“Medicine and Capitalism” is a works-in-progress seminar that provides opportunities for faculty across Columbia’s campuses as well as other NYC community members to present and discuss research that raises ethical questions about the role of capitalism in healthcare, as well as to discuss critical empirical approaches to the topic.
Scholars who participate in this workshop are united by their interest in how medicine and healthcare are fundamentally shaped by private actors and the goals of financial profit. However, participants study a wide array of different capitalist arrangements across time and space. Members conduct multimethod research on a diverse array of empirical topics, combining statistical, historical, ethnographic, interview, and archival methods.
In the coming years, we plan to focus on a number of themes including: (1) the implications of financial transformations in healthcare, including corporatization, financialization, and privatization, (2) healthcare workforce and labor politics (3) the governance and financing of technology and innovation, (4) the political economy of access, and (5) ethical questions related to the role of the university in the funding and production of medical research.
