Speaker: Joseph Harris, Associate Professor of Sociology at Boston University and the author of Achieving Access: Professional Movements and the Politics of Health Universalism (Cornell University Press, 2017).
Scholars have frequently understood development as a process that is either “market-led” or “state-led,” with the industrial development of classic developmental states, like Japan, led by a guiding state agency, like Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry. In Thailand, however, rather than development being state- or market-led, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and autonomous parastatal organizations serve as important “knowledge organizations” that orbit around a pilot agency concerned not with economic development, but social development—the Ministry of Public Health. These knowledge organizations make important technical contributions to national policy successes, while also playing important roles cementing the country’s reputation abroad. This talk will focus on the role played by knowledge organizations in the field of public health in Thailand, focusing on the case of tobacco control.
This event is organized by the New York Southeast Asia Network (NYSEAN) and cosponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute
