内容简介：
Revolutionary Medicine is a richly textured examination of the ways that Cuba's public health care system has changed during the past two decades and the meaning of those changes for ordinary Cubans. Until the Soviet bloc collapsed in 1989, socialist Cuba encouraged citizens to view access to health care as a human right and the state's responsibility to provide it as a moral imperative. Since the loss of Soviet subsidies and the tightening of the U.S. economic embargo, Cuba's government has found it hard to provide the high-quality universal medical care that was so central to the revolutionary socialist project. In Revolutionary Medicine, P. Sean Brotherton deftly integrates theory and history with ethnographic research in Havana, including interviews with citizens seeking medical care, family physicians, public health officials, and research scientists. He describes how the deterioration of health and social welfare programs has led Cubans to seek health care through informal arrangements, as well as state sponsored programs. The creative, resourceful ways that they are pursuing their health and well-being provide insight into how Cubans are navigating, adapting to, and pragmatically coping with the rapid social, economic, and political changes in post-Soviet Cuba.