Dr.sc. Ljiljana Pantović s Instituta za filozofiju i društvenu teoriju održat će gostujuće predavanje u četvrtak 20.1. 2022. u 16h za studente na kolegiju Medicinska antropologija i etnomedicina/Medical anthropology and ethnomedicine. Predavanje će se održati na engleskom jeziku.

Sažetak predavanja i kratku biografiju profesorice Pantović čitajte u daljnjem tekstu.

Providing a service or seeking a favor? The role of private prenatal care in the continuity of care on Serbian public maternity hospitals

Short abstract:

Women in Serbia make informal payments to ensure continuity in care in public maternity hospitals. The private medical sector is reshaping existing informal strategies and blurring the lines between formal and informal payments. Through an ethnographic account of how Serbian gynecologists use the emerging private sector provide individual rather than institutionalized continuity of care for a select group of women during pregnancy and childbirth, I show that introduction of neoliberal market logic of care did not replace the existing informal economy and only deepened the existing inequalities. Consumer practices are not separate but entangled with informality, and that they further exacerbate inequalities present in the healthcare sector in Eastern Europe.

Long abstract:

What is the role of private practices in providing health care in Serbia? Women in Serbia make informal payments to ensure continuity in care in public maternity hospitals. The private medical sector is reshaping existing informal strategies and blurring the lines between formal and informal payments. Through an ethnographic account of how Serbian gynecologists use the emerging private sector provide individual rather than institutionalized continuity of care for a select group of women during pregnancy and childbirth, I show that introduction of neoliberal market logic of care did not replace the existing informal economy and only deepened the existing inequalities. Only public maternity hospital gynecologist who supplement their income working the private sector have the power to blur the distinctions between favors and services. They are able to offer continuity of personalized care to their client/patients and obtain social and economic security unavailable to those working only in one sector. Rather than viewing post-socialist health care systems as unreformed and informality as a legacy of socialism, this research offers an alternative viewpoint and contributes to existing knowledge on neoliberalism and informality in post socialist healthcare. Consumer practices are not separate but entangled with informality, and that they further exacerbate inequalities present in the healthcare sector in Eastern Europe.

Biography:

Dr Ljiljana Pantović is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory of the University of Belgrade. She received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh (USA) with a dissertation entitled: “Private within the Public – Negotiating Birth in Serbia”, under the mentorship of prof. Dr. Robert Hayden. At the Institute she conducts her research in the following research laboratories: The laboratory for the study of philanthropy, solidarity, and care (SolidCare Lab), The gender research laboratory (GenLab), and the Laboratory for the research on socialism and (post)Yugoslavia (YugoLab). The focus of her current research interests is medical anthropology and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of care, health, and gender in the post socialist countries. She is the leader of the project Closeness and Care: Elderly Care in Serbia during the Covid19 pandemic (2021/2022) and team member of the WHO/SeConS group project Implementation of the Behavioral Survey regarding COVID-19 Vaccination Roll-out in the regions with low vaccine uptake in Serbia.