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Technology and Globalisation
The challenges for health sociology
David Legge
La Trobe University, School of Public Health, Bundoora VIC
Abstract
The drivers of institutional change in health care can be traced in part to technology and in some degree to globalisation and to various interactions between the two. Three papers collected under the banner of Health, IT and Globalisation and published in the Y2K issue of Annual Review of Health Social Sciences provide substance for reflection regarding the challenge of factoring 'globalisation' into our analyses of the processes of institutional change in health care.
These three case studies of institutional change deal with the corporatisation of general practice, the rise of e-health and work intensification in nursing. It seems self-evident that analysing such case studies in relation to globalisation is a worthwhile project. However, it is not self-evident how to proceed with such an analysis: what directions should guide it and what are the disciplines involved.
In this (invited) commentary I explore the challenges of analysing such instances of local institutional change in relation to the structures and dynamics of globalisation.
References
Huws U, Jagger N and Bates P (2001) Where the butterfly alights: the global locations of e-work, Brighton, UK: Institute for Employment Studies, IES Report 378.
Sinclair-Jones J (2000) E-medicine and e-work: the new international division of labour? Annual Review of Health Social Sciences 10: 19-30.
White K (2000) What's happening in general practice: capitalist monopolisation and state administrative control: a profession bailing out? Annual Review of Health Social Sciences 10: 5-18.
Wilcox RA and Ralph R La Tella (2001) The personal digital assistant: a new medical instrument for the exchange of clinical information at the point of care, Medical Journal of Australia 175: 659-662.
Willis E (2000) Computerised hospital work: Fordism and Taylorism revisited, Annual Review of Health Social Sciences 10: 31-41.
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