Abstract
The Bangladeshi state is promoting the cultivation of medicinal plants and the development of an herbal pharmaceutical industry as a means to a more economically self-sufficient nation. This chapter argues that the meanings of self-care and self-sufficiency need to be understood in the context of neoliberal policies that support the privatization of healthcare and individual responsibility for maintaining health. Based on more than a year of ethnographic fieldwork, I explore what self-sufficiency and self-care mean for a small Bangladeshi nongovernmental organization that is organizing its struggle for equitable healthcare around medicinal plants. This NGO follows neoliberal trends by encouraging villagers to grow medicinal plants to use for self-treatment and for extra income. At the same time, I show how this organization critiques the failure of government health services and provides a model for imagining a new art of government centered around the use of medicinal plants to strengthen communities.
Published Version
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