Improving Service Encounters through Resource Sensitivity: The Case of Health Care Delivery in an Appalachian Community

Abstract

Pierre Bourdieu's work on the political economy of symbolic power is particularly relevant to marketing and public policy aimed at ameliorating consumer vulnerability and persistent social inequities. This theoretical framework highlights various resources, or capital, that individuals possess and how these resources (or lack of) affect power relations. The authors use an ethnographic study of women's health care encounters in a rural Appalachian coal mining community to explore and demonstrate the usefulness of this approach. Specifically, in some health care encounters, social inequality is reinforced through the interplay of different forms of capital between the service provider and consumer. However, practices that are sensitive to capital increase the possibility of more successful and just service encounters. In this article, the authors examine health care practices that are resource sensitive and insensitive and offer recommendations.