The World Health Organization and the Social Determinants of Health

In November I had the great pleasure of attending and speaking at an event organised by the Wellcome Trust Centre to discuss the Final Report of the WHO’s Commission on the Social Determinants of Health, more information here.  The event was entitled ‘The World Health Organization and the Social Determinants of Health: Assessing Theory, Policy, and Practice’, the programme is available here. 

My paper attempted to see whether there was anything good to come of the financial crisis for funding such a large-scale and redistributive vision as the CSDH Report.  My sense is that there is.  However, the fast-changing nature of events since October 2008 means that I haven’t got around to redrafting the paper yet.  When I do I will post it here as well as here, where some of the other papers are already available.

The Report is well-worth reading.

Developing Geographies of Financialisation

This paper will appear later in 2008 as part of a special issue of Contemporary Politics.

As of 02.10.08, the published version is available here for free download.

The paper explores flows of international remittances through the lens of the financialisation literature and identifies new ‘developing geographies of financialisation’.  It argues that there are two key types of financialisation (i) an intermediated version, via the expansion of retail finance on the back of remittance flows, and (ii) a disintermediated version, via the securitisation of remittance flows.  The article also identifies the need to appropriate what were previously private and informal flows and bring them into the ‘global development architecture’.  This is done so under the premise of a crisis of development financing.