Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor

Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor, by Paul Farmer. Berkeley/Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 2003. $16.45; paper, $10.85. Pp. xxiv, 402.

Paul Farmer is the founding director of Partners in Health and Professor of Medical Anthropology at Harvard Medical School. He also received the Margaret Mead Award for his contributions to public anthropology. Farmer spent many years as a physician and human rights activist in Haiti, Peru and Russia. Pathologies of Power is his passionate account of social, political and economic injustice and a noble attempt to address and rectify the misery of the world's poor.

The book is in two parts: Part I, "Bearing Witness," and Part II, "One Physician's Perspective on Human Rights." Part I is anecdotal, since as Farmer explains it, "the 'texture' of dire affliction is better felt in the gritty details of biography" (31). Through various life stories - Acephie, an AIDS victim in Haiti; Chouchou, a torture victim in Haiti; Yolande, an HfV detainee in Guantanamo; the people of Moises Gandhi in Chiapas who are persecuted and exploited by the Mexican government; and Sergei, a Russian prisoner in Vladimir colony who is a victim of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDRTB) and budget cuts after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 Farmer presents the reality of suffering, injustice, inequality and oppression. In Part II he discusses structural violence and human rights and proposes what he describes as "pragmatic solidarity" (138, 146) and "liberation theology" (138,140) as a compassionate methodology and intellectual resource that can begin to rectify injustice, inequality and violations of human rights.

The book is focused on condemnation of the neoliberal...