Special Keynote Lecture by Bogdan C. Iacob
We are very happy to invite you to a special keynote lecture, followed by a wine reception at Humboldt University.
Date: March 5, 2024
Time: 16:30-18:30
Place: Room 2070a, Humboldt University, Unter den Linden 6, Berlin
Register here for in-person participation.
For online participation, email luis.caspar.aue@hu-berlin.de
Bogdan C. Iacob ('Nicolae Iorga' Institute of History, Bucharest)
Socialist Medicine Travels: The Challenge of Postcolonial Spaces
Socialist medicine, especially its state socialist variety, was central to the politics and practice of global health after 1945. Socialist states, my focus being Central and Southeastern Europe, internationalized medical knowledges, technologies, institutions and personnel within the Second World, at the World Health Organization, or through bilateral relations with the so-called Third World and the West. As a rapidly expanding scholarship has shown, these global circulations adapted to shifts within the camp itself, to external interdependencies, and to evolving representations about and from the decolonizing world. Connecting with the latter in particular, state socialist medicine was shaped by and had an impact on post-colonial actors and locales.
Yet, anti-colonial solidarity co-existed with Eurocentric medicalized narratives about newly independent societies and peoples. Exports of expertise to the “Third World” were hampered by balancing commitments abroad with development objectives at home. The socialist values and practices that created much fascination (or dread) across the world only transferred to limited degrees into postcolonial spaces. It was not unusual for Central and Southeastern European physicians to have their ideological credentials challenged by local populations, colleagues, and officials, or by other socialist experts (from the camp and beyond).
How to make sense of these paradoxes? Was state socialist medicine truly an alternative to (neo)colonial logics or paternalistic humanitarianism embedded in Western scripts across the post-colonial world? My answers lie in connecting socialism to colonial histories that reverberate into Europe’s East; in questioning the whiteness at the heart of East-South healthcare entanglements; and, in exploring the re-centring of the North since the late 1970s. I will invoke the Romanian example. Still, the talk interrogates cases throughout Central and Southeastern Europe, and positions the region into broader frameworks of socialism and decolonization during the Cold War.
Bogdan C. Iacob is a historian focusing on Central and Southeastern European experts at international organizations and in post-colonial spaces. He is co-author of 1989. A Global History of Eastern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and contributor to Socialism Goes Global. The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the Age of Decolonisation (Oxford University Press, 2022).
Special Keynote Lecture by Bogdan C. Iacob
We are very happy to invite you to a special keynote lecture, followed by a wine reception at Humboldt University.
Date: March 5, 2024
Time: 16:30-18:30
Place: Room 2070a, Humboldt University, Unter den Linden 6, Berlin
Register here for in-person participation.
For online participation, email luis.caspar.aue@hu-berlin.de
Bogdan C. Iacob ('Nicolae Iorga' Institute of History, Bucharest)
Socialist Medicine Travels: The Challenge of Postcolonial Spaces
Socialist medicine, especially its state socialist variety, was central to the politics and practice of global health after 1945. Socialist states, my focus being Central and Southeastern Europe, internationalized medical knowledges, technologies, institutions and personnel within the Second World, at the World Health Organization, or through bilateral relations with the so-called Third World and the West. As a rapidly expanding scholarship has shown, these global circulations adapted to shifts within the camp itself, to external interdependencies, and to evolving representations about and from the decolonizing world. Connecting with the latter in particular, state socialist medicine was shaped by and had an impact on post-colonial actors and locales.
Yet, anti-colonial solidarity co-existed with Eurocentric medicalized narratives about newly independent societies and peoples. Exports of expertise to the “Third World” were hampered by balancing commitments abroad with development objectives at home. The socialist values and practices that created much fascination (or dread) across the world only transferred to limited degrees into postcolonial spaces. It was not unusual for Central and Southeastern European physicians to have their ideological credentials challenged by local populations, colleagues, and officials, or by other socialist experts (from the camp and beyond).
How to make sense of these paradoxes? Was state socialist medicine truly an alternative to (neo)colonial logics or paternalistic humanitarianism embedded in Western scripts across the post-colonial world? My answers lie in connecting socialism to colonial histories that reverberate into Europe’s East; in questioning the whiteness at the heart of East-South healthcare entanglements; and, in exploring the re-centring of the North since the late 1970s. I will invoke the Romanian example. Still, the talk interrogates cases throughout Central and Southeastern Europe, and positions the region into broader frameworks of socialism and decolonization during the Cold War.
Bogdan C. Iacob is a historian focusing on Central and Southeastern European experts at international organizations and in post-colonial spaces. He is co-author of 1989. A Global History of Eastern Europe (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and contributor to Socialism Goes Global. The Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in the Age of Decolonisation (Oxford University Press, 2022).
