IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/wdevel/v104y2018icp375-387.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Contestation and negotiation of urban health in India: A situated political approach

Author

Listed:
  • Saravanan, V.S.

Abstract

This article examines health as a political struggle, where individuals contest and negotiate to secure health in a situated context. In this context, individuals who are socially embedded and exposed to the existing biosocial arena integrate macro-institutional determinants with everyday micro-institutional settings during the life course. Drawing together institutional analysis and a life course approach, the article examines the interplay of institutions in the exposure, action and outcomes behind individuals health in two case study wards in urban India-one planned settlement, and the other a ‘slum-like’ settlement. It applies longitudinal methods of household survey and life course analyses of individuals reporting diseases to understand the interplay of institutions. The analysis reveals statutory rules creating boundary conditions for exposure to infection. The individuals exploit these using the socially embedded norms to contest and negotiate through coalitions and networks. The statutory rules defines the scope and outcomes of the health-seeking decisions. The study in two case study reveals that seemingly ‘planned settlement’ is conducive over the spread of infections than in slum-like settlement. It calls for strategic focus on improving the boundary conditions – the environmental hygiene and public health infrastructure – which might be more effective than contemporary neo-liberal techno-centric and individualized interventions. Failure to promote these actions will provide an environment conducive to the future spread of infectious and non-infectious diseases. Theoretically, it pushes for greater understanding of the socio-political struggle of individuals, rather than focusing on risk factors and dualistic nature of macro- and micro-institutions. The approach leaves room for applying situated political approach in understanding mobility and seasonality of exposure to diseases in urban regions.

