Socialist Medicine: An Alternative Global Health History

Project Information

SOCMED

Grant agreement ID: 949639

DOI

10.3030/949639

EC signature date 26 October 2020

Start date 1 September 2021

End date 30 June 2027

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 500 000,00

EU contribution

€ 1 500 000,00

Coordinated by

HUMBOLDT-UNIVERSITAET ZU BERLIN
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SOCMED (Socialist Medicine: An Alternative Global Health History)

Reporting period: 2023-03-01 to 2024-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

This project brings the socialist world into the history of global health for the first time. It identifies the particular health cultures produced by socialism (in all its variety) and explores the impact of socialist internationalism in co-producing global health in the 20th century. Until now, this story has primarily been told from an American perspective, through the lens of international organizations, and colonial and postcolonial relationships. The proposed project pioneers a new history that will not only transform our knowledge of historical processes, but will further our understanding of ideas, practices and processes that current global health structures have been built on.

By centering the analysis on state socialist countries and their global relations, this research changes our fundamental understanding on the history of the emergence of global health in the post-Cold War order. Socialist networks of international solidarity and collectivity shaped health care systems, pharmaceutical manufacturing, and knowledge networks in ways that have been rendered invisible in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rise of neoliberal frameworks, and the HIV epidemic, which animated the rise of global health initiatives driven by “the West”.

Revisiting well-known histories through the lens of socialism, the project incorporates the contributions of alternative and/or competing internationalisms, practices and concepts that together shaped global health in the 20th century. Thus, the research goes beyond the field of global health history by contributing to critical assessments of political thought, state administration systems and international governance.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Since the beginning of the project, two postdoctoral fellows, two visiting researchers and two student assistants have joined the SOCMED team. The team has conducted archival and oral history research in five countries so far, and have published six articles in international journals, and one chapter accepted in an edited volume, which will be published in 2024. SOCMED has held its first scientific workshop on October 9-10, with 21 participants from 11 countries at Harnack-Haus, Max Planck Society, Berlin. The results of the workshop are to be published as a special journal issue in the European Journal for the History of Medicine and Health in Gold Open Access. The journal has accepted the issue proposal and it is scheduled to be published in 2025. The research group has been running a monthly seminar series since the beginning of the 2023/24 academic year. Speakers have been invited from various European universities to present original research. Participants in the seminar regularly attend from 3-4 universities and/or research institutions. SOCMED has developed an ongoing collaboration with the two research groups, based at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science and Charité respectively. The collaboration, titled Health Beyond medicine has organized a common seminar series (2022-23), a Health Beyond Medicine full-day workshop (February 2024). The collaboration's next event will be a major international conference held at Humboldt University in 2025. The project team's website has been attracting a wide readership and we have been informing the public about project events, results, and have launched a podcast series, featuring some of the speakers in our seminars and/or workshops. Project members have been disseminating their research results at keynote presentations, colloquiums, workshops and conferences on four continents, in 13 countries, in four languages. Team members' research has been covered in the media in several countries.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

SOCMED is internationally recognised as leading research in the history of socialist global health, as evidenced by invitations of project members to keynote presentations, colloquiums and workshops on four continents. The research developed by the SOCMED team draws on interdisciplinary approaches (sociology, anthropology, political science) and engages with several subfields in History, such as Cold War history, diplomatic history, postcolonial history, African and Asian history, etc. Through interconnected, individual research projects, team members are developing new ways in which global history can be approached, integrating new actors, networks and processes in well-known narratives, and connecting various registers of analysis to bring together international organizations, national priorities and individual lived experiences.