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

整容旅游是经济和文化全球化的最新产物，很少受到学术界的关注。北卡罗莱纳大学的一名文化人类学家将通过观察、访谈和分析二手数据来调查哥斯达黎加整容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，现在以其最先进的医疗设施和受过国际培训的临床医生在北美得到认可。每年有越来越多的“医疗游客”来到哥斯达黎加，既寻求度假，也寻求廉价的医疗或牙科手术，最受欢迎的是整容手术。哥斯达黎加的整容旅游将首先被审查，作为一套社会实践，可能会被认为旅游具有内在的变革性，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所告知。其次，整容手术旅游将调查在美国的医疗保健费用上升和哥斯达黎加的部分私有化的国家赞助的医疗保健系统。本研究将考虑通过哥斯达黎加旅行和居住在“康复度假村”如何重塑身体转变的愿望和体验，以及医疗旅游如何在哥斯达黎加蓬勃发展的私营医疗部门与其负担过重和资金不足的公共部门之间产生新的联系。通过提供医疗技术和患者全球流通对当地影响的案例研究，这项调查将进一步了解政治和经济条件如何影响生物医学实践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.