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Medical geography: care and caring

This, the second of my short reports into aspects of the current state of medical geography, concentrates on the themes of ‘care’ and ‘caring’ with respect to health and illness. This chosen slant neglects some important research work, especially that reflecting more traditional aspects of the subdiscipline, as well as new work which explores revealing dimensions to the dialectic between health and place (e.g., Bush et al., 2001; Cutchin, 2001; Dovey et al., 2001; Rapheal et al., 2001; Stead et al., 2001; Witten et al., 2001; Wakefield et al., 2001). However, at the same time it allows a selective commentary on the efforts of some geographers who are seeking to redefine this field in conceptually and empirically innovative ways, while still building on the foundations of past efforts. Medical geography has been conventionally mapped as a subdiscipline with two distinctive strands: research work on the spatial distribution of disease and death, and that on the geographical complexities surrounding the provision, access to and (in)equality of health care (Curtis and Taket, 1996; Kearns and Gesler, 2002). My last report partly engaged with the first strand by highlighting new ways in which medical, health and other geographers were critically investigating the diagnosed, diseased, disadvantaged and dying body in ways that expand and sometimes disrupt this ‘canon’. This piece picks up on the second strand and examines how geographers are taking forward agendas relating to health care in ways that go beyond matters of access and provision (although this is still a strong and important theme; see Hotchkiss, 2001; Higgs and Gould, 2001: Gould and Moon, 2000; Martin et al., 2002; Ricketts et al., 2001; Takahashi and Smutny, 2001; to list but a few examples). While there is nothing radically new in this general development (geographers have been seeking to go beyond a simple mapping of health care for some years now), a detailed examination of current work reveals some rich conceptual and empirical nuances to current research directions which merit our attention. Apart from the papers mentioned, this recent Progress in Human Geography 27,2 (2003) pp. 212–221