University of Oxford
Oxford Nizami Ganjavi Centre
For the Study of the History, Languages, and Cultures of Azerbaijan, the Caucasus and Central Asia
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Defining Backwardness through a Lens of Medicine: The Soviet Socialist Health System in Azerbaijan, 1920-1939

19 May 2022
Speaker: Yelena Abdullayeva (ONGC)

Can medicine be used as a lens to observe colonialism and as a way to evaluate state power in action? My research examines the role of health and medicine in the complex relations between colonizing power and the colonized. Through the lens of medical discourse, I focus on the interconnection of colonizing and modernizing ambitions of Soviet зщцук in Azerbaijan between 1920 and 1939. The Bolshevik authorities introduced new social and economic programs to modernize the local societies. One of the programs was to improve health, sanitation, and medical care of the Muslim populace. In their approach, to rescue Muslims from the perceived state of ignorance, Moscow-appointed doctors and researchers employed health and hygiene to denounce as detrimental most aspects of native culture they observed. They assigned disease to culture and ethnicity by focusing on local traditions and customs as the source of ailments. By studying the interconnection of colonizing and modernizing ambitions of the Soviet power through the prism of medicine I argue that these tendencies were mutually supported and interrelated. 

To find out more about Dr Abdullayeva's work, please visit her page.

 Yelena Abullayeva

 TOSCCA/ONGC Seminar Series (Trinity Term 2022) Programme​​​​​

 

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