Season 2, Ep.4- Mazdak Daneshvar: State, Market, and Healthcare System: An Anthropological Perspective 

November 13, 2023

In this episode of the Fly-Bottle podcast, Yeganeh Khazaei talks with Mazdak Daneshvar, a physician, medical anthropologist, and researcher in the field of social history at Leiden University in the Netherlands. They discuss the history of the state and its relationship with the healthcare system in Iran. They also delve into the challenges of commodification, the free market, and neoliberalism in the healthcare system, topics that Dr. Daneshvar had previously explored in his book "Socialist Health In the Debate with Neoliberalism; Critical Essays in Medical Anthropology and Health". In the end, they examine some solutions for addressing the compounded inequality crisis in Iran's healthcare system.

Mazdak Daneshvar completed his studies at Tehran University Medical School and then went on to Amsterdam University where he studied medical anthropology and pursued his doctoral studies in social history at Leiden University in the Netherlands. The main topic of his research at the university is the intersection and collision of the issue of body and pain and the cultural representation of this phenomenon. Additionally, he has focused on changes in the healthcare system in Iran, brought about by the neoliberal trend in this system, and the issue of inequality within medical institutions and society as a whole, and has published numerous notes and articles about it.

Yaganeh Khazai is a dentist, epidemiologist, and researcher at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. She is also a Ph.D. candidate at the dental faculty of Melbourne University of Australia with a focus on microbiome data analysis. 

Music: Reza Nadri

Cover art: Pouya Fatoureh-chi

Content Editor: Ata Heshmati

Produced by Yeganeh Khazaei in the Flybottle Podcast