Doctoral Dissertation Research: An Ethnographic Analysis of Cosmetic Surgery Tourism in Costa Rica

整容手术旅游是近年来经济和文化全球化的产物，很少受到学术界的关注。本论文研究由北卡罗来纳州大学的文化人类学家进行，将采用观察、访谈和二级数据分析来调查哥斯达黎加整容手术旅游的当地发展和影响。 长期以来，哥斯达黎加一直是受欢迎的自然旅游目的地，现在因其最先进的医疗设施和经过国际培训的临床医生而在北美得到认可。每年有越来越多的“医疗游客”来到哥斯达黎加，寻求度假和廉价的医疗或牙科手术，最流行的整容手术。首先将考察哥斯达黎加的整容手术旅游业，作为一套社会习俗，这套习俗可能受到旅行本身具有变革性的假设以及哥斯达黎加在北美作为发展中国家中政治、经济和环境例外的声誉的影响。其次，将调查美容手术旅游与美国医疗保健费用上涨和哥斯达黎加国家资助的医疗保健系统部分私有化的关系。这项研究将考虑如何通过前往哥斯达黎加和居住在“恢复度假村”重塑身体改造的愿望和经验，以及医疗旅游如何产生新的衔接之间的哥斯达黎加的蓬勃发展的私人医疗部门和负担过重，资金不足的公共部门。通过提供一个案例研究的医疗技术和病人的全球流通的地方影响，这项调查将进一步了解政治和经济条件如何塑造生物医学的做法，以及对性别和老龄化的看法。

Cosmetic surgery tourism is a recent outgrowth of economic and cultural globalization that has received little scholarly attention. This dissertation research by a cultural anthropologist at the University of North Carolina will use observations, interviews, and analysis of secondary data to investigate the local development and effects of cosmetic surgery tourism in Costa Rica. Long popular as a nature tourism destination, Costa Rica is now recognized in North America for its state-of-the-art medical facilities and internationally trained clinicians. Increasing numbers of "medical tourists" arrive in Costa Rica each year, seeking both a vacation and an inexpensive medical or dental procedure, most popularly cosmetic surgery. Cosmetic surgery tourism in Costa Rica will be examined first, as a set of social practices that may be informed by assumptions about travel as inherently transformative and by Costa Rica's reputation in North America as a political, economic and environmental exception among developing countries. Secondly, cosmetic surgery tourism will be investigated in relation to rising healthcare costs in the U.S. and the partial privatization of Costa Rica's state-sponsored health care system. This study will consider how desires for and experiences of bodily transformation are reshaped through travel to Costa Rica and residence in "recovery resorts," and how medical tourism produces new articulations between Costa Rica's thriving private medical sector and its overburdened and under funded public sector. By offering a case study of the local impacts of global circulations of medical technologies and patients, this investigation will further understanding of how political and economic conditions shape biomedical practices as well as perceptions of gender and aging.