Doctoral Dissertation Research: Medical Tourism as Economic Recovery in Post-Crisis Argentina

研究生艾米丽·麦克唐纳在彼得·瓜尔纳西亚博士的指导下，将在阿根廷布宜诺斯艾利斯进行跨国医疗旅游实践的研究。在医疗成本上涨的推动下，来自美国、英国和其他国家的医疗游客寻求相对便宜的手术，以及探戈课和品酒等休闲活动。为了吸引这些外国患者，阿根廷的医生正在与当地旅游业建立联系，将医疗旅游确立为应对2001年经济危机的关键经济复苏战略。虽然医疗旅游已经被概括为一种医疗保健实践，但在很大程度上仍未被研究，即医疗旅游如何成为嵌入阿根廷特定经济、政治和历史背景下的一种重要的社会实践。研究人员将通过半结构化访谈、参与者观察和口述历史收集来追踪医疗旅游网络，调查阿根廷的医疗旅游。该项目将解决以下问题：1)新创建的医疗旅游网络如何将阿根廷国内和国家之间以前没有联系的人联系起来？2)医疗旅游作为一种经济复苏战略，以什么方式帮助我们了解阿根廷国内的经济和政治状况？3)如何利用历史和文化中根深蒂固的种族和民族概念向布宜诺斯艾利斯推销医疗旅游，并将阿根廷与其他医疗旅游目的地区分开来？了解医疗旅游的动态将有助于围绕医疗保健的主流辩论，并将促进对跨国主义、经济复苏和生物医药商品化的理解。这项研究还将有助于社会科学家的教育。

Graduate student Emily McDonald, supervised by Dr. Peter Guarnaccia, will undertake research on the transnational practice of medical tourism in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Driven by the rising cost of healthcare, medical tourists from the U.S., U.K. and other countries seek comparatively inexpensive surgeries packaged alongside leisure pursuits, such as tango lessons and wine tasting. In order to attract these foreign patients, doctors in Argentina are making connections with local tourist industries, establishing medical tourism as a key economic recovery strategy in response to the 2001 economic crisis. While becoming generalized as a health care practice, what remains largely unexamined is how medical tourism is emerging as a significant social practice embedded within the particular economic, political and historical contexts of Argentina.Tracing medical tourist networks through semi-structured interviews, participant observation and the collection of oral histories, the researcher will investigate medical tourism in Argentina. The project will address the following questions: 1) How are newly created medical tourism networks linking previously unconnected people, both within Argentina and transnationally? 2) In what ways does medical tourism, as an economic recovery strategy, inform our understanding of economic and political conditions within Argentina? 3) How are historically and culturally embedded concepts of race and nationality used to market medical tourism to Buenos Aires, and to differentiate Argentina from other medical tourism destinations? Understanding the dynamics of medical tourism will speak to mainstream debates around healthcare, and will advance understandings of transnationalism, economic recovery and the commodification of biomedicine. The research also will contribute to the education of a social scientist.