Suggested Citation

  • Saravanan, V.S., 2018. "Contestation and negotiation of urban health in India: A situated political approach," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 375-387.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:104:y:2018:i:c:p:375-387
    DOI: 10.1016/j.worlddev.2017.12.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X17303960
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.worlddev.2017.12.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Debanita Chatterjee & Shanmuga Priya T. & Puja Minni & Jyotsna Jha, 2016. "Reducing Child Marriage in India : A Model to Scale Up Results," Working Papers id:10380, eSocialSciences.
    2. G. Hodgson, 2007. "What Are Institutions?," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 8.
    3. Bakker, Karen & Kooy, Michelle & Shofiani, Nur Endah & Martijn, Ernst-Jan, 2008. "Governance Failure: Rethinking the Institutional Dimensions of Urban Water Supply to Poor Households," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(10), pages 1891-1915, October.
    4. Jyotsna Jha, 2016. "Reducing Child Marriage in India: A Model to Scale Up Results, New Delhi, 2016," Working Papers id:10580, eSocialSciences.
    5. repec:ilo:ilowps:369294 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. V.S. Saravanan, 2013. "Urbanizing diseases: contested institutional terrain of water- and vector-borne diseases in Ahmedabad, India," Water International, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 38(7), pages 875-887, November.
    7. Breman, Jan., 2004. "Social exclusion in the context of globalization," ILO Working Papers 993692943402676, International Labour Organization.
    8. Rosenberg, M.W., 1988. "Linking the geographical, the medical and the political in analysing health care delivery systems," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 179-186, January.
    9. Meredeth Turshen, 1977. "The Political Ecology of Disease," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 9(1), pages 45-60, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nadia Singh & Areet Kaur, 2022. "The COVID‐19 pandemic: Narratives of informal women workers in Indian Punjab," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 388-407, March.
    2. Pereira, Miguel Alves & Marques, Rui Cunha, 2022. "The ‘Sustainable Public Health Index’: What if public health and sustainable development are compatible?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alula Pankhurst & Nathan Negussie & Emebet Mulugeta, 2016. "Understanding Children’s Experiences of Violence in Ethiopia: Evidence from Young Lives," Papers inwopa867, Innocenti Working Papers.
    2. Mirzaee, Zahra & Maarefvand, Masoomeh & Mousavi, Mir Taher & Pourzand, Nilufar & Hossienzadeh, Samaneh & Khubchandani, Jagdish, 2021. "Stakeholders’ perspectives on girls’ early marriage in Maneh and Samalqan, Iran," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    3. Ray, Rita, 2020. "Mother’s autonomy and child anemia: A case study from India," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 112(C).
    4. Kotsila, Panagiota & Saravanan, V. Subramanian, 2017. "Biopolitics Gone to Shit? State Narratives versus Everyday Realities of Water and Sanitation in the Mekong Delta," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 374-388.
    5. Fidrmuc, Jana P. & Jacob, Marcus, 2010. "Culture, agency costs, and dividends," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 321-339, September.
    6. Nastasi, Federico & Spagano, Salvatore, 2023. "Institutionalist Clues in Celso Furtado’s Economic Thought," MPRA Paper 120242, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Maximiliano Marzetti & Rok Spruk, 2023. "Long-Term Economic Effects of Populist Legal Reforms: Evidence from Argentina," Comparative Economic Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Association for Comparative Economic Studies, vol. 65(1), pages 60-95, March.
    8. Robert Roßner & Dimitrios Zikos, 2018. "The Role of Homogeneity and Heterogeneity Among Resource Users on Water Governance: Lessons Learnt from an Economic Field Experiment on Irrigation in Uzbekistan," Water Economics and Policy (WEP), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 4(03), pages 1-30, July.
    9. Maciejczak, Mariusz, 2015. "Will the institution of coexistence be re-defined by TTIP?," GMCC-15: Seventh GMCC, November 17-20, 2015, Amsterdam, the Netherlands 211478, International Conference on Coexistence between Genetically Modified (GM) and non-GM based Agricultural Supply Chains (GMCC).
    10. Xiang Li & Sun Sheng Han & Hao Wu, 2019. "Urban consolidation, power relations, and dilapidated residential redevelopment in Mutoulong, Shenzhen, China," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(13), pages 2802-2819, October.
    11. Mika Kallioinen, 2017. "Inter‐communal institutions in medieval trade," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 70(4), pages 1131-1152, November.
    12. Alastair Greig & Mark Turner, 2024. "Policy and hope: The millennium development goals," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 15(1), pages 66-77, February.
    13. Luis Alfonso Dau & Aya S. Chacar & Marjorie A. Lyles & Jiatao Li, 2022. "Informal institutions and international business: Toward an integrative research agenda," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 53(6), pages 985-1010, August.
    14. Valentin Seidler, 2017. "Institutional Copying in the 20th Century: The Role of 14,000 British Colonial Officers," Journal of Contextual Economics (JCE) – Schmollers Jahrbuch, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin, vol. 137(1-2), pages 93-119.
    15. Bourgeois, Robin, 2007. "Towards the Emergence of Constitutive Rules for Equitable Agribusiness Value Chains," 106th Seminar, October 25-27, 2007, Montpellier, France 7923, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    16. Masahiko Aoki, 2013. "Institutions as cognitive media between strategic interactions and individual beliefs," Chapters, in: Comparative Institutional Analysis, chapter 17, pages 298-312, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    17. Hiedanpää, Juha & Ramcilovik-Suominen, Sabaheta & Salo, Matti, 2023. "Neoliberal pathways to the bioeconomy: Forest land use institutions in Chile, Finland, and Laos," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 155(C).
    18. Marletto, Gerardo, 2011. "Structure, agency and change in the car regime. A review of the literature," European Transport \ Trasporti Europei, ISTIEE, Institute for the Study of Transport within the European Economic Integration, issue 47, pages 71-88.
    19. Laurent Mériade & Benoit Nautré & Corinne Rochette & Damien Talbot, 2017. "Les effets de la Proximité sur l'exécution des politiques publiques : L'exemple d'un Centre de Lutte contre le Cancer (CLCC)," Post-Print hal-02327098, HAL.
    20. Simon Hartmann & Thomas Lindner & Jakob Müllner & Jonas Puck, 2022. "Beyond the nation-state: Anchoring supranational institutions in international business research," Journal of International Business Studies, Palgrave Macmillan;Academy of International Business, vol. 53(6), pages 1282-1306, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:wdevel:v:104:y:2018:i:c:p:375-387. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.