Room 5.80, Robert Leslie Social 

• Roles

  Undergraduate Committee (member)

• Biography

  Lauren Paremoer has a PhD in Political Studies from the New School for Social Research, and an MA and an undergraduate degree in Politics and Economics from the University of Cape Town.

• External Appointments

  Editor:

  Social Dynamics

  Global Health Challenges

• Useful Links

   

• Research, Knowledge Exchange and Impact

  Research Interests

  Global health governance

  Social rights litigation

  Social movements and health  

  Biological citizenship

  Current Research Activities

  I am currently working on a book manuscript centered on the question of whether the neoliberal 21 st century completely

  dismantled the notion, embraced by the welfare states of the late 20 th century, that

  the market regulation is a practice that is both necessary and admirable if we want to

  ensure the dignity and wellbeing of all citizens?

  This book critically analyses the ways in which struggles for the right to health in

  South Africa, and particularly the right to universal health care, are reanimating a

  global conversation about why and how the ideal of social citizenship should be

  defended. It takes the struggle for the right to HIV/AIDS treatment in South Africa,

  and the contradictory afterlives of this struggle, as its reference point in engaging these

  questions.

  Research Projects

  Markets for Health?

  Increasingly, for-profit markets are framed as important – perhaps essential – institutions for realising the ideal of “health for all” set out in the Alma Ata Declaration of 1978. Markets have not always been understood in this manner. Indeed, during the 1990s and early 2000s courts, particularly courts adjudicating social rights claims, were held up as the institutions most likely realise health for all in the Global South. In contrast, for-profit markets were viewed as institutions that undermined public health by charging exhorbitant prices for pharmaceuticals, medical services, medical equipment, and for basic goods and services (notably food and water) that are foundational to health. This project looks at the shift from viewing courts as champions of health for all, to seeing for-profit markets, and philanthropic foundations that owe their riches to these markets, as the “new” champions of health. It is organised around three questions, i.e. Why have markets replaced courts and social rights claims as guarantors of health for all? How is global governance being refigured in the wake of this shift? How do contemporary ideas about the virtues of capitalist markets differ from their historical predecessors, particularly in the field of health? How do actors in the field of public health, both marginalized and privileged, deploy the idea of citizenship in response to the idea that markets are guarantors of social justice?

• Teaching

  Undergraduate teaching

  South African Politics

  Politics of Africa and the Global South

   

  Postgraduate teaching

  Third World Politics

• Postgrad Supervision

  • The Third World political project and its afterlives

  • The political economy of the right to health

  • Situated and embodied knowledges

  • Biological citizenship, particularly in the Global South

• Publications

  • Paremoer, Lauren. 2020. “The Ethics of Global Health: Taking Stock of the State-Market-Citizen Nexus in Global Governance for Health.” In The Routledge Handbook to Rethinking Ethics in International Relations, edited by Birgit Schippers, 237-252. New York: Routledge. 
  • Paremoer, Lauren. 2018. “Situating Expertise: Lessons from the HIV/AIDS Epidemic." Global Challenges 2018, 1700076. https://doi.org/10.1002/gch2.201700076
  • Paremoer, Lauren. 2015. “Making a Virtue out of a necessity: Promoting Access to Antiretroviral Treatment by Valorising Fair Markets and Consumer Rights in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” Critical African Studies: Special Issue on Labour in Africa 7(1): 66-88.
  • Brown, Garrett Wallace and Paremoer, Lauren. 2014. “Global Health and Justice.” In Garrett Brown, Gavin Yarney, and Sarah Wamala (editors), The Handbook of Global Health Policy, 77-95. Chichester, West Sussex; Malden, MA : John Wiley & Sons Inc.
  • Paremoer, Lauren and Jung, Courtney. 2011. “The Role of Socioeconomic Rights in Supporting Opposition in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” In Kahreen Tebeau and Ian Shapiro (editors), After Apartheid: The Second Decade of Democracy, 199-230. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press.