Enveloped Lives (Paperback)

Paperback. Handing envelopes containing money or gifts to doctors in public health care is often seen as a remnant of socialism that continues as an integral part of the Lithuanian health care system. Rima Praspaliauskiene uses the envelope to explore complex doctor-patient interactions that go beyond notions of the gift or the bribe. She reshapes our definition of corruption and encourages seeing these practices as emerging forms of care that impede the neoliberal health care reforms effected in the post-Soviet era. Enveloped Lives extends the analytical categories of gift, care, money, and transparency, shifting attention away from material transactions by prioritizing relations and practices that transcend economic rationality. At a time when health care reforms and the costs of care are being widely debated, this book is a contribution to the larger discussion about the ethics and future of health care around the world. "This book is an ethnography of practices of health and care in post-socialist Lithuania. It focuses on how informal payments - "little white envelopes" - are prevailed in public health care in the times of economic shortages during socialism and during the fundamental transformations to capitalism despite multiple efforts to curtail them."-- Shipping may be from our Sydney, NSW warehouse or from our UK or US warehouse, depending on stock availability.…