in India.// Arise Publishers & Distributors. Schult, Jeff. 2006. B//eauty from Afar: The Medical Tourist's Guide to Affordable and Quality Cosmetic Surgery Outside the United States.// New York: Stewart Tabori & Chang. Sharp, Lesley A. A. 2006. S//trange Harvest: Organ Transplants, Denatured Bodies, and the Transformed Self.// 1st ed. University of California Press, October 4. Singh, Tejvir. 2004. N//ew Horizons in Tourism: Strange Experiences and Stranger Practices.// Cambridge MA: CABI Pub. Smith, Dorothy E. 2005. I//nstitutional Ethnography: A Sociology for People.// AltaMira Press, May 28. Song, Priscilla. 2008. From Cyberspace to China: Biotech Pilgrims and the transnational Quest For Stem Cell Cures. In U//npublished Conference Paper.// San Francisco, November 20. Subramanian, Sarmishta. 2007. WOMBS FOR RENT. M//aclean's// 120, no. 25 (July 2): 40-47. doi:Article. Turshen, Meredeth. 2007. W//omen's Health Movements: A Global Force for Change.// Palgrave Macmillan. __ Education __ PhD in Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY, In Progress MS in Science and Technology Studies, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY, In Progress Certificate in Culture, Health, and Science Studies Awarded by the organization of the Five Colleges, Amherst Mass, 2001 BA in Social & Cultural Studies of Science & Medicine, Hampshire College, Amherst MA, 2000\ __ Employment History __ 2006-Present //North American Kantian Society Newsletter, Editorial Assistant, assemble//, layout and mailing of academic society Newsletter. 2005 - 2006 //Fordham University - NY State HIV/AIDS Service Administration (HASA) Training Program Coordinator,// Conducted daily trainings and Scheduled Educational program for a Multimillion Dollar Grant. (Prof. David Koch). 2000 – 2005 //Medipix Prod. Inc & DPP. Inc., Office manager,// multimedia production and advertising for the Medical and Information Sectors, developed and oversaw media production on behalf of Pfizer, Bayer, Rutgers University and Berkeley College. (Dennis Powers, DPPI Inc, and Larry Testa MPP Inc). __ Committee Service & Professional Memberships __ Elected International Student Representative, Society for Social Studies of Science (2008-2010) Colloquium Committee member, Dept of STS, RPI (2007-08) Student Member, Society for Social Studies of Science (2006- Present) Student Member, American Anthropological Association, (1999-2000, 2006-Present) Member of the Section for Medical Anthropology, and Section for Cultural Anthropology __ Professional Publications __ “Eugenics” Article for //The Encyclopedia of Scientific Controversies//, Edited by Sal Restivo, Greenwood Press, 2008 “Organ Transplantation;” and “Traffic Light;” Articles for //The Encyclopedia of Discovery and// // Invention //, Edited by James Ciment. M.E. Sharpe Inc., In press – Expected 2009 __ Selected Panel and Conference Presentations __ “Making the healthy self and the unhealthy self: Neoliberal Identity, category, and selfhood” Meetings of the Society for Social Studies of Science – International Society Meeting (Washington DC, US), Submitted, Expected - September 2009 “Science-fiction, Promises and Threats in Popular Communication” International Communication Association. Meetings (Chicago, IL) May 2009 “Reinventing Risks: The Environmental Hazard with Human Initiated bio-threat of emergent diseases,” Meetings of the International Association of Science and Technology Studies, (RIT, Rochester, NY) April 2009 “Lost (and found) in Transnationalism”, Panel Organizer (with Aalok Khandekar RPI, STS) Meetings of the Society for Social Studies of Science – International Society Meeting (Univ. Rotterdam, Holland) August 2008 “From Health Travel To Health Tourism: A Discursive Analysis”, Meetings of the Society for Social Studies of Science – International Society Meeting (Univ. Rotterdam, Holland) August 2008 __ Teaching Experience __ Graduate Teaching Assistant, Department of Science and Technology Studies, RPI “Information Technology and Society;” “Politics and Economics of Information Technologies;” “Professional Development II: Leadership;” “Introduction to Science and Technology Studies”
 * __III. Contribution- Description of future research and career plans:__**
 * __V Works Cited:__**
 * __ Gareth A. F. Edel __**__ **Curriculum Vitae**__