Health, Medicine, and Science in Asia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2022. 272 pp. (Tables, graphs.) US$127.00, cloth. ISBN 9789463720977.
The outbreak of COVID-19 has had a profound impact on all aspects of life in Asia, as it has elsewhere in the world. The spread of the pandemic has disrupted public health systems, brought economic life to a standstill, transformed social life, and exposed socioeconomic inequalities and political fissures. National governments have addressed this unprecedented challenge in different ways, with varying degrees of success and possibly divergent long-term implications; international cooperation between national governments and international health institutions has been crucial. Against this background, the book under review presents a collection of essays that reconstruct the experience of selected Asian countries in managing the public health emergencies associated with the pandemic’s outbreak.
The introduction sets the stage with an acknowledgement of Asia’s exceptional diversity, which is reflected in the variation of national government responses to COVID-19. It is precisely this diversity that leads the editors to reject culturalist explanations of variation in policy outcomes or success, and to propose instead that in-depth case study analysis could offer more valuable insights.
The substantive chapters then unfold over four sections. The first one has a strong focus on the international dimension of public health governance, as contributions here analyze the role of international health institutions and the often fraught dynamics of coordination between domestic and international actors. The first two chapters analyze the role of the World Health Organization and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, respectively, while the third draws from historical public opinion data in an attempt to identify a relationship between international cooperation and public trust in government institutions.
The second part of the book has a more speculative tone, as contributors venture into predictions about what future health policy international cooperation in the region may look like. The individual contributions focus specifically on the forthcoming international roles of China (chapter 4), South Korea (chapter 5), Taiwan (chapter 6), and Japan (chapter 7).
The third part of the book includes a collection of case studies to analyze domestic responses to the pandemic challenge. Unfortunately, however, only three countries are covered, namely Vietnam, Malaysia, and South Korea, and the strategy for case selection is not discussed. As a result, most of the diversity the editors allude to in the introduction is excluded from the analysis.
Finally, the fourth part concludes with a set of contributions on disparate topics that did not fit in the previous three sections. Chapter 12 explores the relationship between COVID-19 and China’s decoupling from the global/US economy; chapter 13 details the pandemic’s implications for a vulnerable population, namely guest workers in Taiwan; chapter 14 is a political economy analysis of how Japan’s developmental model has informed policy responses to the pandemic; and chapter 15 describes how Indonesia, a labour-exporting country, has managed inbound and outbound migratory flows during the pandemic.
The volume under review is not a conventional academic study, as it is largely descriptive and lacks a unifying conceptual and theoretical framework to guide the analysis performed in the various chapters. For example, each of the country case studies develops an ad hoc account of domestic policy dynamics, and no effort is made to draw conclusions based on a comparative analysis. An overarching argument is similarly missing. As such, its value for theoretically minded academic readers is limited. Nevertheless, this is a timely publication on an important topic, and the editors should be lauded for the remarkable accomplishment of bringing the work to fruition on a tight timeline. Furthermore, the individual chapters are generally well researched and structured in an accessible way; both generalist and specialized readers with an interest in public health in Asia during these turbulent times will find valuable information.
City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong