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Echoes of austerity Policy, temporality, and public health in South Africa
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Echoes of austerity Policy, temporality, and public health in South Africa

Theodore Powers
Focaal, Vol.2019(83), pp.13-24
03/01/2019
DOI: 10.3167/fcl.2019.830102

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Abstract

South Africa's post-apartheid era has been marked by the continuation of racialized socioeconomic inequality, a social situation produced by earlier periods of settlement, colonization, and apartheid. While the ruling African National Congress has pursued a transformative political agenda, it has done so within the confines of neoliberal macroeconomic policy, including a period of fiscal austerity, which has had limited impact on poverty and inequality. Here, I explore how policy principles associated with austerity travel across time, space, and the levels of the state in South Africa, eventually manifesting in a public health policy that produced cuts to public health services. In assessing these sociopolitical dynamics, I utilize policy process as a chronotope to unify diverse experiences of temporality relative to austerity-inspired public health policy.
Anthropology Life Sciences & Biomedicine Science & Technology

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