The increasing consumption of antibiotics and corresponding rates of antimicrobial resistance in Turkey, among other countries, has become a cause for national and global public health concerns. The translation of global public health policies into the Turkish health care system over the past two decades has resulted in the implementation of ‘rational antibiotic use’ protocols attempting to regulate antibiotic prescription and use across the country. How do biological and medical temporalisations combine with social and political concepts and practices in Turkey? Nalan Azak addresses these questions by exploring how people draw on local, cultural, and temporal understandings and phenomena when deciding how and when to use antibiotics, and how this, in turn, shapes antibiotic use and the management of AMR in Turkey.
“The current medical-rational paradigm in countering AMR fails to engage with the local experiences and understandings of antibiotics, as well as the tensions that arise between public health policy and the lived realities of ordinary people and health professionals alike. I argue that people handle illness episodes by claiming responsibility, authority, and social belonging, which are often contingent and bound by multiple priorities, shaping unsettled and multitemporal, rather than linear care practices. These practices, in turn, condition how antibiotics are used, and AMR is managed in Turkey, in ways that often diverge from the intentions of state-imposed rules and policies,” says Nalan.
Based on historically informed ethnographic fieldwork and written documents in Turkey, Nalan’s work aims to contribute to the growing social science research about antibiotic use and the management of AMR on local and global scales. She suggests that analysing antibiotic use in relation to people’s experiences and expectations may shape better ways to provide care in a world where AMR is becoming a growing public health threat.
Ayse Nalan Azak successfully defended her dissertation on 20 October 2023.
Trial lecture
Designated topic: "Culture, Medicine and Practices of Care in Contemporary Turkey"
Evaluation committee
- Professor Nik Brown, University of York (first opponent)
- Associate Professor Ayşe Parla, Boston University (second opponent)
- Professor Jacob Høigilt, University of Oslo (committee administrator)
Chair of the defence
- Professor Rune Svarverud
Supervisors
- Professor Einar Wigen, University of Oslo
- Dr. Coll de Lima Hutchison, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine